Hi, I’m Laura.
Once upon a time, I flunked out of grad school.
Okay, that’s a bit of a mischaracterization, my grades were quite good. But I realized that my goal was beyond me. In particular, I had wanted to become a counsellor and Help People. Alright, let’s be perfectly honest… I wanted to be Deanna Troi. But partway through the schooling for that I came to the sad conclusion that I couldn’t cope with the weight of it. The pressure, the high stakes. I was also finding that, after a lengthy period of avoiding people because of my anxiety, combined with that very anxiety, I did not know how to converse with strangers anymore.
Well, after a bit of mourning for the future I could no longer look forward to, I saw a new future ahead of me. I could still help people! I could break down stigma, teach people who hadn’t been previously able to understand what it felt like to be mentally ill what it felt like to be mentally ill, and send a message of hope to those who knew all too well.
I could start a blog.
I came up with the name Delicately Off-Balance, put together a WordPress site, and just started writing.
I was proud of a lot of my content, but I got very little interaction, and the handful of people reading it were people close to me. They would say they appreciated getting to understand me better, or sometimes that they related to something I’d written. But I was writing “anonymously,” and admittedly was afraid of being publicly identified as a bipolar person for fear of the effects that might have on my later life. So I only actually advertised the existence of this blog to a very few of my already-small number of Facebook friends. I asked those people not to tell anyone else who wrote the blog.
With very little audience and almost no engagement, my enthusiasm waned. I went longer and longer between posts. After some years, I gave up on my beloved blog.
It wasn’t until late-pandemic times that I watched one of my favourite YouTubers discuss how she gained a following for her blog and channel, and I realized I’d left out an important step. You can’t just put out content and expect the world to find it “because Google.” You have to go out and find your community, and engage with them first. It’s lonely without a community.
I wonder, if I’d learned that lesson earlier, what would have happened to that blog. But in keeping with my philosophy on regret (which boils down, basically, to “don’t,” but more on that another day), I am satisfied with how things played out. Because here I am. (cont. soon)