#it's about the imposter syndrome and knowing that everything you do it watched and judged AAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[birdstruck]

new petey which means i get to be regular about a man in his 20s

[sunskate]

Off (ice) Hours Podcast: episode 10 Emilea Zingas (part 2)

has imposter syndrome sometimes (like at 4CC), has to remind herself she earned her place

she's not superstitious at competitions, but Vadym is way more- meditates, everything's organized in a particular order, his costumes, skates. she gets anxious at competitions about her hair and makeup, though -

when she skated singles, she threw on mascara and eyeshadow and called it a day, but she went to her first competition at Lake Placid their first season, and other girls at practice had on fake eyelashes, which she'd never worn in her life, and her coaches asked, where's your makeup? "i didn't know that was a requirement of me right now!" and she was the only skater with a bare face at the practice

other skaters at her rink taught her how to do her makeup. she would sleep in 25 braids before Nationals and 4CC because she didn't want to get up to crimp her hair before performing their RD

Q: is it true that in ice dance, judges - a lot of pressure/attention is put on how the girl looks, like that defines how the whole team looks? A: yeah, a 100%. one of my biggest fears going into ice dance was thinking that i wasn't going to look like a dancer. i just want to say it really doesn't matter what your god-given look is, you can be whatever you want to be. a lot of people told me you just don't look like it, you'll never be an ice dancer. you're such a jumper, you have these huge legs for jumping. you'll just never have that look, and i was really discouraged by that. i let that affect me for a really long time, and now i realize it's not that deep, and you can be whatever you want to be without thinking about how you look all the time. it is a huge part of dance, which i think is unfortunate. like teams who have worse proportions, like maybe the girl is taller than the boy or something like that, it's more difficult physically and people don't like it as much? i guess? i don't want to say that because that's not how i feel, but i can definitely see that people see it that way

sibling teams- could never skate with her brother, it would be more difficult because there's no real boundary for what you can say or do when you're family with someone. that can get messy fast

she looks up to Piper Gilles - her favorite person she's met in ice dance. Emilea has a recurrent ovarian cystic disease, and how Piper handled herself with her ovarian cancer and came back even stronger was inspiring and amazing. and is one of the most talented, powerful, beautiful skaters in the sport today. watched their FD last season crying. Piper carries her weight -

in ice dance "there's a stigma that [the girl] can sit and look pretty and the boy does a lot of work, which there are teams with that dynamic, and it does work, but i think Piper is a good example of someone who doesn't have that kind of presence on the ice. she makes her presence very known, and she's hauling ass in that program. the section after the SlLi - like 2 backwards crossovers basically on her own and then she does this backwards extension - i was just like 'holy- ' she is flying, and she's having no help. she can skate, and that's what i aspire to be like. i don't want to just sit and look pretty, like i want to carry my weight. and i want to be someone who makes a difference in a partnership, and makes a difference in a performance, and she's a great example of someone who does that"

(i *think* this the moment she means, even though it's not after the SlLi - it is an amazing transition into the curve lift)

[sadfruittheatre]

Name: Aneas

Age: Over 5000 (equivalent to a 15-year-old)

Gender: Nonbinary (he/they)

Species: Shinjin/Core Person (I lovingly call them fruitboys)

Height: 4’

Likes: gardening, sewing, cooking, romance novels, and corny jokes

Dislikes: himself, silence, people who are rude to/about his wife, aphids, and high shelves

Fears: fucking up his job and also that one day his plants will suddenly become sentient and start revealing everything he’s ever told them, or alternately start judging him or telling him they hate him

Personality: Aneas is generally very shy, reserved, and nervous. He doesn’t like to stand out, and he doesn’t even think he should. That said, he always tries to be amicable and kind, and if you get to know him, he’ll talk your ear off about the things he’s interested in. He’s a hopeless romantic and catches feelings easily— so easily, in fact, that he is already married (to someone his own age, don’t worry), and takes his duties as a husband very seriously.

However, he also struggles with a lot of internal darkness. He’s severely depressed, which can often manifest as anger, bitterness, and thoughts of violence. Said violent thoughts are especially likely to become violent actions if you upset his wife in any way, shape, or form. His self-esteem is incredibly low and he’s often prone to jealousy and projecting his own insecurities onto others. He hates this part of himself and trying to be a good person in spite of his darker impulses only adds to the imposter syndrome he already feels.

Background: Aneas is from Universe 5, one of the four universes (out of twelve) that isn’t some degree of a dumpster fire, and for the most part, has lived a pretty average life. He was an average kid, with average skills and an average amount of friends. And that was perfectly fine by him, until his friend Bragi suddenly had a lot less time to hang out thanks to all the special classes he was in. He was worried that this development would potentially spell out the end of their friend group, so he decided that he would try to study and train hard so he could bridge that gap between them.

However, not everyone is born with natural talent. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t catch up. He couldn’t even come close to catching up. The repeated failed efforts had done a number on his self-esteem, and in an unfortunate case of projection, he was sure his friend thought he was as stupid and useless as he did, so eventually, he just sort of gave up. Not just on this, but everything. He sort of just coasted by until one day, it was announced that there would be a lottery held to find the next West Kai.

Aneas entered his name into the drawing on a dare and lo and behold, it was the first time he’d won a drawing for anything. He was entirely too young and entirely too unqualified, but the lottery had spoken. And so, armed with some basic training from the other Kais, he made his new home on a tiny planet somewhere in the Other World where he would watch over his quadrant of the universe and try to figure out what in the hell he was doing.

His mental health was already bad enough, and none of this was helping much, but in a desperate attempt to keep himself from spiraling any further, he took up gardening. It took a lot of trial and error, but it proved to be something he was really good at. It wasn’t long before most of his little planet was filled with plants, all with their own names and personalities and meticulously interconnected lore. Was he going a little crazy? Probably. But talking to an audience that could never possibly judge him for his darkest thoughts wound up being incredibly therapeutic.

However, his life would change dramatically once again when he was more or less voluntold to be a parole officer for a high profile prisoner of the Time Patrol because no one else wanted to do it. Coulie, the apprentice of the Demon King’s sister, Towa, was someone with a lot of blood on her hands thanks to her incredibly dubious science experiments, and now she was at his front door. The initial encounter was tense and awkward, but they quickly found some common ground in their loneliness and talking about these more difficult feelings with the plants they worked with all day, and both of them sort of ended up forgetting why they had to meet like this to begin with.

After awhile, Coulie expressed the desire to stay with him once her parole was up, and so, being that they were already raising a beautiful plant named Eugene together, Aneas, sufferer of terminal Shoujo Bitch Disease, saw only one course of action: marriage. It was some wishful thinking that got entirely out of hand, but after a lot of miscommunication and one of Eugene’s leaves blowing in the air, Coulie reciprocated and the two were wed.

However, their peaceful wedded bliss can’t last forever, as their pasts tend to keep coming back to haunt them in various ways, from Aneas’s childhood friends, to Coulie’s former cohort and prince of the Demon Realm, Fu. Not to mention all the gods and demons alike who are more than a little baffled by U5’s baby West Kai marrying U7’s baby demon war criminal.

Will they ever know peace? Will it all come crashing down in divorce? Find out on the next episode of SAD FRUIT THEATRE!

[aphrodite-would-be-proud]

🕯Anon said: just wanna say I adore your writing and how you write Reiner and the kids and the other warriors is my favourite thing ever !! I just wanna give them all hugs :) do u have any hcs for the types of jobs you see them all doing in modernverse ?🕯

The types of jobs they have in modern au

{Annie, Bertolt, Colt, Marcel, Pieck, Porco, Reiner, Zeke, }

{Implied Reiner x reader}

{ "Porto" 1935 by Renato Natali 1883-1979 }

Annie is an Animal rescue worker.

Having had experience as a dog trainer before, it wasn't hard to find a full time job at her local shelter after graduating high school, having volunteered there before.

With time, effort and a lot of energy she made her way into the position of "animal control officer" now she spends her days busting animal's abusers doors and rescuing injured or neglected pets.

With long shifts and a high maintenance job, her time was all poured into her work. Usually she'd be exhausted after a long day.

Despite that, she's fulfilled and satisfied with her job. Not having to deal with a lot of people is a plus too, it's a hard job yes but she prefers it this way.

Her friends are bumped about not being able to see her a lot but they understand, plus she keeps in touch with them by lurking in the group chat only to send a snarky remark to stir the pot every now and then.

Bertolt sees her everyday because they work at the same animal shelter, even if their jobs are different they still walk home together, she also met some different people like Hitch and Marco at her job.

The kids love her job, they think it's badass, especially Gabi and Udo. Gabi because Annie gets to kick people in the face and Udo because he genuinely cares about animals.

She'd never tell anyone this, but part of the reason she wanted the job was because she felt guilty for her past self and wanted to fight for those who couldn't fight for themselves.

Bertolt is a veterinarian.

Having changed his mind post graduation and going to college instead of with Reiner, he graduated after 4 years of studying and is currently working with Annie at the local shelter while also planning to open his own clinic one day.

He takes some animals under his personal care for weeks or months even till they get adopted, he fears something bad will happen to the weak or ill ones if left at the shelter overnight.

Just like Annie, the job takes a lot of his time, not to mention caring for animals off of work. So he's in the same situation as her, but for the sake of his best friend he still finds time to visit and hang out once a week.

Reiner and him still text daily, it's mostly pictures Bertolt took of the animals, Annie on her break, interesting plants he finds along the way. And Reiner replies with pictures of the kids.

They still find time to play basketball together, they try to keep it a secret from Annie because she will kick their ass in it.

Bertolt is comfortable with his job, he feels like he belongs and likes being needed. Yes the long hours are a con but seeing the fruits of his labour grow and get better day by day makes it all worth it.

The kids like visiting his house because there usually will be a new dog or some animal in there every month or so, Reiner makes sure they don't bother the animals. 

Something he's never told anyone is a big part of the reason he changed his mind last minute was because Animals feel much safer and secure for him to work with than humans.

Colt is a college student working part time.

He's majoring in nursing, being a four years degree he's trying to balance his studies with work and taking care of Falco.

Zeke offered him to work full time after graduation at his clinic, since he's been working part time there for a while and the pay is good, plus it's really convenientnal.

He has worked different part time jobs in the past like a barista, flower shop assistant, tutor, kindergarten teacher, etc.

Between all his responsibilities he barely has time for himself, his courses end right before his work starts and the small bits in-between is spent on Falco and his friends. Zeke and Pieck try to take some of his responsibility but he refuses saying it's the least he could do to Falco.

He's really good at his job like multitasking, reading people, gaining their trust and having high stamina that he could stay for night shifts even.

He relies on coffee a lot.

Falco sees him as a real life superhero, they weren't that close before but after the incident he really started appreciating his big brother. 

Something he keeps inside is that despite pursuing this job because he genuinely wanted to make a difference in people's lives and help the sick, he also felt a crushing guilt after his parents passed away, and so he's trying to save other people's lives now instead.

Marcel is a pilot.

It's a dream he always had since middle school, soon after graduation he joined the military to gain enough flying hours and experience to apply to a commercial airline after taking some mathematics, aviation and some general flying courses.

He was officially hired as a pilot after getting his first class medical certificate to check his health.

His work isn't measured by hours to him but by days, he needs to be available 24/7 in case of an emergency call. Now he's working overseas and far away from his friends.

You've actually never met Marcel, only seen pictures of him and received letters. The person he keeps in touch with the most is Porco.

He likes his work, it's his dream. He doesn't like the work hours and being so absent from his friends and brother, he misses them so much at times.

Pieck is a tattoo artist.

Her shop is actually her old flower shop after she decided to change her career. She's always been good with plants and taking care of them, at that time Colt worked as her assistant. 

It wasn't till later after some years of practice and training under other artists that she was confident enough about her skills to start the project 

Her art is full of life, mesmerising and beautiful. She puts her soul in every piece and has gained a good reputation because of it, plus having really high ratings and strict hygiene rules, no health inspector could ever challenge her.

Having her own independent work meant that she has a very flexible schedule, being mostly free ment she could pursue other hobbies like gardening.

A peaceful and simple life where she can indulge in her art and be happy is all she ever wanted

Porco is a frequent customer of hers that gets a family discount, Zeke came once before and later sent his friend, a really tall and blonde woman who became her most frequent customer.

Zofia thinks her work is really cool and wants to go and just watch her do her thing, but it's frowned upon to have a kid just sitting at a tattoo shop.

Despite changing into this career, the town people still think of her as the sweet flower shop lady.

Porco is a bartender.

That job came to him by accident more than anything, he was working part time as a bouncer in a local bar but a slot was open after the old bartender suddenly quit and he gave it a chance.

He didn't expect to love it so much, neither did he know about his hidden talent in mixing drinks. So he took it as full time and changed to better bars after gaining the experience he needed.

Being naturally charismatic and good at influencing people, while also multitasking in making drinks and keeping a conversation going, he was instantly a hit in whatever place he worked at.

Working the night shift ment he's mostly free in the morning, he tries to help Pieck with her gardening and is actually attempting to grow some plants at his house.

Naturally whenever there's a gathering, he's the one mixing drinks and being the self assigned bartender who openly judges his friends for their choice in drinks. The charismatic persona being thrown out the window and replaced by a no mouth filter.

He genuinely cares tho, he's the one taking care of someone when they drink more they can handle. It's mostly Colt who underestimates his drinks and is left clinging to Porco who drives him home.

Because of his line of work, tattoos and general brash personality, the kids' parents don't like him even one bit. They're suspicious of him no matter how many times Reiner assures them he's trustworthy.

It's actually only Colt who trusts Falco with him, and maybe Zofia's mom who is at the bar every weekend. 

Reiner is a firefighter.

With his mother pushing him into this line of work, he applied for the physical and psychological exams after graduation before getting accepted. He wasn't unprepared per say but actually being in that line of work was more than he could ever prepare for.

It instantly took a great hit at his mental health, so much in fact that he was thankful Bertolt changed his mind last minute and didn't follow him in this job.

It was both everything he ever wanted, like saving people, helping children, animals and knowing it's him who saved them even if it means putting his own life at risk.

