The Authentic Voice

Over the past week sev­eral peo­ple have asked me about the mix of top­ics in my blog – and my will­ing­ness (brav­ery? stu­pid­ity?) to write about yoga or leisure activ­i­ties in the con­text of a busi­ness-ori­ented blog. Don’t get me wrong – they like the mix of top­ics, and feel it reveals inter­est­ing things about the per­son writ­ing the blog. It’s one of the rea­sons they keep com­ing back.

These con­ver­sa­tions have taken place over cof­fee or lunch, after a meet­ing – but not in the blo­gos­phere. Some have been with peo­ple I already knew, oth­ers with folks who wanted to meet in part because of what they’ve read in my blog.

They’ve told me they use Twit­ter and/or LinkedIn (and maybe Face­book for fam­ily con­nec­tions). But they don’t yet feel the need – or have the time to com­mit – to their own blogs. From their ques­tions it’s clear they’re try­ing on the notion of writ­ing their own blog. A cou­ple won­der if they’ll find it a sat­is­fy­ing cre­ative out­let.

I sus­pect they’re con­fronting the ques­tion of find­ing their own voice, wor­ry­ing about reveal­ing their pas­sions, won­der­ing what they might find inter­est­ing enough to write about on a reg­u­lar basis.

The time fac­tor can be a real issue when the time avail­able for blog­ging com­petes with fam­ily inter­ac­tions, other leisure activ­i­ties or real-world social­iz­ing. Blog­ging, after all, is a kind of hobby for those of us who don’t earn our liv­ing in SEO, SEM, social media pun­ditry, etc.

For me writ­ing about yoga or what I’ve been read­ing lately feels authen­tic. Even if inter­spersed between more tra­di­tional busi­ness top­ics.

As a self-employed per­son I have the lux­ury of “flow” — more flex — in my day­time hours, unlike my hus­band who’s trapped in the cor­po­rate world. If I feel like writ­ing about mar­ket­ing con­cepts for yoga stu­dio own­ers – just for the heck of it – there’s no one stand­ing over my shoul­der ask­ing why I’m not doing “some­thing more worth­while.”

On the other hand I’m also not get­ting paid to blog. Need­less to say, when dead­lines loom, I don’t feel com­pelled to blog…

To those won­der­ing how to jump in, find your voice – Just do it. Find a blog­ging ser­vice that suits your needs, a writ­ing tool that lets you think (with­out risk of los­ing half-based thoughts), iden­tify some top­ics that get you ener­gized, and get going.

If the sub­ject is inter­est­ing to you, you’ll fig­ure out a way to tell the story in your own words. Or pic­tures.

Enjoy the ride.