So firstly I tried cathybussey.blogspot.com, a personal blog that became a PR blog that became a mummy blog that became a dumping ground for rants that became a bit about everything.
Then The Girl's Guide to Life on Two Wheels, a cycling blog with the same name as my third book. For a while I ran two blogs, giving neither the attention they deserved. With hindsight naming the blog after the book was a mistake, as most people assumed the book was named after the blog and I began to find myself described as 'blogger turned author' or 'blogger who got a book deal.' which was factually incorrect.
Then I went back to the original personal/PR/mummy blog and added cycling in there.
Then I shut down both blogs and created Chasing My Village, a whimsically-monikered blog to chart the transition from feeling fairly lonely and isolated in a new community without family nearby, to finding a home and a place in our new surroundings.
But nothing felt right. Nothing fit.
And then finally I worked out why.
I couldn't make a blog fit and work for me, because I'm not a blogger.
I have been trying to force my square peg into a round hole. I didn't want a blog. I didn't want a cute pseudonym.
Why would I, when I've spent (counts hastily on fingers) 12 years writing professionally under my own name?
Heavily influenced by those around me making huge successes of their beautiful blogs that I absolutely love to read and interact with, I had tried to change myself to become one of them, instead of understanding that my own USP is that I am who I am.
One of the golden rules of branding and marketing is to think about your audience. This is tricky for me because my audience is disparate to say the least.
I have an audience of people who know me from my days as a staff journalist and editor, most recently at PRWeek magazine. Some of these are part of the audience that knew me as a freelance copywriter, creative and social media consultant.
Some of these are also part of the audience that knows me as a stay-at-home mother of two children, and some of these again are also part of the audience that knows me as a cycling author and Telegraph journalist, and some of these also know me as a bit of a hippy with a strong interest in anything a little alternative and earth-loving.
And then there are some who only know me as somebody who takes pictures on Instagram.
Then there are people who know me for only one or two of those parts, and then there are people who know me as the sum of them all.
So thinking about my audience is, at the very least, confusing. While I value anybody and everybody who wants to interact and engage with me both online and off, to think about them only leads me to a complicated, multi-stranded offering with which only a part of me can be comfortable.
Over the last four years as I have created and then given up a career as a freelance copywriter and creative and to focus almost exclusively on mothering two children, dipping my toe into editorial waters here and there when time allows, my identity has shifted and rebooted time and again.
My output has dwindled dramatically, going from almost daily content and hits to a very occasional piece for the Telegraph or VeloVixen.
Instead my focus has shifted inwards and the hard work has been going on inside of my home, and inside of me. On top of the immense day-to-day workload of mothering two children, I have been paying a great deal of attention to myself, my personal growth and my own development and evolution.
And so finally I concluded that I don't want 'a blog' at all. That's not to say I don't want to blog, or to share and engage with my increasingly disparate audience. But I am not going to put myself into the category of 'blogger' because that's not what I'm about and that's not what I do.
First and foremost I'm a mother.
And then, I'm an author and journalist. This is my profession, my training and my trade. This is what I do and will continue to do, and this is what I love.
I sometimes consider putting myself under the umbrella of 'writer' but the writing I do and want to do is quite specific in terms of output.
Books, features and photography are my loves and my future.
Instead of a blog, then, I needed a website. An online home, somewhere I could share my work, words and pictures, signpost people to find out more about what I do, and yes also share my thoughts, feelings and experiences. Such as in this blogpost.
So I made one. I hope you like it!