But also everything he hated, like the hunting faces and screams of the people who were far too gone for him to save, the recurring nightmares and constant guilt paired with imposter syndrome.

He works a 24/72 shift, meaning he works for a whole day before getting 3 days off. Approximately only working 7-8 days a month, not to mention unpaid leave, sick days and holidays.

So it both gave him a really tight schedule on some days and on others more free time than he knows what to do with, that's why he naturally took the main role of being the kid's caretaker. Looking after his little cousins genuinely helped him and he liked playing the big brother role.

Especially to Gabi, he was the only stable adult in her life. It's common knowledge that you call Reiner first for anything concerning her before her parents because he's more likely to answer and be available.

After meeting you, his life improved to the better as you moved in and became a trustworthy person in his life, someone he can depend on to take care of his little cousins on the days he works.

Not to mention that after you persuaded him to see a therapist, his mental health began improving too.

Gabi may or may have not committed arson at one point, she still wants to be a firefighter despite that and follow in Reiner's footsteps.

He hasn't told anyone beside you this, but he really fears for her, but doesn't have the heart to tell her no.

Zeke is a doctor.

Previously he worked in a hospital but was able to open his own clinic afterwards, Colt was a great help to him at that time when he was getting on his own feet and even worked a lot of unpaid hours.

After that he insisted Colt works an official part time job there with a much higher pay, till he graduates at least. Plus the experience will greatly improve his resume.

Zeke is brilliant at his job, he'd be a perfect doctor wasn't it for the fact he's a huge hypocrite who doesn't follow the advice he gives his patients. 

He does a side job in his free time that honestly no one of his friends know what it is, but they know it gained him a lot of connections and made new friends.

Something he always keeps buried inside was that he really never expected himself to become a doctor especially after what his dad did to his mother, and yet here he is. In some way it's like his own personal stepping stone to prove he's a better man than his father ever was.

Bonus:

Falco: middle schooler

He does volunteer work on the weekends, sometimes Udo joins him.

Doesn't want Gabi becoming a firefighter.

Likes all videogames , just all types.

Likes watching cartoons and medical shows with Colt who covers Falco eyes whenever an adult scene is on

His favourite food is chicken nuggets

Wants to try coffee

Is good at PE

Reads comic books

Likes yellow and blue

Gabi: middle schooler

Takes self defence classes and really wants to go to summer camp

Wants to be like Reiner, aspires to be as strong too.

Likes shooter videogames or really hard ones.

Likes watching Anime and cartoons

Her favourite food is Pizza

Wants to try energy drinks

Is also really good at PE and surprisingly good at puzzles.

Likes red and pink 

Udo: middle schooler

Takes music classes at the weekend, wants to go to science camp

Kinda wants to be like Reiner or an astronaut.

Likes calming videogames

Likes watching anime and Minecraft let's play

His favourite food is mac and cheese 

His favourite drink is strawberry milk

Is good at language classes and creative writing, he also just likes animals a lot.

Likes green and black

Zofia: middle schooler (could've been in a special program)

Takes music classes with Udo

Wants to be a lawyer

Likes co-op Videogames 

Likes watching true crime and youtubers drama

Her favourite food is Donuts

She likes strawberry milk and ice tea 

Is good at all classes

Likes white and purple

[dobrikdeadass]

views

word count: 1705

description: david talks about addie on the podcast for the first time.

October 2019

“Welcome back to Views. I’m David, I’m 23. That’s Jason. He’s 46.” This was the first time David had avoided stumbling over his age since his birthday months ago and he was excited. “Wait, Jace, that was so smooth.”

“David if we’re gonna talk about smoothness we need to talk about that stunt you pulled with the Monday video.”        

He let out a giggle. “Wasn’t it the best video?”       

“It was really fucking cute dude. Are we gonna talk about her at all or are we just gonna leave the listeners hanging for a little longer?”

“Nah, man. I’ve had to hide her for so long. I’m so excited to talk about her you have no idea.” David had a huge smile on his face. None of the podcast listeners could see it—the boys stopped recording video with the podcast months ago. But he was sure the happiness shone through in his voice.

“Alright then dude, let’s do this. I guess you should tell people her name, right?”

David let out his signature laugh and fell back into the couch. “Oh yeah, I totally forgot I didn’t put her name in the video. Okay, okay. Her name is Addie, which is short for Adaline and she’s gonna kill me for telling everyone her full name but oh well. She is absolutely incredible. So smart and funny and a thousand percent out of my league.”

“The fact that she is still with you is mind-blowing,” Jason said, agreeing with David. When he’d met her for the first time he actually thought it was a prank.

“No dude, one of the reasons I wanted to keep our relationship private at the start is that I was convinced she was gonna realize how much better she is than me and end it.” Jason laughed and nodded his head in agreement. “No, but seriously she is incredible. I fall more in love with her every day.”

“Okay, lover boy. I don’t think the listeners want to hear you be mushy-gooshy all podcast. Tell us some more serious stuff about her, about your relationship. What does she do, how’d you guys meet, why now? Blah, blah, blah.” Jason knew everything already, but it would take a little goading for David to do more than say how much he loved his girlfriend.

“Fuck you, Jace. Let me be in looove.”

“Alright guys, so that’s all the time we have for this episode of Views—”  

David laughs again, in a great mood. “Uhm, no seriously. Okay, so we met when I started talking to Nickelodeon about America’s Most Musical Family. She’s a lawyer. Well, she is now. At the time she was interning for them, so she was assisting with all the contract negotiations and stuff like that. But now she’s a fully graduated lawyer. There was a clip of her graduating in the video actually. And she took her big test to actually get licensed so she’s done studying and is going to work every day.”

“What’s she doing now?”

“She got a job clerking…is that what it’s called? I should know this, holy shit. We’ve talked about it so much.”

Jason laughed at David’s slight panic. “Yeah, dude I think you’re right. That sounds familiar.” 

“Anyway, she’s clerking for a fancy judge in LA. I’m not sure if that’s the right word but I am sure this job is like. One of the hardest ones to get. Like she could work on the Supreme Court or something like that after this job, she’s that fucking smart.”

“Wait really, dude? I didn’t know that. Is that something she’s interested in?” Jason asked, genuinely curious.

“I’m not sure, Jace. She talks about the Supreme Court like it’s her dream job, but you know how humble she is. I don’t think she would actually think there’s a chance for it until, like, she started the job. Apparently like only ten people can clerk there a year or something crazy small. But maybe. How fucking cool would that be? Anyway. We’re just living in the moment now. She’s super nervous about her job because she has super bad imposter syndrome but I know she’s killing it. And it’s so nice to come home and have her like actually be here and talking to me and not just be here but studying.”

“So, you said home. I think you need to explain that one dude.”

“Oh shit, well, yeah. We moved in together officially after she graduated. We’d been dating for a year and it just felt right and it’s so great to be able to go to bed with her every night. That’s why we finally decided to tell people, though. Her stuff is here now, and it was getting hard to hide it when we were filming. Like, she’s Jewish right, so she put up these… uhm… what’re they called Jace?”

“Mezuzahs.”

“Yeah, she put mezuzahs up on the door frames, which, like, I guess is just like a thing you’re supposed to put up when you’re Jewish…”

“Well, when you’re a good Jew,” Jason said with a laugh. “I have no mezuzahs up in my house.”

David laughed too. “Yeah, you and Josh did not prepare me for this. I thought I knew what was up with, like, Hanukkah and stuff but she’s so much more religious than you guys.” 

“Yes, Addie is better than I am, we get it.” David dove back into the couch with laughter.

“Anyway, people started to see the mezuzahs in some of the vlogs and people got really confused trying to figure out what they were, and then like in the fridge people noticed there was more than just drinks because Addie is a great cook and feeds me which is awesome. So, all of that was getting hard to hide. And her too, now that she’s here full time.” David laughed. He was so happy to have this all off his chest and to be able to be open about his whole life again.

“So we just decided to tell everyone so it was on our terms. She’s able to control what people see of her now and stuff which makes her feel better about the whole thing. We don’t want to be, like, super public like I was with Liza or anything. But it’s nice to not have to hide her.”

Jason hummed in agreement. “So you’re not gonna have her in the videos or anything?”

“No, I’m sure we’ll film, like, a Q&A at some point and I’m sure she’ll be in the videos here and there but her job is, like, real. And requires confidentiality. Like, I don’t think future firms want to see her getting drunk at a party. And she’s not the kind of person who would want to be all over social media anyway. I don’t think it would be fair to her to be crazy public and honestly, I don’t think I want to be that public in a relationship again.”

“David Dobrik growing up? Who would have thought,” Jason said.

“Fuck you dude,” David said through laughter.

“No, seriously dude, I’m proud of you. She’s great and you’re great together. And being with her has put you on more of a schedule.” They were both laughing now. “For anyone wondering, we are recording this podcast at three p.m. because David has finally learned how to schedule his time because Addie works a nine-to-five office job and David—”

“Well, yeah so when we first started dating and she was in school I could still kinda get away with my fucked up schedule but as she’s started working I realized if I want to, like, talk to her ever or, you know, cuddle with her or something, I can’t be editing when she’s awake and home. I mean there are sometimes when I’m super behind on an edit when my other priorities get in the way so I’ll, like, put the computer away when she gets home and just be with her until she goes to bed. Like, last night I did that and I finally finished the edit at like seven when she was waking up and I don’t normally wake up with her but it was so cool to just watch her get ready and stuff. Like the way she pulls on a pencil skirt is just so mesmerizing to me. And then she gave me a kiss before she left. Like it’s great to just be able to be in sync with her because there were a few months where I was a shitty boyfriend to her with my editing schedule and I felt so terrible about it. So now I’m trying to be good about it so that I can actually see my girlfriend, y’know.”

“Dude, I’m not complaining. I’m so happy that you’re usually asleep at three a.m. like a normal person. And the fact that you didn’t sleep until three p.m. today even though you got to bed super late is also a vast improvement.” 

David laughed again.

“Alright, before we cut to an ad, tell me your favorite Addie story.”

“Ooh, my favorite Addie story. Hmm, the first one that comes to mind is my twenty-second birthday, we had kind of been flirting after my meetings at Nickelodeon, but she didn’t want to actually go on a date with me because she thought that was super unprofessional. But I think it was pretty obvious that we both were interested in each other. So, when I came into my first meeting after my birthday she told me she had something for me and I followed her to her desk and she had baked me twenty-two little camera cookies. Like, you could tell she would do something like that for anyone in her life—and I’ve seen her do that kind of stuff since we started dating—but for her to think about my birthday, and spend time to make these for me, and personalize them to look like my camera. I don’t know. It’s just so her, y’know?” David was smiling. He hadn’t stopped all podcast and Jason was sure the rest of their conversation would be about Addie.

[clairehazelb]

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR OF THE TENTH CUBE

And by Editor I mean, Claire Hazel,

(whom you may know as C.M. Hazel)

Writing my first historical fiction novel was a task of love, but a great endeavor nonetheless.

When we do things we love. we love the things we do. The Tenth Cube was, in essence, my love for romance and history poured onto pages of combined plotlines and historical facts. Coupled with science and a good dose of ritz, it blossomed like a garden flower into the novel it became. I felt, finally, like a writer the moment I wrote “The End.”

Writers, like professionals of other art forms, just are. Mostly, it occurred to me long ago,  we can become it, like the second you write the last sentence of that novel, or publish your book, like there is a glorified ending to calling yourself a member of the elite group of artists who pine at the sight of a lonely blank page.

Or so I felt. 

I read years ago -and my apologies to the person who wrote it for I sincerely do not recall the author- that ‘the moment you call yourself what you esteem yourself to be, is the moment you become it’. Therefore, if you want to be a writer, you call yourself a writer and let others deliberate on whether you are apt to be or not.

I practiced my skill of saying I was a writer in front of a mirror or while waiting for traffic to move in the lane ahead of mine. I yelled it out the window for good measure. “Move the fuck out of the way. I am a writer and can write this into my book!”

The moment somebody asked me and I said it out loud, I embodied it with pride, like the day I stepped with character shoes onto a stage felt for the actress in me. It burgeoned out of me like it was supposed to forever, waiting to be discovered. I beamed with the wine-laced fever of the evening.

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  It was a pivotal moment in my history, redefining where I ended up with my work. I went on a search for myself and found my writing voice. The days were growing longer with the dawn of my ideas and entries, so I had to make use of what I was inspired to do.

Despite my assertion, that I was a writer and not a poser, fear of criticism stalled me. I faced it like stage fright, but it was a sinister face at the end of my journal telling me it was not good enough. Nothing could come out of my penned notes and rhythmic pentameters.

I read about imposter syndrome around the time, looking for ways to face my fears. As it turns out, it can apply to anyone in any career, but it is a disorder that affects writers especially so, the idea that you aren’t good enough is prevalent amongst the inked-fingered-wordsmiths in my profession.

When I finished the Tenth Cube, everything changed.  While editing, I thought about a piece I had never published which explored the elements of fear. From that entry into my journal, came the text I eventually entered into my novel. I felt it appropriate for my second published book and first historical fiction novel. Aspiring writers are usually the best readers and learn best while to reading other writers’ works, taking what they can to heart. Here is part of the text in my book.

  A WRITING INDULGENCE

When I first started writing The Cube (as I lovingly call this novel), I typed without direction and wrote about many topics. I posted most of it on an old website, I would not even dare call a blog at this point. I eventually learned to hold hands with my muse in a better way and supplied my artistic knowledge with my other artistic experience. But, it inevitably always led me toward the same reason for not embarking onto a manuscript fully. Fear.

  My head swam with thoughts and reasons why I would fail miserably at my task. I just knew.

I know everything in stories has already been said and done.

I know I’m not alone when it comes to storytelling and interesting facts about life and circumstance. I know the very principle of storytelling relies on the fact that the narrative is good and characters are interesting. And, then again, I don’t know anything at all.

I personally see the story better in my head than how it reflects on writing.

  Despite knowing and fear, stories ultimately lead you where you need to go. And for sake of argument,

Yes, I believe it’s possible to be a good storyteller, despite everything having been done already.

