The first session I attended at BlogHer on Friday was "Finding and Following Your Passion". I am still figuring out what to do with this blogging thing, so I thought it would be interesting to go and see what others had to say about where blogging has led them.
Christine Kane opened the session by saying that the guiding principle for her in starting a blog was having something she was passionate about, and something she wanted to share with others. Christine is a singer songwriter who felt that she had to reachout through her blog so that she could relate to others what she knows about being an artist in the music business.
Carmen Stacier has a diet, exercise, and weight loss blog. She started it after a new year's resolution, and the blog chronicles her success in losing 75 pounds and becoming more interested in exercise than she ever thought she would be. She has also has a parenting blog about her life with 6 kids called Mom to the Screaming Masses. She said that she has done done more than she ever thought she could do and is passionate about telling other women they can do it.
Sheila Scarborough writes about family travel, NHRA drag racing, and NASCAR. She has lived and traveled all over the world, and when she retired from the Navy, she decided to become a full-time freelance writer. Family travel was a natural fit for her, since she loves traveling with her kids, but later she became interested in women in drag racing. She knew nothing about racing when she started, but learned to love the sport. She started by blogging about something she knew a lot about and later fell into something she knew nothing about when she started.
The session was fairly small, and there was ample opportunity for interaction with the audience. Some of the audience members had not yet started blogging, and were wondering how to get started, and why anyone would care about what they had to say. Others related their stories of how they started and why they blog.
The take away messages from this session, were:
- Sometimes finding your passion is really about overcoming your fear. You have to have confidence that you know that you are an expert on the topic, and find your voice.
- Do what you know.
- Be authentic, and don't do what someone else is doing. No one is an expert on everything, but you're an expert on the things you love.
- Be honest. If you don't know what you're doing, but know how to write, note the details and describe what you see. Make things come alive for people, and they will respond to what you write.
- GK Chesterton said, "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly." Don't be afraid to fail in public, others will be inspired because you tried.
- Don't listen to the voices that say, "Who do you think you are to try this?" or to negative comments or reactions.
- Don't worry about finding an audience. When you find your own voice and your own passion, you will find people who want to hear what you have to say.
- Take joy in storytelling.
- Passion keeps us learning and
growing, it's not always about expertise, but development.
- When asked, "How do you find your passion when you are interested in a lot of things?", the panelists answered, "It finds you."
- Ask yourself what don't I want? Then, what do I want? Write every day about what you want.
- If you say to yourself, "I really wish someone what write about ..."? Write about that. There will be others who want to know about it as well.
- You can be passionate about your own life and write about that.
- Audience members recommended The Artist's Way
by Julia Cameron and Twyla Tharp's The Creative Habit
- Great things can happen from blogging. It's a way to show your work. You never know where it will lead you, or who will find you. Things can happen just from showing up, and doing something you love and writing about the things you love.
I thought all the panelists did a great job, and were inspiring. It was a great start to the conference for me.
