Finding Your Own Voice (2018) | Blogtober Day 14

This is a post that I wrote for Blogtober 2018. I stumbled upon it when looking for inspiration for this blogtober and realised I never posted it. So, I thought I’d post it now, as something that still holds truth but is a sort of time capsule for my blog in it’s first month of being active.

And boy, a lot has changed.

So Kayla from 2018, do your thing.

 

“Finding Your Own Voice And Self”

In such a crowded world, it’s easy to feel you’ve lost your voice. 

Especially in terms of social media, there’s so much you can shout until you’re piled up by the other shouters of the internet, completely covering you until you can’t be seen anymore. 

To counteract that, the first question you ask yourself is ‘what are these people doing, that I am not?’ You look at the successes, the people getting likes and retweets, the people that you want to be and wonder why you’re not there, too. You’re funnier than them, you’ve got a great personality and sure as hell you have something to say! So, what can you do, that makes you stand out?

Be exactly like them! 

It’s so easy for this to be everybody’s first thought, right? Imitation is flattery, but when you become a full blown copycat? Everybody’s instagram feeds start to look the same, we’re all talking about the same topic. We all look identical. Is that really the key to success? Being somebody else?

Now, I’m not gonna act like Miss Perfect here. I don’t know anything. I have 30 blog followers, 355 twitter followers and about 10 blog views a day. My instagram feed is absolutely trying to be someone else, white and blue and pale and bland. However, the difference is, I came to accept that content is more important than followers. 

I asked myself, at the end of the day, why do I blog? Of all forms of writing, why is blogging the one that is taking my passion right now? The answer is, I have the ability to talk about whatever the fuck I want! I finally have a freedom. Nothing on my blog is going to be marked or graded. My blog is run by me and the people who choose to follow my journey. I want to be a role model, so I’m using my blog as a voice to talk about super important issues to me, things that I feel are taboo or weirdly unspoken of. 

In that passion, I found my voice. In that moment, where I had a mini existential crisis with myself, I realised what I want to be and what I want to say. 

If you’re struggling to find your voice on this platform, my biggest piece of advice is to take a break from it. It’s so easy to get lost in other people’s posts and the work of others, that you get confused between what’s your voice and what’s theirs. Take a break and ask yourself a couple of questions;

1. What Makes Your Voice Important?
2. What Do You Want To Tell The World?
3. Why You?

And I promise, your content will come back stronger and most importantly, more personal to who you are as a person. People love passion.