Rarely am I ever afraid, even rarest is my admission to the fear, but it scares me a little still because nothing has ever worked in my mind better than my stories.

I’ve failed so miserably at so many things it’s hard to start this again. I do not fear telling you this though. I write for a while and the fear disappears. I want to be the bearer of good news for new writers or those having an urge to quit like I have so many times before. Bear with me on this.

The phrase ‘It started with a notebook I once wrote’ jumped into my head a while ago. I wrote a poem about it because of the many notebooks later it took me to create the first personal entry into a public medium. I’d written about theater plays and Language Education with a technical point of view, but storytelling, like acting in stories which came to life through my fingers, became the part of me I most enjoyed writing.

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About eight years ago, I wrote a story –also based on a weird dream- and I went from there. I haven’t really stopped writing since. So, maybe that’s my beginning for this. I’ve scattered ideas and unfinished stories everywhere. My own pending as ever, the satire runneth over my brimming mind, for lack of better understanding sets perfectly in here. But, to make things simple, I will advise you to keep trying new and trying for more.

“Delia became my headstrong voice for writing. Though it was my second novel finished, she paced my thoughts in a way no other story had, and I was hooked to her charms. Delia Donovan became my daily dose of the [her-story] I so hated as a young girl and delight so in my adult years. Instead of writing columns of advice for women as I had planned, I went toward writing about strong, intelligent, resourceful, frightened yet capable women with the same principle in mind.” Claire Hazel

Delia will hopefully continue to inspire stories – I am in research and writing the second novel. There will likely be a third as well.

Aspiring writer and authors, the gist of what I mean in this.

It took me X years to develop the voice I needed to write this book.

It took me lll to research and write the full novel, with periods of off and on to dream and work on other projects.

It has taken me lV between trying to publish on my own and finding a publisher.

  The Tenth Cube became an enduring project because it has a life worth living, I have said that before I think. Most writers live in this world where stories cannot go untold. Therefore my dear thirtysomething-writer who hasn’t started yet, if you are like I was, find the outlet to do so and share the story that has a life worth living.

Take the time to write and sit with confidence to edit. And please, share with me that hard-pressed jewel when you like.

A big box with recycled paper packing and a mug of coffee with enough supply for reading will be the most delicious treat a grown girl could ever get.

  What are then, these so-called Elements

By ways of telling you of the best technique I have used to move my stories and find the hidden information in my characters I need to shape their persona, we will use the What if? technique. What ifs are a way to create possibility. When you have doubts, there are endless What ifs going around in your head like a merry-go-round of incertitude. In essence, The Elements of said turntable of fear could be considered the following:

What if I can’t write like the rest of the authors I read?

This could fall within the impostor syndrome I wrote about before. You are not an impostor of your own game, you feel like a writer, believe it with confidence. It does not mean you have to be like other writers, successful or not.

Writing may or may not take time. For the present me, it is a matter of sitting to the type or jot down notes. But as I mentioned, it took many years to develop a voice I found pleasing and suitable, according to my desired writing style. I guess what is important is that

you don’t imitate but emulate those you love AT FIRST to develop your own voice

write about what you like and not what people like, the audience will find you and relate better

study the greats and accommodate your needs through your learning styles and experiences

nobody is alike and we are all connected, so find what works for your personal style without judging yourself or thinking you will be compared

What if there are things I don’t know or need to include in my novel I know absolutely nothing about?

Researching novels doesn’t have to be grueling work. Annote as you write (for pantsers) or outline the novel as you want it to be (plotter). Your writing style can help or hinder you. So, read carefully,

Research as needed before and fully after finishing your manuscript

Too much research can create difficulty for you and/or your reader, who is probably not in need to sit through, say, a history class instead of understanding through the plot movement

Too little research shows lack of pulchritude and disrespect to your readers, or make you sound nonchalant and ignorant.

Rule of thumb? Be aware, show knowledge, but don’t over inform.

What if I get stuck in my writing process?

Find inspiration wherever you look or take time to be still and OBSERVE

Nature, life, family, etc, show us and teach us. Use its lessons to show you the way, so do not just look and see, WATCH AND LEARN

Don’t overwhelm yourself or stick to a plotline if you feel stuck. Take a break to refresh your ideas and they will hit you when you least expect it, I promise you! An exercise that works for me is jumping the part where I am stuck and either mind mapping or planning the ending first then backtracking to the difficult area

Talk to your characters. they tell you lies at times but help you find the way. Listen carefully!

What if they do not help me publish?

Many writers are still sitting on the sideline of genius, gems of witing prose at their fingertips. Sadly, most give up writing because of this. I have quarried and continue to quarry publishers without much success, but I keep pressing on.

I self-published my first two books with great difficulty and many years of work, but they paid off in a way nothing else has. Take your chances with self-publishing. (I will soon open a platform for other writers to send me manuscripts to publish as an editor. News on this later!)

What if I don’t have time to write?

Write where ever you are able to create a strong writing muscle. Keep pen and pads where ever you can or use phones and tablets, recording apps, and /or your digital cameras

Take every chance you get to exercise the need to write, be it a post-it note or a short phrase inside a journal, a Tweet or a love note, make those words count in your favor

What if I do not feel like I can write my novel (yet)?

Use blogs, submit to magazines, write articles or content, keep journals, or write your family’s newsletter.

Contact your local papers or ask if anybody needs a content writer in your school or local businesses

Start with simpler texts, like magazine entries and restaurant menus

Keep writing your way into the published author you want to be without thinking that you have to have a published book in your hands before you can call your self a writer. There are hundreds of professions where writing is a need and many forms of writing are included in this. Comic book writers, for exa

  Comic book writers, for example, are storytellers, too. It is a matter of how you see your writing come to life to show others your stories. Find where your style fits best and show your best work.

My final writing indulgence was to tell other writers that there are ways, time, and chances to do what you love and ways to do it. The biggest problem most people face is fear, but fear can come with a face, a price tag, a backseat without a window, or an empty stomach and children on your hip.

We may fear different things which hinder our jump into the life we want. Discovering the fear we face is the first step toward the freedom from it. The next is up to you.

  With love,

Claire.

Lovely writer and content creator, take a moment to create your own purpose, and formulate a plan to write your way into the content you like to read. Start by creating your own space and sharing with others the gift of your writing wisdom, comedic genius, romantic side, laughing tales of your youth, or the recipes and secrets your grandmother gave you to keep.

You will get a cool credit for those plugins that make your place shine and sparkle.

It is easy and fast to start. Tell me about it on your way back to my content and happy writing!

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Before the Tenth Cube. I typed without direction and wrote about many topics. With time and practice, I learned to hold hands with my muse, but fear held me back. Learn how to understand it and push past it. A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR OF THE TENTH CUBE And by Editor I mean, Claire Hazel,

[resilientsovl]

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME:  samuel  william  winchester. PRONUNCIATION:  pronounced  how  it’s  spelled. MEANING:  so  from   the  hebrew  name  שְׁמוּאֵל,  it  means  god  has  heard,  or  name  of  god.  it’s  a  little  ironic  considering  sam  is  lucifer,  god’s  fallen  son’s,  true  vessel.   REASONING:  sam  was  named  after  his  maternal  grandfather,  samuel  campbell. NICKNAME(S):  sam,  sammy,  little  winchester,  moose,  738273  other  height  related  nicknames. PREFERRED NAME(S):   sam. BIRTH DATE:  may  2,  1983. AGE:  honestly  he’s  not  sure.  he’s  died  3-4  times,  been  the  vessel  for  demons  and  archangels  which  probably  stalled  his  physical  aging  too.  i  say  he’s  probably  biologically  somewhere  around  35,  even  though  he’s  technically  47ish. ZODIAC: taurus. GENDER:  cismale. PRONOUNS:   he/him. ROMANTIC ORIENTATION:  heteroromantic. SEXUAL ORIENTATION:  bisexual.  (  he  can  appreciate  that  men  are  attractive,  has  probably  even  slept  with  a  couple,  but  has  no  desire  to  be  in  romantic,  serious,  relationships  with  men.  ) NATIONALITY:  american. ETHNICITY:   wonderbread  white. CURRENT LOCATION:  san  francisco,  ca. LIVING CONDITIONS:   a  crappy  two  bedroom  apartment  he  rents  by  the  month.  it’s  small,  not  in  a  great  neighborhood,  but  it  does  the  trick.   TITLE(S):   n/a.

BACKGROUND

BIRTH PLACE:   lawrence,  kansas. HOMETOWN:  technically  lawrence  kansas,  but  they  moved  around  frequently.   SOCIAL CLASS:  blue  collar. EDUCATION LEVEL:   undergraduate  degree  from  stanford.   FATHER:   john  winchester. MOTHER:   mary  winchester  (  neé  campbell  ).   SIBLING(S):   dean  winchester,  adam  milligan  (  half  ).   BIRTH ORDER:  dean,  sam,  adam.   CHILDREN:  jack  kline  (  adopted  /  unofficially  ) PET(S):   n/a. OTHER IMPORTANT RELATIVES:  bobby  singer,  pseudo  uncle.   castiel,  pseudo  brother  /  brother-in-law.   SIGNIFICANT  OTHER:   natasha  herrera,  wife.  (  separated  ) PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIPS:   jessica  moore,  amelia  richardson,  meg,  sarah  blake,  ruby,  a  few  one  night  stands,  amy  pond  (  first  kiss  ),  etc.   ARRESTS?:  a  few,  yes.   PRISON TIME?:  minimal,  seen  in  folsom  prison  blues.  

OCCUPATION & INCOME

PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME:   credit  card  scams,  illegal  activity.   SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME:   n/a. TERTIARY SOURCE(S) OF INCOME:   hunting,  but  it  pays  for  shit.   APPROXIMATE AMOUNT PER YEAR:   unknown.   CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB (OR LACK THERE OF)?:   this  is  never  the  job  he  wanted.  so  no,  definitely  not.   PAST JOB(S):   student.   SPENDING HABITS:  extremely  frugal,  only  on  necessities.   MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION:  john  winchester’s  journal.  

SKILLS & ABILITIES

PHYSICAL STRENGTH:   peak  physical  condition,  human,  in-shape.   OFFENSE:   extremely  skilled  with  weapons  and  hand  to  hand.   DEFENSE:  extremely  skilled  with  lethal  and  non-lethal  defensive  moves.   SPEED:  faster  than  average. INTELLIGENCE:  educated  and  above  average.   ACCURACY:   above  average. AGILITY:   above  average.   STAMINA:   above  average.   TEAMWORK:   below  average.  he  doesn’t  work  well  with  people  he  doesn’t  know  or  trust.  it  takes  time  to  develop  a  bond  /  ease  of  working  with  others.   TALENTS:   computer  skills,  digesting  information,  critical  thinking  skills. SHORTCOMINGS:   stubborn,  naive,  reckless,  deep  psychological  trauma,  suicidal  ideation,  a  nice  grabbag  of  issues.   LANGUAGE(S) SPOKEN:   latin,  english,  probably  a  bunch  of  other  old,  dead,  languages  that  might  come  in  handy.  he  probably  also  took  spanish  in  school.   DRIVE?:   yes. JUMP-STAR A CAR?:   yes. CHANGE A FLAT TIRE?:   yes.   RIDE A BICYCLE?:   yes. SWIM?:   yes.   PLAY AN INSTRUMENT?:   no. PLAY CHESS?:   yes. BRAID HAIR?:   no. TIE A TIE?:   yes. PICK A LOCK?:  yes.  

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE & CHARACTERISTICS

FACE CLAIM:   jared  padalecki.   EYE COLOR:   hazel. HAIR COLOR:   brown. HAIR TYPE/STYLE:   long  and  flowing.   GLASSES/CONTACTS?:   n/a. DOMINANT HAND:   right.   HEIGHT:  6′4 WEIGHT:   220  ish  lbs. BUILD:   slender  but  muscular.   EXERCISE HABITS:  rigorous.  he  jogs  in  the  mornings,  does  sit  ups  /  pull  ups  at  night,  and  lifts  weights  during  the  day  in  between  cases.  he  stays  in  shape.   SKIN TONE:   tanned.   TATTOOS:   anti-possession  tattoo  over  his  heart.   it  was  carved  out  in  2026  but  the  scar  has  been  tattooed  over,  replacing  the  original.   PEIRCINGS:   none.   MARKS/SCARS:   he’s  died  and  come  back  so  many  times,  it’s  hard  to  say  what’s  still  there  and  what’s  gone.   he  does  still  have  the  bullet  wound  from  where  he  shot  chuck  though.  it  never  healed.   NOTABLE FEATURES:   nose,  hair.   USUAL EXPRESSION:   smirk  of  disbelief,  concern.   CLOTHING STYLE:   lumberjack  lesbian.   JEWELRY:    he  wears  a  chain  with  his  wedding  ring  around  his  neck,  the  one  he  never  got  to  put  on  for  real.   ALLERGIES:   none.   BODY TEMPERATURE:   normal. DIET:   not  great.  hence  the  need  to  work  out. PHYSICAL AILMENTS:   general  fatigue  from  a  rigorously  active  lifestyle.  

PSYCHOLOGY

JUNG TYPE:  INFJ JUNG SUBTYPE:  Introvert(47%)  iNtuitive (34%)  Feeling(31%)  Judging(38%) You have moderate preference of Introversion over Extraversion (47%) You have moderate preference of Intuition over Sensing (34%) You have moderate preference of Feeling over Thinking (31%) You have moderate preference of Judging over Perceiving (38%) ENNEAGRAM TYPE:   the  reformer  or  the  challenger.   MORAL ALIGNMENT:  chaotic  good.   TEMPERAMENT:   melancholic.   ELEMENT:   taurus  are  usually  earth  elements,  but  i  think  air  suits  sam  better.   PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE:   logical-mathematical,  probably.   APPROXIMATE IQ:   unknown.  we  know  he  scored  a  174  on  the  LSAT,  which  is  incredible,  but  that  doesn’t  always  translate  over  to  IQ.  i  would  say  he’s  got  a  pretty  high  IQ  even  if  he  lacks  a  few  common  sense  points.   MENTAL CONDITIONS/DISORDERS:   undiagnosed  depression,  anxiety,  PTSD,  imposter  syndrome,  and  survivor’s  guilt  —  and  that’s  just  the  tip  of  the  iceberg.   don’t  ask  me  to  psychoanalyze  the  winchesters,  it’ll  break  us  all.   SOCIABILITY:   he  doesn’t  seek  it  out  but  he  can  keep  up  with  the  joneses.   EMOTIONAL STABILITY:   not  good.  he  has  exhibited  severe  signs  of  codependency,  suicidal  ideation,  lack  of  regard  for  his  own  life,  and  believe  that  he’s  cursed.  the  boy  is  a  mess.   OBSESSION(S):  vengeance  after  significant  loss,  saving  people  (  even  if  it’s  from  themselves  ),  trying  to  make  up  for  all  of  the  blood  on  his  hands.   PHOBIA(S):   clowns.  not  a  fan.   ADDICTION(S):   demon  blood  (  previously  ) DRUG USE:   no. ALCOHOL USE:  recreationally.   PRONE TO VIOLENCE?:  can  be,  yes.  

