Finding a theme for my blog (and my career)

So, I've gotten a little off focus lately. Whining about my career path and money. Blogs are supposed to have a topic, a theme, a thread. My sub-title up there says "acknowledging positivity and serendipity while randomly musing my way to publication." Have I done that lately?

Penelope Trunk writes in this post that blogs have to have a topic to be successful and to help your own success. She advises that you use your blog to get known for what you are good at. She asks:

a) What do you want people to know you for?

b) Where do you want to go next?

What do I want to be known for?

I want to be known as a writer. A non-fiction, personal narrative writer. A writer who muses about my life and the paths on which I daily ramble. I, like Anais Nin, taste life twice through my writing. I experience it then reproduce it in words. I find meaning this way. I woke up once in the middle of the night with this phrase banging around in my head:

I am a writer. I have to document my life.

So, while this blog may seem random - kids, money, career, religion, writing - it all huddles under one umbrella: life as interpreted by me, in my words.

I approach my life as a writer. I'm not here to offer my readers advice on how to write or what to write, only to offer myself up as an example of how one writer thinks and lives. The fact that more minutes of my life are dedicated to being a mother, a wife, a housekeeper, and a struggling business woman than a writer, means what I write are these things. My other hats are fuel to my writing fire.

The fact that I look for and believe in Serendipity and Thinking Positively makes these things natural themes in my writing. Due to life's current struggles I haven't focused on them lately, however, and this is where I think I need to make a change. I do strongly believe that if you look for the positive you will not only find it, but it will also find you.

So, that brings me to Penelope's second question: Where do I want to go next?

What I want is to take this blog to the next level. I want to make it a source of Positive Thought and Serendipity from the point of view of a writer. My "outside" writing and the (inner) journal writing instruction will merge with one concrete theme: Helping others to Live Authentically using their Inner Wisdom. This is my focus, my theme, my thread.




In another post, Penelope emphatically states you should not have more than one blog. Oops! I have three. My logic was: one for writing my everyday musings, one to promote my journaling workshops, and one just to have a place to shove various essays or stories that were laying around. I am in the process of launching a real website to promote my workshops and my husband's psychotherapy practice. Writing to wellness and self-actualization and seeing a counselor for such go hand in hand, kind of like him and me, so why not live together in a little patch of cyberspace.

I am planning to launch my new website January 1, 2010 (to give myself plenty of time to conquer the scary HTMLs and other such foreign languages I don't understand). Please stayed tuned!