At the time I am writing this, no one reads my blog...
That is a very quick and concise explanation of my failures to date as it pertains to me putting myself out to the world. The reality is that I have actually done very little to improve that truth about my efforts. However, I do have a YouTube channel where I have posted some content. You may have even found this website through that channel. The disastrous truth about my YouTube channel is that I have never really organized my thoughts appropriately or had a well defined vision for what I wanted the channel to be.
Here’s the problem: I am “into” a number of things, but hardly an expert on any of them. The one subject to which I am legitimately an expert on is Massage Therapy. And while i am abundantly passionate about the subject, I have general held the belief that I should muddy the waters of my professional life my tackling that subject in these forums. I now, after much personal meditation, have decided it is time to change that. Yet I do not want to just be a YouTuber or Blogger on the subject of Massage. First of all, I would run out of topics rather quickly. Second, that is not my strongest passion in life. There are a myriad of other topics to which I feel I have a voice.
So what to do?
On January 1st of this year, I decided to begin daily vlogging. I had made the decision to finally bite the bullet and make it a priority. I was going to use YouTube as a daily journal of my thoughts on life, my career, my fitness, my travels…you name it. One thing I have never struggled with is having something to say. Although, come to behold, I did struggle. Primarily, I agonized over feeling repetitive and pigeon-holed on the finite subject matter. So I quit on February 1st…just one month in to the process.
So what next?
Blogging. Just plain and simple blogging. This medium, in my humble opinion, is better suited to my primary strength: the gift of gab. While I feel I thrive in a group conversation, easily playing off the riffs of others and making my voice heard, in the YouTube world of video content creation I fall short. My writing my thoughts down, I am able to eliminate the tedious editing process and get to focus on my thoughts. I can stop stressing over lighting and composition of the scene and aim my attention to syntax and sentence structure.
I am not planning on diving into this venture head first. I am going to take my time. I am going to do some more research on what makes a successful blog and what pitfalls to avoid. While I have already started the research, I want to start laying down the framework of how the blog is going to run and what the structure will look like. That will be fleshed out over the coming days.
I welcome feeback!
My primary motivator for doing this has remained the same in every iteration of my attempts to put myself out there: I feel I have something to say and I would like to be known for my opinion. Call me a egomaniac. Call me a narcissist. Call me a buffoon. It does not matter to me. First and foremost, I am doing this for myself. I have been doing this long enough in different formats that I have collected a decent catalog of content that I go back to occasionally and peruse. That allows me to learn from my failures and improve my methods going forward. I would love your assistance in that too. If you have any suggestions, tweaks, vast alterations, etc., please let me know. Comment on my posts, email me, PM on Facebook. Use whatever method of content works best for you. I welcome it all. Even if you want to tell that I am a stinking pile of refuse, go ahead. As long as you mean it…
-Christopher Hess, LMT