MANNERISMS

SPEECH STYLE:  casual. ACCENT:   american.  nothing  specific.   QUIRKS:   chewing  on  pen  caps,  tapping  to  songs  on  the  radio  against  the  steering  wheel  with  his  fingers.   HOBBIES:   reading,  researching,  pool,  morning  crosswords.   HABITS:   stress  pacing,  irritability  under  extreme  pressure. NERVOUS TICKS:   jaw  clench,  nostrils  flaring,  hands  curled  into  fists.   DRIVES/MOTIVATIONS:  vengeance,  restoring  order  /  protecting  people,  survival.   FEARS:  losing  the  people  he  loves,  hurting  innocents,  isolation.   POSITIVE TRAITS:   dependable,  loyal,  protective,  determined,  strong,  honest,  vulnerable. NEGATIVE TRAITS:  impulsive,  reckless,  guilt-stricken,  naive,  obtuse,  too  trusting.   SENSE OF HUMOR:   dry,  sarcastic.   DO THEY CURSE OFTEN?:   no. CATCHPHRASE(S):  damnit, dean.    jerk  /  bitch.  

FAVORITES

ACTIVITY:   long  drives.   ANIMAL:  hedgehogs. BEVERAGE:   monster  energy  drinks.   BOOK:   probably  the  classics,  or  something  by  neil  gaiman. CELEBRITY:   he  doesn’t  have  one. COLOR:   blue.   DESIGNER:   doesn’t  have  one.   FOOD:  philly  cheesesteak.   maybe  mashed  potatoes,  if  not  the  cheesesteak.   FLOWER:   sunflowers. GEM:   none. HOLIDAY:    none.   MODE OF TRANSPORTATION:   car.   MOVIE:   mallrats.   MUSICAL ARTIST:  none.  he’ll  just  listen  to  whatever  they  have  in  the  car,  or  is  on  the  radio.  before  i  think  he  was  probably  into  top  40,  maybe  even  classic  rock  as  much  as  he  complained  about it.   QUOTE/SAYING:   none. SCENERY:   autumn  leaves  falling  from  trees.   SCENT:   linen.   SPORT:   none.  he  doesn’t  care.   SPORTS TEAM:   see  above.   TELEVISION SHOW:   none.  he  probably  only  watches  soap  operas  every  now  and  then  again.  he  doesn’t  watch  anything  he  would  have  to  invest  time  and  energy  in.   maybe  pawnstars,  or  mythbusters.   WEATHER:  drizzle.   VACATION DESTINATION:  somewhere  warm,  tropic,  and  free  of  monsters.  

ATTITUDES

GREATEST DREAM:   to  have  a  normal  life.   he  knows  he’ll  never  get  it,  has  come  to  terms  with  the  fact  that  he  was  never  going  to  be  normal.   GREATEST FEAR:   ending  up  alone,  watching  everyone  he  loves  die.   MOST AT EASE WHEN:  around  the  people  he  loves.   LEAST AT EASE WHEN:   on  a  hunt  that’s  starting  to  go  awry.   WORST POSSIBLE THING THAT COULD HAPPEN:   turning  into  a  monster  —  the  very  thing  he’s  dedicated  his  life  to  hunting,  or  becoming  evil.  being  forced  into  killing  his  own  brother,  or  someone  he  loves  like  family,  would  also  make  the  list.   BIGGEST ACHIEVEMENT:  in  a  really  soft  way,  i  want  to  say  it’s  becoming  a  pseudo  dad  to  jack.  it  might  not  have  been  what  he  saw  for  himself,  or  how  he  imagined  being  a  dad,  but  he  loves  the  kid.   if  not  that,  maybe  stopping  the  apocalypse.   not  that  it  lasted  for  very  long.   BIGGEST REGRET:   not  telling  jessica  the  truth.  he  will  always  believe  he  got  her  killed.  that  guilt  will  set  with  him  until  the  day  he  dies.   MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENT:   too  many  to  count.   BIGGEST SECRET:   he  remembers  a  lot  of  what  the  demon  did  when  it  possessed  him  in  2026.   he  fought  with  everything  he  had,  but  every  time  he  broke  through  they  pushed  him  back  down.   TOP PRIORITIES:  figuring  out  what  comes  next,  i  suppose.  

[doyoulike-whatyousee]

TW: unalive mention IM NOT GOING TO DO IT I PROMISE

I want to be unalived so badly. Im so tried of the constant pain, nausea, vision issues, fatigue, anger, and all the other shit. I just want to be abled. I so badly want to be able to work, to make and keep Friends, to graduate. People, especially teachers parents and MH workers act like I’m choosing this, like I want this, like I’m pretending to be more fucked up then I am. God knows I wish I was, and sometimes I even believe it. Maybe I am faking, maybe I do just want the attention, maybe I don’t want to make friends/go to school/be happy/have a job/etc, but it’s partly hard to believe because I’m so done with this. Imposter syndrome sucks. I feel like a liar, a failure. Im so alone, no one understands me.

Even my partner “oh I understand you. I have anxiety too” hunny I love you and your stuff is valid but your occasional anxiety about others disliking you is not the same as my constant fear of being called out for things I haven’t done, of being embarrassed, hated on, the fear of saying or doing something wrong even when you’re just blinking or breathing, the constant fear that someone or multiple people are watching your every mood, reading your brain, judging everything you do. You may partly understand, but no one fully ever will. Which is normal I guess, no one can ever fully understand how another feels as we all deal with things differently, but I wish I knew someone I could relate to more.

[snap138]

Me, my health, and I

I’m not a writer, so this may be a bit rambly or stream of consciousnessey in places. For that I apologise.

 I’m not well. I’ve not been for a long time. My brain doesn’t get on with the rest of me. It doesn’t get along with itself most of the time. I’m not sure where to start, so I’m just going to type.

 I worry. I worry a lot about everything. I need constant distraction from music, audiobooks or just other people being there or my mind drifts. And when it drifts it inevitably tells me how awful I am at things. I get imposter syndrome about everything. I shouldn’t be doing this job, I don’t know what I’m doing, I’m really unqualified, everyone knows so much more than me. I shouldn’t be judging, I don’t know enough, I’m terrible at it. I definitely shouldn’t be level two, I have no clue what I’m doing with coaching other judges, I can’t write reviews. People don’t actually like me as friends, they just tolerate me, I bring nothing of value to friendships, I just leech from people and don’t give anything back. I shouldn’t be considering myself LGBTQ+, I don’t really count. I’m barely out, genderfluid’s not a real thing.

 I’m just terrified. Terrified of fucking things up. Terrified of consequences. You can’t tell your work you want to wear a skirt sometimes, they’ll sack you. You can’t tell your friend you’re in love with them, they won’t want to be your friend any more. You can’t tell your family you’re a girl sometimes, they’ll throw you out. You can’t tell people you’re annoyed with them, or upset with them, because they won’t want to associate with you any more, and everyone will take their side. You can’t tell your friend their partner is an asshole who is emotionally abusing them, because they won’t believe you, and then you’re down a friend. You just can’t tell people what you really think, because then they’ll see the real you.

 That may be the crux of it. I don’t like me, or at least my own impression of me. And I don’t trust myself not to show that to other people. I don’t trust other people easily too. Trust is a huge issue for me. I find it hard to talk to new people, I don’t trust myself not to say the wrong thing and fuck it up. When I do manage it, I don’t trust them enough to actually open up. I can’t date, because I don’t trust myself not to say the wrong thing. Which isn’t an issue because I’m so terrified of rejection I can’t even ask anyone out. I can’t hook up with randoms because I don’t trust them not to take advantage (#metoo x3). So I beat myself up about being alone forever as no one wants damaged goods. My sense of self-worth decreases, and I withdraw further into myself, because I have nothing of value to provide.

 And the whole cycle repeats.

 Then something comes out of left field, like my gran being taken in to hospital under basically the same circumstances as her husband was a few years ago. At the same time of year. With the same symptoms. He died on Christmas Day and now all I can think about is that the same thing is going to happen to her.

 So I’m in an absolute state. I’m bad enough at the best of times, my brain just doesn’t work right. I’m bad enough in the winter, I need my daylight. I’m bad enough at Christmas, it reminds me of my papa. And now there’s this on top of all that. It’s too much. I can feel my self-destructive urges coming out. I can see myself trying to self-sabotage. I watch myself being needy as fuck, demanding the attention of my friends at all times and getting upset when they don’t respond to me STRAIGHT AWAY. And that just makes me worry more; I’ve said something to upset them, they’re fed up with me monopolising their time, they’re not going to respond because you drove them away.

 And the cycle becomes a spiral, it becomes harder and harder for me to get out of.

 So to all of you reading this: I’m sorry. I’m at a real low, and I’m finding it hard to be myself. I can’t even do my normal thing of pretending to be happy, because I’m not. I’m really not. I’m so far from it. I’m going to be needy, I’m going to be fragile, and I’m going to misinterpret everything anyone does or says in the worst possible way. I’m sorry. I’m really, truly sorry. I don’t mean to be a bad friend. But I need you. I need your help, just for a little while.

 Help me through Christmas and New Year. My first therapy appointment is in January, and hopefully I start making upward progress then.

 Thank you, friends. I love you all.

[fuckstudy]

Hey, I have a question regarding test anxiety. I'm a junior in high school right now (11th grade) and I was diagnosed with GAD in 9th grade. But I'll admit that I was a mess in 9th grade - I didn't do my work, it was always rushed, my depression was terrible, I never focused and my GPA was in the gutter. But last year, in 10th grade, I improved a lot. I improved my work habits, I focused, I did everything I possibly could. And I actually did well. I managed to pull a 3.78. Not too shabby. +

(cont) + and this year I’m continuing my work habits. I’m in the IB Diploma programme so the courses are a lot harder but I swear to god I’m trying. But my GPA dropped to a 3.6 and I promised myself I would bring it up. And I studied so goddamn hard for my exams, I swear I did, but I got a C on my business exam. And my grade dropped, and my GPA dropped. I review a lot, I swear. I had a study session with one of the smartest people in my biology class and we went over everything. She told me not +

+ but I can really see that I need the help. My thoughts are drifting toward suicide, and as much as I know that I SHOULD ask for help, I don’t WANT to. My GPA dropped to a 3.4 today. I was at a friend’s house when I found out and I just went to the toilet and cried. All my life (before 9th grade) I was a straight A student. I got awards, I was athletic, I was an all-rounder. But now? I’m stupid, I’m fat, I’m ugly. I can’t do anything right. +

+ I feel like I’m constantly cheating people? I don’t think that makes sense. By people call me smart because I understand the material and I can easily explain it to them, but they don’t know that I don’t do well on tests. And I feel like I’m cheating them and hiding who I truly am. A couple of my friends know, but they don’t really help me out. I mean, yes, they’re there for me. But it’s not directly helping with my anxiety. ++ and I’m sorry for this long message. I don’t know why I sent it on anon to you, because you can’t help me from behind a computer screen, and that’s perfectly okay. I get it. It’s okay, really. But I think I just needed to vent. I need some sort of validation that I’ll do okay in life and I won’t flunk out of high school. I’m just…I’m tired. All the trying and still failing is frustrating me so much. I’m about to just quit trying at all. Why bother? +

+ I’ve tried everything - breathing slowly, reviewing more, clenching and relaxing my muscles, everything. But nothing seems to help me and I just get more and more nervous. Anyway, I’m sorry for this rant. I just really needed to let all this out somewhere. Thank you.

Hi anon, 

Thank you for yourmessage. Thank you for having the courage to share this with me and forreaching out - everyone needs a space to vent and I'm glad that I could helpyou in that regard.

My answer is noreplacement for medical advice, which I actively encourage you to seek ifnecessary. However, from the tone of your message it sounds like you want afriend, someone to listen to you as opposed to medical advice that you'vepreviously sought.

I'm no doctor, but Ican be a friend. 

On working hard and not receiving the grade you want

From your academichistory it sounds like you're a very capable student. I do not doubt for asecond that you've studied hard, dedicated yourself to your studies, andstepped up to meet the challenges of the IB Diploma. Just because your academicresults do not reflect that effort, doesn't mean that it was all done in vain,or that it was a waste of time. Just because you didn't get an A, doesn't meanyou didn't try. 

I was raised on thephilosophy that "if I didn't achieve the best result, obviously I didn'ttry hard enough, and therefore I need to work harder." But life doesn'twork that way. The academic system does not work that way. You can try hard and still fail. Becausethere's a thousand and one factors that are beyond your control, no matter howhard you've tried to control them, or mitigate their adverse effects.  Success is not a reward that youautomatically are entitled to just because you've worked hard.

The grade youreceive will never ever be an accurate reflection of the effort or thesacrifice that you put in. It only accounts for your performance in that tinysnapshot of time - at that exam hall, in that hour, of that one day of yourlife. That's it. It doesn't tell me whether you're a good person, doesn't tellme anything about your sense of humour, what tv shows you like, what songs youlike to sing in the shower, what your favourite flavour of ice cream is. Itdoesn't tell me whether you're a morning person or a night owl.

What hurts is whenwe fail to meet our own expectations. And how we deal with them. I've writtensome posts addressing those points here and here.

