Earlier this year, I brushed the dust off my pencil and started writing a blog, not knowing where it was going, and not needing to know either. The good thing about starting is there are no prerequisites of knowing: to start, we just start.

Since then I’ve given a lot of consideration to the questions of What it is, and Who is it for?

Having stumbled into a wormhole of reading a lot of the ironically classic writing-about-writing and the myriads and multitudes of articles about having a successful blog, content creation, and growing your brand/business, I found there is a dreadful amount of advice out there: 12 Key Steps to This, 7 Things to Know About That. I’ve read enough of it to know that I don’t want most of it. It’s not that it’s bad advice, it’s just other people’s advice, written by–and seemingly for–other people. If you want advice, you can save yourself some time and stop reading this.

I’ve given a lot of thought to voice and contribution. My voice and my contribution. The Peanut Gallery is all too happy to tell us what to do to be a success. Unfortunately, no one seems to pause to reflect on what being a success means. And I think I know why: Success is a highly personal term. It is each of our own privilege to define, and it is to our great advantage to do so. As one gal’s trash is another lady’s treasure, as my vacation might be your worst nightmare, so too may one person’s success be another’s nervous breakdown.

My voice and my contribution, and indeed part of my own rendering of success, is to cut thru the mounds of cookie-cutter advice. To offer an alternative perspective: that while yes, there is good information and choice tidbits to be gleaned from the flock of advice-givers, to make the leap from survival to our own thrival, the knowledge we seek resides in our own knowledge of self.

But wait! The Peanut Gallery screams from their perch high atop BlogLand. To be a success, you must Be An Expert!

I hear y’all, but I’m just not sure I’m buying that.

It’s the Information Age: the totality of human culture, information, and misinformation are all instantly available in the palms of our hands. It’s all out there already. Personally, I prefer to not spend my days and early morning twilight hours jostling about, elbows out, just to rehash, reshape, and respin information that’s already available, as The 3 Steps to Becoming an Expert suggests.

What I see is that we’ve collectively become lost in this Sea of Information. We’re drowning out here, clinging to the Experts’ Advice like so much flotsam amidst the floating wreckage. Amidst the deluge of external advice and information, it’s easy to lose touch with the knowledge that resides inside us and comes thru us, our own creativity, and our individual and collective humanity.

​What I hope to offer, what I aim to contribute, is a reminder of that humanity. A glimpse of my path towards my own self-knowledge. A view of my own internal insights as they dance their way thru the outer world. And, maybe, on a good day, provide a tidbit that reverberates with just one of you, that sings out to your innate wisdom, creativity and knowing. That it jostles awake a dormant piece of you yearning to paint, run thru a field, or stare at the stars. If in doing so, I can invite one person to move just a little bit closer in to their deeper self, well, that is my definition of success.