On practical advice re: test anxiety

Once again, ifyou've found that seeking professional medical help has assisted in the past, Ihighly recommend that you seek it out. 

Personally, when Ireceive a grade that I'm disappointed in I try to frame it this way: "Itwasn't because I didn't put in enough effort - it was because I was directingmy efforts in the wrong direction."

Its not about howmany hours you study - its about whether your studying habits are addressingthe assessment criteria.

This requires you totailor your studying habits to your curriculum and assessment style.

Don't learn thingsyou won't be assessed on. Prioritise the topics you need to learn by referenceto how much time your teacher spent on it during class, the proportion of thecourse the topic took up in your semester, and whether or not you've been assessedon the topic prior to the exam or not. Ask your teachers. Alternatively, deducewhat your exam will be like by looking at the format of past exams.

Find some time toreplicate exam conditions - for example, doing practice exam questions, workingunder time pressure.  Set up familiarpatterns of behaviour you can replicate in the exam hall - for example, I wouldalways have my watch on the top right hand side of the table and place my sparepens right under, with my waterbottle on the floor. Going through the samesequence of events when I entered the exam hall helped me "get into themindset" and calm me down.  

Whilst nothingreally ever compared to the 'exam' hall for me, I found that being 'familiar'with what to expect made me feel much more prepared when I sat the exam. Sure,my hands still shook when I entered the exam room, and I still felt like Iwanted to hurl, but due to conditioning, my mind adapted to working under thatkind of pressure. And whilst I wasn't performing as well as I would be had Itaken the same question home and "studied" it; at least I wasperforming in an exam environment.

And in the end, that's what it boils down to: it doesn't really matter whetheror not you're performing at 100% in the exam hall - as long as you're puttingsomething on the page, you will be ok. It wont be perfect, but you're gettingthe fuck through it.

And yes, all the"general" tips apply. However, if you're finding that they're nothelping, be brave and seek advice from elsewhere - whether that be medicalhelp, online, journaling, or having an activity outside of the hectic hell holethat is high school.

On getting help

"Knowing"and "accepting" something are two very, very different things.Knowing that you need help doesn't mean you accept that you need it. Acceptingthat you need help does not automatically mean you will get help. And that'sok. Give yourself time to assess your options. Don't feel like it's a "race" to get help - no one should beforcing you to 'get help' nor judging whether or not you do. It's yourrecovery.

But give yourself awarning flag - a threshold that, once breached, will be a sign for you tore-evaluate your options.

Friends are friends.And good intentions are just that - intentions. They don't magically translateto a cure. And its great that they're there for you. But support, whilstuseful, doesn't mean that things will automatically be ok.

Because in the end,its something for you to accomplish.

I think of it as aship. My friends are my crew - they row the boat with me, we share funnystories about what we see on the sea, we swear and curse and cry and love.They'll support me through thick and thin. But in the end I'm the captain of myship, I need to steer the ship in the right course. I still need to call theshots. So we can all get there together.

On imposter's syndrome

Anon, I feel thisall too keenly. 

As someone who has'held themselves out' to be studious, or to be smart, or who completed  an 'advanced degree so oh my god you must besmart', when I don't meet those supposed expectations, I feel like I am animposter. Like somehow, I've "talked to talk" but failed to"walk the walk"

I feel like I don'tdeserve my achievements.

That some day,someone is going to see me for who I am and take all those achievements awayfrom me.

But it boils down tothis: I feel like I needed to 'prove' myself to people.

But why?  You don't need to be perfect, you don't needto be "the smartest person" just because you've been labelled as"smart". You're human - which means you can be a duality of things.You can be study-smart, but street stupid. You can be street smart but studystupid. You can excel in practical application but be at a loss when it comesto theoretical application.

You don't need to beperfect to be "genuine".

You're human. You'reallowed to make mistakes. You are more than this stupid arbitrary box that thepeople around you have chosen to define you by.

And you are morethan your academics. Just because your ability to explain things verbally isn'treflected in your written grades doesn't mean you're "dumb" orcheating, or hiding who you truly are. It probably attests to how you're averbal communicator. And in the end that's only one very small piece of thepuzzle. Who you are doesn't stop at that first sentence.

 I'm a law graduate.I'm smart. I also procrastinate the shit out of everything and regularly pullall nighters, drink too much, stay in bed all day, cry and feel lost.

 All those sentencesare accurate. Who I am doesn't stop at the first full stop.

You're not hiding who you truly are. They're just notgiving you a chance to elaborate on that picture.

On how you are going to get through this

You will get throughthis. You've picked yourself up before and pushed through. You don't need to bethat "all rounder" - you just need to be the version of you who you'dlike to be at this point, at this time. It'll come in small steps, your smallvictories of the day - but define them and celebrate them.  

Remember life is not a collection of binary outcomes.Just because you didn't get an "A" does not mean that you've failed.Just because you're not "athletic" doesn't mean you're"fat". There's so many shades of grey in between. It's not one or theother; its just a work in progress. 

Keep working on it.

Its easy for me tosay because I've completed high school, university, all that jazz. Hindsightand all that. But you will get through this - tooth and nail. And when you comeout on the other side, you'll be able to help others to get through too. Find somethingthat will get you through - heck it doesn't need to be some "life longpassion or dream" that every movie and studyblr talks about - it justneeds to be something small, something that will get you out of bed, somethingthat will help you be kinder to yourself. 

And when its doneand dusted, I can't promise you that life will be perfect, or that you'll havethe life you're dreaming of, but I can promise you that it'll be different towhere you are now.

And sometimes, thehope of change is all we need to get through.

And finally, on how its really, really, really ok to send melong messages  

I can't stress toyou how much I admire your bravery for sharing your experiences with me. I'mnot confident that this message will change anything, or fix anything. But Ihope, at the very least, its helped you feel less alone.

For a moment.

Because messageslike yours are the only reason why I continue to run this shitshow of a blog.

So thank you.

All the best anon.I'm rooting for you.

[tamershahin]

Start Your YouTube Channel - Just Do It!

I have one thing to say to you: Start your YouTube channel - Just do it! If you’re procrastinating on starting your YouTube channel, it’s time to stop it. Procrastination is your enemy and it’s going to stop you from starting a YouTube channel, growing your business, and achieving the level of success that you want. 

Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad about procrastinating because when it came to starting a YouTube channel, I was the the king of procrastination. Seriously, I’ve wanted to start my YouTube channel since YouTube first came into existence, but I didn’t. I continued to put it off and I kept procrastinating. I got so good at procrastinating, that I didn’t even realise I was doing it. So, what was stopping me from starting my YouTube channel? It wasn’t just one thing that stopped me from finally shooting my first ever YouTube video, it was five things. Looking back, I can see that I was probably just procrastinating the entire time. Nonetheless, I’m going to share the five reasons why I didn’t start a YouTube channel with you in hopes that it gives you the push you need to start your YouTube channel (because you should!). 

In this video, you’ll find out: 

How to stop letting your fear of being judged stop you from starting your YouTube channel 

• How to overcome imposter syndrome 

• Why you need to silence your inner perfectionism and just start your YouTube channel 

 • Why you need to make time to grow your channel and/or your business • Why it’s never too late to start and grow a successful YouTube channel Which of the five reasons resonates with you the most? Or, is there a different reason why you haven’t started a YouTube channel yet? 

This is the second part in my series for How to Grow Youtube Channel from 0. 

The first one 'Watch me grow from scratch - How to Start a YouTube Channel' is right here: https://youtu.be/r0GH8VKJ9-w Want to see more videos like this one? 

SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel (go on, you know you want to!) – I post new videos every Wednesday to this channel (CEO Entrepreneur by Tamer Shahin) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw45... 

You can also read the blog post on this topic if you prefer, just head over to ceoentrepreneur.com. This video is Start Your YouTube Channel. Just Do It! https://youtu.be/_AkjbcnN0CU

ABOUT ME 

 Hi! I’m Dr. Tamer Shahin, the Founder & CEO of CEO Entrepreneur, where we help small business owners scale their businesses, without sacrificing their lifestyle, wellbeing, or freedom. I’m also a Serial Entrepreneur, TEDx speaker, Executive Coach, Consultant, Author, Speaker, Investor, and now… I'm a ‘YouTuber.’ 

I’ve grown several multi-million-dollar businesses from scratch. Some of these businesses were massively successful and others turned out to be catastrophic failures! Nonetheless, I picked myself up and learned a lot from all of my extraordinary success and catastrophic adversity. Now, I’m taking everything I’ve learned and leveraging it to create this YouTube channel and help people like YOU scale your business to astronomical heights. Each week, I’ll be sharing tactics, tips, tools, and insights to help transform you into a “cool as a cucumber” CEO. 

**Disclaimer** Results are not typical nor guaranteed. You are responsible for your own actions and decisions. Neither Tamer Shahin nor CEO Entrepreneur can be held liable for any results you may or may not get as a result of decisions you take during or after watching these videos. 

[moonbeam42world]

For the last year I have been setting up a university bridging module which offers the chance for those affected by homelessness and, often, addiction, to access higher education.

It has been a path fraught with challenges and barriers

It has been a mountain that has sometimes seemed almost impossible to climb.

It has been a journey full of anxiety and worry.

But most of all it has taught me to understand the strength of the human spirit, the power of determination to beat the odds, it has reminded me of the innate kindness of the human heart.

I still remember the first day, the sense of trepidation with which I stood in front of a group of strangers who had experienced more in their lives than I could begin to fathom.

They walked together through the door of the University,  And I could see it in their eyes, the uncertainty of the welcome they would receive.

This group of people used to being judged and ostracised, misfits expecting to be labelled and  rejected

I tried to imagine the courage it must have taken to walk through that door, the demons they had to battle to take that first step.

We all of us struggle with imposter syndrome, the belief that any minute now someone is going to find us out and realise we are not who we say we are, but for those guys on that evening I can only imagine how alien the world of academia must have seemed.

But from the moment they sat in the lecture room, they were transformed. They became hungrier for learning and thirstier for knowledge than any  students I have ever taught.

And as the year progressed, they became more confident and with each week, I became more humble.

I was and still am, overawed by their ability to link the theories that we talked about to the lives they had lived.

I was, and still am,  blown away by their intelligences and quick -wittedness.

And I was, and still am, overwhelmed by their generosity of spirit, by their kind heartedness. From those who have been out in the cold, I have received more warmth than from many who have never known loneliness.

From those who have nothing, I have learnt the value of a kind word and a smile.

From those who are used to being invisible, I have learnt the difference that treating people with respect and having just one person who truly cares can make.

And so, on that first evening, we began a journey that profoundly changed us all. There were times when we cried together, times when we almost gave up.

If you have no identity, no documents to show who you are, then it is hard to prove you are someone.

If your default reaction to stress is to reach for a bottle or a needle, then writing academic essays when you have never really been to school, becomes more than just an annoying challenge.

But there were times when the room was warmed by laughter, when the sense of achievement was almost tangible.

Some did not complete the course but what I have learnt, is that the sum of what we are trying to do is greater than its parts. It is not about completing a course but about offering hope, about understanding your own potential, about maybe, just maybe, making the impossible seem possible. And even when the dream doesn’t quite come true,  honesty and self-awareness grow.

“Sorry, but I struggled with the essay…every time I worked on it, I really had a bad craving for a drink …I almost relapsed,” wrote one student ” My sobriety is more important than a uni degree…but thanks for making me realise I had a brain.”

They learnt how  to reference, how to write critically. They read academic journals and spent hours in the library, leafing through books. Guest lecturers kept asking me if they could come back, library staff told me enthusiastically how hard they were all working. Almost without any of us noticing, they became absorbed into the fabric of he University as hard-working, dedicated students.

“Can you think of a time when you have been labelled?” I asked them. And of course I expected everyone to tell me stories of how they were perceived  as “the homeless,”  or “addicts,” ….but that is not the story they told me. One by one, sometimes whispered, sometimes angrily,  they spoke of a time when they were children and a parent or teacher called them “thick.” or “stupid,” or “useless.”

Education is transfomative but  being described as uneducable is one of the most destructive things that can ever happen .

It destroys  self-belief and self-worth.

It destroys trust and  love.

It shatters everything you were beginning to believe about yourself.

It leaves nothing but a sense of self-loathing, worthlessness and emptiness. And the best way to fill that is often with drugs or alcohol.

As parents and educators we need to take some responsibility for that. We hold the future of every child and student in our hands. We cannot protect them from danger or injustice, but we can fill them with a hope that tomorrow might be better than today.

We can give them the tools to make better decisions.

We can wrap them in the belief that they can be someone.

Because if I have learnt anything on this journey, it is that homelessness cannot simply be solved by cheaper housing ( although that will help) and addiction is not something that ever leaves us.

” I will always be an addict,” says someone from the course,  ” But I can choose whether to be a drunk addict or a sober one. ”

It is easy to walk past figures slumped in a doorway, to cross the street to avoid the Big Issue sellers. We only need to turn our heads away from what we choose not to see. We all of us have a pre-conceived idea of homelessness. Drunks and tramps and self-chosen outcasts. But as I talk with the ex-deputy headmaster who is currently trying to fight his way out of addiction or with the ex-head of a department in an internationally renowned firm, victim of an abusive relationship that destroyed her,  I am struck by the precariousness of life, by the knowledge that it could happen to any of us, by the awareness that next time it might be me.

I am climbing the stairs in the education department, on my way to a meeting when my phone rings. I glance at the name, one of the students from the bridging module.

” Hi,” he says.

“Are you alright,” I ask immediately.

For a second he hesitates.

“That’s why I’m ringing,” he says, ” We are always ringing you because we are not alright, because we need something, But today  I’m ringing to ask how you are. I know your mum hasn’t been well and so I’m just checking that you’re ok. You have done so much for all of us and we want you to know that we are all here for you.”

And for a moment I can’t move, paralysed by the depth of emotion that such genuine kindness evokes in me. That’s who they are these unwanted dwellers on the edge of society, some of the kindest, most generous people it has ever been my privilege to meet.

And at the beginning of September the first 4 students started at University. They shrugged off their past and stepped into their future and so far… they are blossoming. Every time I see them, sitting in the cafe, wandering around campus or chatting with other students, I feel my heart skip. I watch as slowly, very slowly, some of the weight they have carried for so long on their shoulders, lifts. I watch as they make their way to lectures, just another student, stressed out about essay deadlines..

And for a moment I feel as though I can almost reach out and touch hope.

And on the same day that they started, the next group of uncertain bridging module students stepped through the university door and holding their heads as high as they dared, started their journey.

And I know however long it takes, each small step will make our lives, theirs and mine,  more meaningful.

And every time I walk past someone bundled in a doorway I catch their eye and smile.

Because sometimes all it takes is a smile to make people believe that they exist.

Sometimes a smile is the very first step.

    The First Step For the last year I have been setting up a university bridging module which offers the chance for those affected by homelessness and, often, addiction, to access higher education.

[mysideblog]

Can’t sleep!

Y’know, ever since that one night in japan, I’ve been thinking... maybe I do suck. Basically, we were drunk and rated the smartness of our group.

It was obvious who was the smartest. Friend A is literally a doctor lol. Though friend A has pretty transparent intelligence flaws too, but they don’t count lol.

Anyways I thought I’m at least tied with Friend B, but Friend B was making a lot of points... I’m sure there was no intention to actually hurt my feelings but still. The only point I actually had was booksmart. Friend B’s argument for being more booksmart then me was having a higher university GPA. I didn’t want to sound petty by bringing up the friend B was in an easier program, or that my high school gpa, which is actually standardized, was higher.

But honestly, it doesn’t even matter. As everyone who’s no longer in school says, grades don’t actually count for anything... besides, Friend B also mentioned social intelligence, emotional intelligence and being directionally capable. I wouldn’t mind being worse at these things, but these are all things that I’m actually bad at.

It made me think... am I just bad at everything? How am I even a functioning adult? Maybe that’s why Friend B found a job before graduating and I didn’t. It’s not that thinking about this stuff keeps me up at night.

But I was already up and now I’m thinking about it... idk. I remember I was really offput for a good portion of the night after. I don’t want to suck, but maybe admitting to myself that I do would make accepting all my failures easier. But maybe admitting it to myself would make me less motivated than I already am.

Now that I’m here, awake (1.5 months later), I tried thinking about things I’m good at. I’m good at math, writing (this doesn’t count I’m literally mind dumping words at 3am) memorization... school shit, basically lol. I think I’m good at committing to stuff. As in, self teaching and learning about a subject, once I care about it (Speaking of which, the longer it takes to get a job, the more I worry I fucked up which degree I chose, but that’s a rant for another time heheheh :/). I mean, I self taught guitar, self teaching japanese, self taught 3D modelling, self taught drawing. I think I’m good at introspection and being by myself.

Unfortunately, no one can judge but me so who knows though.

I’m good at bottling stuff up, and some people might say it’s a bad thing, but that’s because they’re too dependent on others so they wouldn’t understand. I read before that when you share your problems with other people, they feel closer to you. But sometimes that’s not true. Maybe we’re circling back to my emotional unintelligence, but when another one of my friends got dumped, she drove me to her house to talk and wouldn’t take me back home. I got a ride the next day. I ultimately didn’t care because of how distraught she was, but I was inconvenienced! Also the dude was ugly and he only brushed his teeth once a week... anyways.

Honestly, there’s so much more stuff that I’m bad at though. Like, once someone starts naming your faults, it’s hard not to keep going. Like, oh, is that all I’m bad at? How superficial! You forgot that I suck at arguing, I suck at standing up for myself, I suck at my own fucking specialist degree, my imposter syndrome is through the roof, I can’t commit to watching tv shows, I hate exercise, I suck at cooking, I’m not a good driver, I have a shitty attention span, I can’t market myself, I can’t get a boyfriend, I fall asleep all the time, I don’t interview well, half the time I don’t even test well, I can’t do makeup, I can’t dress, I can’t make new friends, I am so bad at js... this could probably go on forever.

Idk wtf I have going for me but hopefully I figure it out soon because I’m getting sick of working at this bakery for minimum wage.

P.S. Does Friend B really have more emotional intelligence than me, because I don’t think it’s emotionally intelligent to point out someone’s flaws and put them on blast, especially while drunk! I could’ve done the same but I didn’t!

[kristinejrosario]

231: From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – A Tech Podcaster Tells His Story

Today’s episode continues our series where I hand the podcast over to you, the listeners, to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs.

Today’s blogger is Neil Hughes from Technology Blog Writer. Neil shares how he started out writing articles on LinkedIn, and talks about some of his struggles, accomplishments, and goals.

Links and Resources for From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

Technology Blog Writer Blogger Neil Hughes

Start a Blog Course

Facebook Group

PB121: 7 Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 231 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks and a course all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog, to grow that blog, the traffic to it, the content on it, and to make some money from it as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger over at problogger.com.

In today’s episode, we’re continuing our little series of blogger stories which we are ending 2017 and starting 2018 with in the lead up to our Start a Blog course. My goal in 2018 is to see hundreds, if not thousands, of new blogs started. We’ve developed this great little course which you can find at problogger.com/startablog. It’s free and it will help you, all your friends, to start a blog.

As part of the launch of this new course, we wanted to feature the stories of bloggers who had started blogging and to tell the stories of the opportunities that came from that. Also, to share some tips particularly for those starting out but also for those who are on the journey.

Today I’ve got a tech blogger from the UK who is gonna share some of his tips. He’s actually used blogging, podcasting. He started out on LinkedIn. He’s got some expertise in that as well. He’s really built himself an amazing little business as a result of that, a business that has enabled him to leave his full time job and work for himself. He talks a little bit about imposter syndrome and pushing through that. He gives a brilliant tip that I wanna add some thoughts to at the end of his story as well.

I’m gonna hand over now to Neil Hughes from Tech Blog Writer. You can find his blog at techblogwriter.co.uk. You can also find a link to that on today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/231. I’ll be back at the end of Neil’s story to wrap things up and tell you a little bit about tomorrow’s show too.

Neil: My name is Neil Hughes. My blog, podcast, and everything that I do comes into the name Tech Blog Writer. My URL is predictably www.techblogwriter.co.uk. I’m hoping that you know what I do from the title there. That was the idea from the very beginning. My story really began in July 2014 when I published my very first post on the LinkedIn publishing platform. It was a simple post calling out gurus, ninjas and those self-proclaimed influences, you know the kind, the Instagram expert with 72 followers.

The post was called The Rise of the Social Media Guru. This is where my tech blogging journey started. At the time, I didn’t have any objectives, any hopes, goals or dreams for the blog. I just wanted to share my insights having spent 20 years working in IT. I gotta be honest with you, I was originally scared about blogging on the LinkedIn publishing platform and crippled with that self-doubt and imposter syndrome that so many of us go through.

I still, to this day, remember nervously hovering over the publish button full of fears and doubts. What would my professional colleagues, friends, and contacts say? This was my personal brand on a professional platform that everybody would say and judge but obviously, I did hit publish on that post. It was instantly picked up and promoted by LinkedIn themselves. It received thousands of views. More importantly for me, fantastic engagement.

A year later, I had over a hundred tech articles against my name on LinkedIn that seemed to act as my own portfolio and cement me as a thought leader in the tech industry. What was also great about writing on the LinkedIn platform at the time was that they displayed all their sharing and viewing stats for everyone to see so everyone could look at all the articles you’re creating and how many views, how many likes, how many shares that you have.

Suddenly I found myself with one million views and was voted the number two tech writer on the whole of LinkedIn. Quickly I started getting accolades from my way including being named one of the top nine influential tech leaders on LinkedIn by CIO Magazine. ZDNet included me on the list of you need to follow these 20 big thinkers right now alongside from million names which is Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Weiner to name a few.

I still struggled with that pesky imposter syndrome. When I looked back at the mistakes that I made and I’d advise other people to avoid in their blogging journey, I would say that my biggest mistake was to unwittingly become too reliant on one platform. That platform was also somebody else’s playground. Essentially, I was just a guest there. Obviously looking back, I should’ve diversified my work much soon.

My best advice to anyone who wanna be a blogger is that never have all your eggs in one basket and don’t rely on a game where you’re playing by somebody else’s rules and in their playground. Saying that, but I did make the most of so many great opportunities. My LinkedIn work suddenly catapulted me into the tech writing stratosphere. I now have columns in Inc. Magazine and The Next Web. Millions of article views no longer excite me, it was finding other ways to meaningfully engage with those million readers.

I launched my own podcast around the same time that Darren launched his ProBlogger podcast. I still remember, on launch day, we were featured side by side on the New and Noteworthy section of iTunes. I tweeted Darren a pic which he immediately replied to. This is where things got really exciting. Fast forward two years, I’ve now performed over 400 interviews with the most significant tech leaders and startups in the world such as Adobe, Sony, Microsoft, IBM, writers and even TV chat show host, Wendy Williams and movie star William Shatner.

I still have to pinch myself. This work has enabled me to leave my day job as an IT manager and setup my own business. I’m now living by my own rules and doing something that I love to do. I guess worth pointing out, for me it was never about the Neil Hughes show, it was about me sharing insights and my guest sharing insights.

I’m then throwing it out there to all the people listening and reading and consuming my content and asking them to share their stories. This was always my biggest motivation because if we think about it, our ancestors thousands of years ago went from town to town exchanging stories around the campfire. We’re doing the exact same now but around virtual campfires. We’re tearing down geographical barriers and stereotypes by talking, working, and collaborating with each other. That’s what this recording is doing right now, isn’t it?

My number one tip for any new blogger would be don’t get carried away with this age of instant gratification where everyone wants instant success, [inaudible 00:07:27] solution but it doesn’t exist. Do not believe anyone that offers you a shortcut. Remember, we all digest content differently. If you wrote two blog posts per week, you can also turn those two blog post into podcast and to videos too.

After one year, you could realistically have 100 articles, 100 podcasts and 100 YouTube videos. If your audience likes to read, listen or view their content, you’ve got all bases covered. Most importantly of all, think of the SEO there because all of that content is against your name. That will cement you and your reputation as a thought leader within your industry.

Think of the SEO on iTunes, on Spotify, on YouTube and your own personal blog as a hundred pieces of content that sits next to your name. However, most people will end up doing 5 to 10 pieces of content in the New Year and say this is a waste to time and give up by the time they hit February or March. It’s that grind of getting 2 of pieces of work against your name every week until you have a 100 or 300 if you repurpose your content. That’s where the value is.

I think this is the only real secret to success. It is hard work. As Gary Vaynerchuk often says, “Don’t complain that you haven’t got a few hours to spend each week when you binge watching TV shows on Netflix.” My number one tip for new bloggers in 2018 is two blog posts per week every week. Two per week becomes eight per month and that becomes a hundred over a year.

Along the way, don’t forget to build on your success and grab opportunities along the way. Just like a snowball rolling down a hill, your content and your portfolio will get bigger and bigger. That’s it for me. Guys, what are you waiting for?

Darren: That was Neil Hughes from techblogwriter.co.uk. You can again find the links to Neil and his blog on today’s show notes at problogger.com/podcast/231. I loved Neil’s story today. I love today that we’re talking a little bit about a podcast as well because I think a podcast is essentially, whilst a lot of people would differentiate it from a blog because they would say a blog is a written content, a podcast is an audio content.

In many regards, they’re a blog, they’re both a blog and they share many features, they’re both presented in chronological order with dates and usually with show notes and comments. I generally would say it is an alternative to a blogger and a nice addition to a blog. I love Neil’s story for a number of reasons.

Firstly, he mentions the imposter syndrome there. I know many of you who are thinking about starting his blog in 2018 are probably wrestling with that right now. There are others of you who have already started your blog, this is a very common thing to wrestle with. You have fear, you have doubt about whether you really have the credibility to say what you’re saying on your blog, whether anyone is gonna listen to you. It’s something that we all face in different stages of our blogging and podcasting career.

If you’re struggling with that, can I really encourage you at the end of this podcast to go and listen to Episode 121. In that episode, I gave you seven strategies for really dealing with imposter syndrome. It is something you need to push through. In that episode, I gave you some practical things that you can do to really push through that imposter syndrome. That’s Episode 121.

I also love Neil’s story because he mentions there a mistake that many bloggers make and that is becoming too reliant upon a platform like LinkedIn. This really could be any platform at all that you don’t have complete control over. Neil mentions there that he really built his asset, he built his archive of articles on someone else’s playground.

LinkedIn owns LinkedIn, LinkedIn ultimately controls the content that he put onto LinkedIn. With the algorithm changes that’s on their domain, ultimately what you’re doing by building on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or any of these other places is building someone else’s asset. You put yourself at the mercy of other people.

This is something a lot of bloggers who are starting out fall into the trap of. They see a tool like Medium or LinkedIn’s blogging tools or even Facebook and they’ll say, “I can just blog there.” There are certainly some advantages of using these types of tools because they can help you to get some exposure. If that’s all you do, if all your eggs are in that basket, you’re setting yourself up for trouble down the track and you put yourself at the mercy of their algorithms and their rules and there are limitations on what you can do.

What Neil did in starting his own thing, in his case it was a podcast, in many other cases it’s a more traditional written blog, in other people’s cases a video blog. Setting something up of your own that you have control of on your own domain, on your own service is one of the best things that you can do. Certainly I’m not saying you shouldn’t be involved in these other platforms.

I think LinkedIn is certainly a place that some of you should be working and building a presence but do it to build your own presence as well, drive people back to your own blog, your own podcast, your own email list and build the asset there. I think it’s great to do those things in conjunction. That’s what Neil is doing today.

I also love Neil’s tip there of not getting carried away with instant gratification, there are no shortcuts in this. Do what he said, his great call to action there. Create two pieces of content every week, two blog posts every week and then repurpose those two blog posts into two audio files if you can or two videos. You have 100 articles by the end of the year if you do that. I think that’s a brilliant goal for a new blogger just starting out, 100 articles by the end of the year.

As you get going, you might wanna then start repurposing and aim for 200 pieces of content with 100 articles and 100 podcasts or 100 videos as well. Start with those articles, start with the medium, I guess, that you’re most comfortable with. In most people’s cases, that does tend to be a written content but you might wanna start with a podcast as well and then learn how to repurpose those things.

Ultimately, that grind of creating that content every week is going to pay off in the long term because you’re gonna end up with an asset. The asset will be, if you set up on your own blog, in your own home base, something that you control and gradually over time, that asset builds. Every one of those articles is a new doorway into your home base. It’s a new potential reader who you can get the email address of and you can build a relationship with.

Over time, the more articles you’ve got, the more doorways you’ve got into your site. It doesn’t happen overnight, there’s no instant gratification here. This is something that does take time to build but it’s an incredibly powerful thing. It can open up opportunities for you in the ways that Neil has talked about in new relationships in building a business as well.

Also, I love that he said that we all digest content differently. This idea of not just creating written content but also exploring some of these other mediums is a very powerful thing as well. I know many of you who are listening to this podcast today have already got blogs. Maybe 2018 is the year where you need to explore that idea of podcasting for the first time or maybe you do need to start creating some videos in some way as well.

I hope that you’ve got some ideas and inspiration from that. If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve already got this amazing archive, hopefully, of hundreds of articles that you’ve written. It’s not too hard to repurpose those in today’s other mediums. I encourage you to explore that in 2018.

Again, today’s show notes are at problogger.com/podcast/231. You can find our Start a Blog course. We’re just two days away from launching that course now if you’re listening to this in the day that this episode goes live. You can find where you can signup to claim your spot in the course at problogger.com/startablog. If you’re listening after the 10th of January 2018, then that course is, hopefully, live now for you to go to as well. If you go to that URL, you’ll be at a signup and start that blog as well.

As I’m recording this, over 1300 people signed up already for that course. There’s a whole group of people going through it together. We’re gonna have a Facebook group where you can begin to interact with one another, support one another, ask questions. We’re also going to help you to launch your blog as well. I’ve got some great things planned where we’re going to feature all the blogs that start as a result of this course over on ProBlogger and hopefully find you some new readers as well.

Again, problogger.com/startablog. I can’t wait to get going with that course in the next couple of days. I hope you are finding some inspiration in this series. If you wanna listen to a few more stories of this series that we’ve been doing, every episode between 221 and 232 which will be tomorrow’s episode will be these blogger’s stories. Thanks for listening today. We’ll chat in the next few days.

How did you go with today’s episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 231: From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

230: How a Blog Helped Grow My Voice Coaching Business

229: 2 Finance Bloggers Share their Tips for Building Blogs from Hobby to a Full Time Business

228: From Crying in the Bathroom at Work to a Multi Six Figure Online Business – A Writing Blogger Shares Her Story

  from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ProbloggerHelpingBloggersEarnMoney/~3/ifDjZcgT-QE/

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231: From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – A Tech Podcaster Tells His Story

Today’s episode continues our series where I hand the podcast over to you, the listeners, to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs.

Today’s blogger is Neil Hughes from Technology Blog Writer. Neil shares how he started out writing articles on LinkedIn, and talks about some of his struggles, accomplishments, and goals.

Links and Resources for From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

Technology Blog Writer Blogger Neil Hughes

Start a Blog Course

Facebook Group

PB121: 7 Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view

Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 231 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks and a course all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog, to grow that blog, the traffic to it, the content on it, and to make some money from it as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger over at problogger.com.

In today’s episode, we’re continuing our little series of blogger stories which we are ending 2017 and starting 2018 with in the lead up to our Start a Blog course. My goal in 2018 is to see hundreds, if not thousands, of new blogs started. We’ve developed this great little course which you can find at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. It’s free and it will help you, all your friends, to start a blog.

As part of the launch of this new course, we wanted to feature the stories of bloggers who had started blogging and to tell the stories of the opportunities that came from that. Also, to share some tips particularly for those starting out but also for those who are on the journey.

Today I’ve got a tech blogger from the UK who is gonna share some of his tips. He’s actually used blogging, podcasting. He started out on LinkedIn. He’s got some expertise in that as well. He’s really built himself an amazing little business as a result of that, a business that has enabled him to leave his full time job and work for himself. He talks a little bit about imposter syndrome and pushing through that. He gives a brilliant tip that I wanna add some thoughts to at the end of his story as well.

I’m gonna hand over now to Neil Hughes from Tech Blog Writer. You can find his blog at techblogwriter.co.uk. You can also find a link to that on today’s show notes at http://ift.tt/2CDvUdK. I’ll be back at the end of Neil’s story to wrap things up and tell you a little bit about tomorrow’s show too.

Neil: My name is Neil Hughes. My blog, podcast, and everything that I do comes into the name Tech Blog Writer. My URL is predictably http://ift.tt/2Ffl538. I’m hoping that you know what I do from the title there. That was the idea from the very beginning. My story really began in July 2014 when I published my very first post on the LinkedIn publishing platform. It was a simple post calling out gurus, ninjas and those self-proclaimed influences, you know the kind, the Instagram expert with 72 followers.

The post was called The Rise of the Social Media Guru. This is where my tech blogging journey started. At the time, I didn’t have any objectives, any hopes, goals or dreams for the blog. I just wanted to share my insights having spent 20 years working in IT. I gotta be honest with you, I was originally scared about blogging on the LinkedIn publishing platform and crippled with that self-doubt and imposter syndrome that so many of us go through.

I still, to this day, remember nervously hovering over the publish button full of fears and doubts. What would my professional colleagues, friends, and contacts say? This was my personal brand on a professional platform that everybody would say and judge but obviously, I did hit publish on that post. It was instantly picked up and promoted by LinkedIn themselves. It received thousands of views. More importantly for me, fantastic engagement.

A year later, I had over a hundred tech articles against my name on LinkedIn that seemed to act as my own portfolio and cement me as a thought leader in the tech industry. What was also great about writing on the LinkedIn platform at the time was that they displayed all their sharing and viewing stats for everyone to see so everyone could look at all the articles you’re creating and how many views, how many likes, how many shares that you have.

Suddenly I found myself with one million views and was voted the number two tech writer on the whole of LinkedIn. Quickly I started getting accolades from my way including being named one of the top nine influential tech leaders on LinkedIn by CIO Magazine. ZDNet included me on the list of you need to follow these 20 big thinkers right now alongside from million names which is Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Weiner to name a few.

I still struggled with that pesky imposter syndrome. When I looked back at the mistakes that I made and I’d advise other people to avoid in their blogging journey, I would say that my biggest mistake was to unwittingly become too reliant on one platform. That platform was also somebody else’s playground. Essentially, I was just a guest there. Obviously looking back, I should’ve diversified my work much soon.

My best advice to anyone who wanna be a blogger is that never have all your eggs in one basket and don’t rely on a game where you’re playing by somebody else’s rules and in their playground. Saying that, but I did make the most of so many great opportunities. My LinkedIn work suddenly catapulted me into the tech writing stratosphere. I now have columns in Inc. Magazine and The Next Web. Millions of article views no longer excite me, it was finding other ways to meaningfully engage with those million readers.

I launched my own podcast around the same time that Darren launched his ProBlogger podcast. I still remember, on launch day, we were featured side by side on the New and Noteworthy section of iTunes. I tweeted Darren a pic which he immediately replied to. This is where things got really exciting. Fast forward two years, I’ve now performed over 400 interviews with the most significant tech leaders and startups in the world such as Adobe, Sony, Microsoft, IBM, writers and even TV chat show host, Wendy Williams and movie star William Shatner.

I still have to pinch myself. This work has enabled me to leave my day job as an IT manager and setup my own business. I’m now living by my own rules and doing something that I love to do. I guess worth pointing out, for me it was never about the Neil Hughes show, it was about me sharing insights and my guest sharing insights.

I’m then throwing it out there to all the people listening and reading and consuming my content and asking them to share their stories. This was always my biggest motivation because if we think about it, our ancestors thousands of years ago went from town to town exchanging stories around the campfire. We’re doing the exact same now but around virtual campfires. We’re tearing down geographical barriers and stereotypes by talking, working, and collaborating with each other. That’s what this recording is doing right now, isn’t it?

My number one tip for any new blogger would be don’t get carried away with this age of instant gratification where everyone wants instant success, [inaudible 00:07:27] solution but it doesn’t exist. Do not believe anyone that offers you a shortcut. Remember, we all digest content differently. If you wrote two blog posts per week, you can also turn those two blog post into podcast and to videos too.

After one year, you could realistically have 100 articles, 100 podcasts and 100 YouTube videos. If your audience likes to read, listen or view their content, you’ve got all bases covered. Most importantly of all, think of the SEO there because all of that content is against your name. That will cement you and your reputation as a thought leader within your industry.

Think of the SEO on iTunes, on Spotify, on YouTube and your own personal blog as a hundred pieces of content that sits next to your name. However, most people will end up doing 5 to 10 pieces of content in the New Year and say this is a waste to time and give up by the time they hit February or March. It’s that grind of getting 2 of pieces of work against your name every week until you have a 100 or 300 if you repurpose your content. That’s where the value is.

I think this is the only real secret to success. It is hard work. As Gary Vaynerchuk often says, “Don’t complain that you haven’t got a few hours to spend each week when you binge watching TV shows on Netflix.” My number one tip for new bloggers in 2018 is two blog posts per week every week. Two per week becomes eight per month and that becomes a hundred over a year.

Along the way, don’t forget to build on your success and grab opportunities along the way. Just like a snowball rolling down a hill, your content and your portfolio will get bigger and bigger. That’s it for me. Guys, what are you waiting for?

Darren: That was Neil Hughes from techblogwriter.co.uk. You can again find the links to Neil and his blog on today’s show notes at http://ift.tt/2CDvUdK. I loved Neil’s story today. I love today that we’re talking a little bit about a podcast as well because I think a podcast is essentially, whilst a lot of people would differentiate it from a blog because they would say a blog is a written content, a podcast is an audio content.

In many regards, they’re a blog, they’re both a blog and they share many features, they’re both presented in chronological order with dates and usually with show notes and comments. I generally would say it is an alternative to a blogger and a nice addition to a blog. I love Neil’s story for a number of reasons.

Firstly, he mentions the imposter syndrome there. I know many of you who are thinking about starting his blog in 2018 are probably wrestling with that right now. There are others of you who have already started your blog, this is a very common thing to wrestle with. You have fear, you have doubt about whether you really have the credibility to say what you’re saying on your blog, whether anyone is gonna listen to you. It’s something that we all face in different stages of our blogging and podcasting career.

If you’re struggling with that, can I really encourage you at the end of this podcast to go and listen to Episode 121. In that episode, I gave you seven strategies for really dealing with imposter syndrome. It is something you need to push through. In that episode, I gave you some practical things that you can do to really push through that imposter syndrome. That’s Episode 121.

I also love Neil’s story because he mentions there a mistake that many bloggers make and that is becoming too reliant upon a platform like LinkedIn. This really could be any platform at all that you don’t have complete control over. Neil mentions there that he really built his asset, he built his archive of articles on someone else’s playground.

LinkedIn owns LinkedIn, LinkedIn ultimately controls the content that he put onto LinkedIn. With the algorithm changes that’s on their domain, ultimately what you’re doing by building on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or any of these other places is building someone else’s asset. You put yourself at the mercy of other people.

This is something a lot of bloggers who are starting out fall into the trap of. They see a tool like Medium or LinkedIn’s blogging tools or even Facebook and they’ll say, “I can just blog there.” There are certainly some advantages of using these types of tools because they can help you to get some exposure. If that’s all you do, if all your eggs are in that basket, you’re setting yourself up for trouble down the track and you put yourself at the mercy of their algorithms and their rules and there are limitations on what you can do.

What Neil did in starting his own thing, in his case it was a podcast, in many other cases it’s a more traditional written blog, in other people’s cases a video blog. Setting something up of your own that you have control of on your own domain, on your own service is one of the best things that you can do. Certainly I’m not saying you shouldn’t be involved in these other platforms.

I think LinkedIn is certainly a place that some of you should be working and building a presence but do it to build your own presence as well, drive people back to your own blog, your own podcast, your own email list and build the asset there. I think it’s great to do those things in conjunction. That’s what Neil is doing today.

I also love Neil’s tip there of not getting carried away with instant gratification, there are no shortcuts in this. Do what he said, his great call to action there. Create two pieces of content every week, two blog posts every week and then repurpose those two blog posts into two audio files if you can or two videos. You have 100 articles by the end of the year if you do that. I think that’s a brilliant goal for a new blogger just starting out, 100 articles by the end of the year.

As you get going, you might wanna then start repurposing and aim for 200 pieces of content with 100 articles and 100 podcasts or 100 videos as well. Start with those articles, start with the medium, I guess, that you’re most comfortable with. In most people’s cases, that does tend to be a written content but you might wanna start with a podcast as well and then learn how to repurpose those things.

Ultimately, that grind of creating that content every week is going to pay off in the long term because you’re gonna end up with an asset. The asset will be, if you set up on your own blog, in your own home base, something that you control and gradually over time, that asset builds. Every one of those articles is a new doorway into your home base. It’s a new potential reader who you can get the email address of and you can build a relationship with.

Over time, the more articles you’ve got, the more doorways you’ve got into your site. It doesn’t happen overnight, there’s no instant gratification here. This is something that does take time to build but it’s an incredibly powerful thing. It can open up opportunities for you in the ways that Neil has talked about in new relationships in building a business as well.

Also, I love that he said that we all digest content differently. This idea of not just creating written content but also exploring some of these other mediums is a very powerful thing as well. I know many of you who are listening to this podcast today have already got blogs. Maybe 2018 is the year where you need to explore that idea of podcasting for the first time or maybe you do need to start creating some videos in some way as well.

I hope that you’ve got some ideas and inspiration from that. If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve already got this amazing archive, hopefully, of hundreds of articles that you’ve written. It’s not too hard to repurpose those in today’s other mediums. I encourage you to explore that in 2018.

Again, today’s show notes are at http://ift.tt/2CDvUdK. You can find our Start a Blog course. We’re just two days away from launching that course now if you’re listening to this in the day that this episode goes live. You can find where you can signup to claim your spot in the course at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. If you’re listening after the 10th of January 2018, then that course is, hopefully, live now for you to go to as well. If you go to that URL, you’ll be at a signup and start that blog as well.

As I’m recording this, over 1300 people signed up already for that course. There’s a whole group of people going through it together. We’re gonna have a Facebook group where you can begin to interact with one another, support one another, ask questions. We’re also going to help you to launch your blog as well. I’ve got some great things planned where we’re going to feature all the blogs that start as a result of this course over on ProBlogger and hopefully find you some new readers as well.

Again, http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. I can’t wait to get going with that course in the next couple of days. I hope you are finding some inspiration in this series. If you wanna listen to a few more stories of this series that we’ve been doing, every episode between 221 and 232 which will be tomorrow’s episode will be these blogger’s stories. Thanks for listening today. We’ll chat in the next few days.

How did you go with today’s episode?

Enjoy this podcast? Sign up to our ProBloggerPLUS newsletter to get notified of all new tutorials and podcasts.

The post 231: From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story appeared first on ProBlogger.

     Related Stories

230: How a Blog Helped Grow My Voice Coaching Business

229: 2 Finance Bloggers Share their Tips for Building Blogs from Hobby to a Full Time Business

228: From Crying in the Bathroom at Work to a Multi Six Figure Online Business – A Writing Blogger Shares Her Story

  231: From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

[bizmediaweb]

231: From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – A Tech Podcaster Tells His Story

Today’s episode continues our series where I hand the podcast over to you, the listeners, to tell your stories and tips of starting and growing your blogs.

Today’s blogger is Neil Hughes from Technology Blog Writer. Neil shares how he started out writing articles on LinkedIn, and talks about some of his struggles, accomplishments, and goals.

Links and Resources for From Imposter Syndrome to Tech Influencer – One Tech Podcaster Shares His Story

Technology Blog Writer Blogger Neil Hughes

Start a Blog Course

Facebook Group

PB121: 7 Strategies for Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

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Darren: Hi there and welcome to Episode 231 of the ProBlogger podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and I’m the founder of problogger.com – a blog, podcast, event, job board, series of ebooks and a course all designed to help you as a blogger to start an amazing blog, to grow that blog, the traffic to it, the content on it, and to make some money from it as well. You can learn more about what we do at ProBlogger over at problogger.com.

In today’s episode, we’re continuing our little series of blogger stories which we are ending 2017 and starting 2018 with in the lead up to our Start a Blog course. My goal in 2018 is to see hundreds, if not thousands, of new blogs started. We’ve developed this great little course which you can find at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. It’s free and it will help you, all your friends, to start a blog.

As part of the launch of this new course, we wanted to feature the stories of bloggers who had started blogging and to tell the stories of the opportunities that came from that. Also, to share some tips particularly for those starting out but also for those who are on the journey.

Today I’ve got a tech blogger from the UK who is gonna share some of his tips. He’s actually used blogging, podcasting. He started out on LinkedIn. He’s got some expertise in that as well. He’s really built himself an amazing little business as a result of that, a business that has enabled him to leave his full time job and work for himself. He talks a little bit about imposter syndrome and pushing through that. He gives a brilliant tip that I wanna add some thoughts to at the end of his story as well.

I’m gonna hand over now to Neil Hughes from Tech Blog Writer. You can find his blog at techblogwriter.co.uk. You can also find a link to that on today’s show notes at http://ift.tt/2CDvUdK. I’ll be back at the end of Neil’s story to wrap things up and tell you a little bit about tomorrow’s show too.

Neil: My name is Neil Hughes. My blog, podcast, and everything that I do comes into the name Tech Blog Writer. My URL is predictably http://ift.tt/2Ffl538. I’m hoping that you know what I do from the title there. That was the idea from the very beginning. My story really began in July 2014 when I published my very first post on the LinkedIn publishing platform. It was a simple post calling out gurus, ninjas and those self-proclaimed influences, you know the kind, the Instagram expert with 72 followers.

The post was called The Rise of the Social Media Guru. This is where my tech blogging journey started. At the time, I didn’t have any objectives, any hopes, goals or dreams for the blog. I just wanted to share my insights having spent 20 years working in IT. I gotta be honest with you, I was originally scared about blogging on the LinkedIn publishing platform and crippled with that self-doubt and imposter syndrome that so many of us go through.

I still, to this day, remember nervously hovering over the publish button full of fears and doubts. What would my professional colleagues, friends, and contacts say? This was my personal brand on a professional platform that everybody would say and judge but obviously, I did hit publish on that post. It was instantly picked up and promoted by LinkedIn themselves. It received thousands of views. More importantly for me, fantastic engagement.

A year later, I had over a hundred tech articles against my name on LinkedIn that seemed to act as my own portfolio and cement me as a thought leader in the tech industry. What was also great about writing on the LinkedIn platform at the time was that they displayed all their sharing and viewing stats for everyone to see so everyone could look at all the articles you’re creating and how many views, how many likes, how many shares that you have.

Suddenly I found myself with one million views and was voted the number two tech writer on the whole of LinkedIn. Quickly I started getting accolades from my way including being named one of the top nine influential tech leaders on LinkedIn by CIO Magazine. ZDNet included me on the list of you need to follow these 20 big thinkers right now alongside from million names which is Jack Dorsey from Twitter, Elon Musk, Sheryl Sandberg and Jeff Weiner to name a few.

I still struggled with that pesky imposter syndrome. When I looked back at the mistakes that I made and I’d advise other people to avoid in their blogging journey, I would say that my biggest mistake was to unwittingly become too reliant on one platform. That platform was also somebody else’s playground. Essentially, I was just a guest there. Obviously looking back, I should’ve diversified my work much soon.

My best advice to anyone who wanna be a blogger is that never have all your eggs in one basket and don’t rely on a game where you’re playing by somebody else’s rules and in their playground. Saying that, but I did make the most of so many great opportunities. My LinkedIn work suddenly catapulted me into the tech writing stratosphere. I now have columns in Inc. Magazine and The Next Web. Millions of article views no longer excite me, it was finding other ways to meaningfully engage with those million readers.

I launched my own podcast around the same time that Darren launched his ProBlogger podcast. I still remember, on launch day, we were featured side by side on the New and Noteworthy section of iTunes. I tweeted Darren a pic which he immediately replied to. This is where things got really exciting. Fast forward two years, I’ve now performed over 400 interviews with the most significant tech leaders and startups in the world such as Adobe, Sony, Microsoft, IBM, writers and even TV chat show host, Wendy Williams and movie star William Shatner.

I still have to pinch myself. This work has enabled me to leave my day job as an IT manager and setup my own business. I’m now living by my own rules and doing something that I love to do. I guess worth pointing out, for me it was never about the Neil Hughes show, it was about me sharing insights and my guest sharing insights.

I’m then throwing it out there to all the people listening and reading and consuming my content and asking them to share their stories. This was always my biggest motivation because if we think about it, our ancestors thousands of years ago went from town to town exchanging stories around the campfire. We’re doing the exact same now but around virtual campfires. We’re tearing down geographical barriers and stereotypes by talking, working, and collaborating with each other. That’s what this recording is doing right now, isn’t it?

My number one tip for any new blogger would be don’t get carried away with this age of instant gratification where everyone wants instant success, [inaudible 00:07:27] solution but it doesn’t exist. Do not believe anyone that offers you a shortcut. Remember, we all digest content differently. If you wrote two blog posts per week, you can also turn those two blog post into podcast and to videos too.

After one year, you could realistically have 100 articles, 100 podcasts and 100 YouTube videos. If your audience likes to read, listen or view their content, you’ve got all bases covered. Most importantly of all, think of the SEO there because all of that content is against your name. That will cement you and your reputation as a thought leader within your industry.

Think of the SEO on iTunes, on Spotify, on YouTube and your own personal blog as a hundred pieces of content that sits next to your name. However, most people will end up doing 5 to 10 pieces of content in the New Year and say this is a waste to time and give up by the time they hit February or March. It’s that grind of getting 2 of pieces of work against your name every week until you have a 100 or 300 if you repurpose your content. That’s where the value is.

I think this is the only real secret to success. It is hard work. As Gary Vaynerchuk often says, “Don’t complain that you haven’t got a few hours to spend each week when you binge watching TV shows on Netflix.” My number one tip for new bloggers in 2018 is two blog posts per week every week. Two per week becomes eight per month and that becomes a hundred over a year.

Along the way, don’t forget to build on your success and grab opportunities along the way. Just like a snowball rolling down a hill, your content and your portfolio will get bigger and bigger. That’s it for me. Guys, what are you waiting for?

Darren: That was Neil Hughes from techblogwriter.co.uk. You can again find the links to Neil and his blog on today’s show notes at http://ift.tt/2CDvUdK. I loved Neil’s story today. I love today that we’re talking a little bit about a podcast as well because I think a podcast is essentially, whilst a lot of people would differentiate it from a blog because they would say a blog is a written content, a podcast is an audio content.

In many regards, they’re a blog, they’re both a blog and they share many features, they’re both presented in chronological order with dates and usually with show notes and comments. I generally would say it is an alternative to a blogger and a nice addition to a blog. I love Neil’s story for a number of reasons.

Firstly, he mentions the imposter syndrome there. I know many of you who are thinking about starting his blog in 2018 are probably wrestling with that right now. There are others of you who have already started your blog, this is a very common thing to wrestle with. You have fear, you have doubt about whether you really have the credibility to say what you’re saying on your blog, whether anyone is gonna listen to you. It’s something that we all face in different stages of our blogging and podcasting career.

If you’re struggling with that, can I really encourage you at the end of this podcast to go and listen to Episode 121. In that episode, I gave you seven strategies for really dealing with imposter syndrome. It is something you need to push through. In that episode, I gave you some practical things that you can do to really push through that imposter syndrome. That’s Episode 121.

I also love Neil’s story because he mentions there a mistake that many bloggers make and that is becoming too reliant upon a platform like LinkedIn. This really could be any platform at all that you don’t have complete control over. Neil mentions there that he really built his asset, he built his archive of articles on someone else’s playground.

LinkedIn owns LinkedIn, LinkedIn ultimately controls the content that he put onto LinkedIn. With the algorithm changes that’s on their domain, ultimately what you’re doing by building on LinkedIn or Facebook or Instagram or Pinterest or any of these other places is building someone else’s asset. You put yourself at the mercy of other people.

This is something a lot of bloggers who are starting out fall into the trap of. They see a tool like Medium or LinkedIn’s blogging tools or even Facebook and they’ll say, “I can just blog there.” There are certainly some advantages of using these types of tools because they can help you to get some exposure. If that’s all you do, if all your eggs are in that basket, you’re setting yourself up for trouble down the track and you put yourself at the mercy of their algorithms and their rules and there are limitations on what you can do.

What Neil did in starting his own thing, in his case it was a podcast, in many other cases it’s a more traditional written blog, in other people’s cases a video blog. Setting something up of your own that you have control of on your own domain, on your own service is one of the best things that you can do. Certainly I’m not saying you shouldn’t be involved in these other platforms.

I think LinkedIn is certainly a place that some of you should be working and building a presence but do it to build your own presence as well, drive people back to your own blog, your own podcast, your own email list and build the asset there. I think it’s great to do those things in conjunction. That’s what Neil is doing today.

I also love Neil’s tip there of not getting carried away with instant gratification, there are no shortcuts in this. Do what he said, his great call to action there. Create two pieces of content every week, two blog posts every week and then repurpose those two blog posts into two audio files if you can or two videos. You have 100 articles by the end of the year if you do that. I think that’s a brilliant goal for a new blogger just starting out, 100 articles by the end of the year.

As you get going, you might wanna then start repurposing and aim for 200 pieces of content with 100 articles and 100 podcasts or 100 videos as well. Start with those articles, start with the medium, I guess, that you’re most comfortable with. In most people’s cases, that does tend to be a written content but you might wanna start with a podcast as well and then learn how to repurpose those things.

Ultimately, that grind of creating that content every week is going to pay off in the long term because you’re gonna end up with an asset. The asset will be, if you set up on your own blog, in your own home base, something that you control and gradually over time, that asset builds. Every one of those articles is a new doorway into your home base. It’s a new potential reader who you can get the email address of and you can build a relationship with.

Over time, the more articles you’ve got, the more doorways you’ve got into your site. It doesn’t happen overnight, there’s no instant gratification here. This is something that does take time to build but it’s an incredibly powerful thing. It can open up opportunities for you in the ways that Neil has talked about in new relationships in building a business as well.

Also, I love that he said that we all digest content differently. This idea of not just creating written content but also exploring some of these other mediums is a very powerful thing as well. I know many of you who are listening to this podcast today have already got blogs. Maybe 2018 is the year where you need to explore that idea of podcasting for the first time or maybe you do need to start creating some videos in some way as well.

I hope that you’ve got some ideas and inspiration from that. If you’ve been blogging for a while, you’ve already got this amazing archive, hopefully, of hundreds of articles that you’ve written. It’s not too hard to repurpose those in today’s other mediums. I encourage you to explore that in 2018.

Again, today’s show notes are at http://ift.tt/2CDvUdK. You can find our Start a Blog course. We’re just two days away from launching that course now if you’re listening to this in the day that this episode goes live. You can find where you can signup to claim your spot in the course at http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. If you’re listening after the 10th of January 2018, then that course is, hopefully, live now for you to go to as well. If you go to that URL, you’ll be at a signup and start that blog as well.

As I’m recording this, over 1300 people signed up already for that course. There’s a whole group of people going through it together. We’re gonna have a Facebook group where you can begin to interact with one another, support one another, ask questions. We’re also going to help you to launch your blog as well. I’ve got some great things planned where we’re going to feature all the blogs that start as a result of this course over on ProBlogger and hopefully find you some new readers as well.

Again, http://ift.tt/2Cz9que. I can’t wait to get going with that course in the next couple of days. I hope you are finding some inspiration in this series. If you wanna listen to a few more stories of this series that we’ve been doing, every episode between 221 and 232 which will be tomorrow’s episode will be these blogger’s stories. Thanks for listening today. We’ll chat in the next few days.

How did you go with today’s episode?

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