For the past two months I’ve been working on my first product, a ebook about health and fitness blogging. It’s finished, uploaded, and launches tomorrow.

Man, am I nervous.

I’m not sure why I’m so nervous. I guess because it’s my first time. There is no outside pressure on me. This is my project, it’s not for a boss or for school. If it doesn’t sell, then it doesn’t sell. If it does sell, then that’s awesome. There is no real reason to be nervous when it’s gone through multiple edits, at least 5 people have read it, and even more have told me how awesome/impressive it is.

Yet, I’m still nervous.

It’s the nervous feeling of the unknown. Will something go wrong? Will people actually buy it? Is it as good as I think? I’m nervous about the reaction and all the things I can’t control.

I wish I wasn’t nervous, but I am. What began as a fun afterthought turned into a huge project. I wanted to create a small guide to answer some of the blogging questions I routinely receive, and ended up creating a huge 65 page guide to health blogging. Who knew I would write a book this year? I certainly didn’t have that in mind at the beginning of the year.

It took a lot of my time and skill to create. I had to learn a lot about creating a quality digital product and how to sell it. Even with everything I’ve read and learned I still feel like I’m making rookie mistakes.

I felt the need to make this product as close to perfect as I could, packing in as much value as possible. What originally was going to be a short ebook then expanded and went from the price of $9.99 to $17 to $27. It’s grown in value and price since I first started. The pricing process was probably the hardest part, but when I finally settled on $27 it felt right, so I went with it. I haven’t heard any backlash about that yet, but I’ve yet to find out if it will actually sell at that price or not.

The product launches tomorrow and I’ll update later this week with my thoughts on the launch experience. Wish me luck!

Lately I’ve been unplugging more often and trying to stay unplugged.

Weekends off.

Days without blogging.

Little blogging breaks.

Including trips to Nashville and mini reunions with friends.

It’s been nice.  I think the realization that so much of my life is shared online, and so much of my time is invested in this medium both personally and now professionally, led to the conclusion that I need more breaks.  Or to at least take breaks when I can.  In trying to grow what I’m doing I have the tendency to spend ridiculous amounts of time working on things web related.  I need time to step away from the online world and just live without it.  I need more balance like this.

This probably won’t last long as this next week will include the purchase of a new iphone, the completion of an ebook and the attendance a blogging conference.  Those few things signal the end of my self imposed distance from the world wide web.  They also signal big things to come in my world.

The next few weeks are going to be busy ones for me so I’m glad I took the time away while I could.   Now?  Full steam ahead.  Time to make things happen.

Sometimes I sit down to write in this blog and have no idea what to write.  I know that most successful blogs stick to a niche, but I can’t bring myself to do that again.  I’ve already done it once in health/wellness which is the whole point for this blog.  I want to write about what I want to write about. Basically I want to write about everything I love thinking about and doing: blogging, travel, lifestyle design, creating my own business…

Oh yes, the business thing.

It’s on my goal list but now I’m working on it.  For real this time.  I’m not trying to just make money, but I trying to build something.  I’m in the middle of creating a product that I will be launching and selling next month.  I have plans for more and partners to work on them with.  It’s simultaneously exhilarating and frightening because I’m in control of the whole process and therefore responsible for its success or failure.  I’m betting on this being a success, but in the back of my mind there is always a chance of failure.

The thing about it is – you can’t let fear of failure stop you from doing what you want.

I decided I want to work for myself. So I’m trying this new approach to doing it.  I have a ton to learn about creating and launching products and even more to learn about being self employed.  For the last several months I’ve built up an income of several hundred dollars a month through blogging.  I’m not getting rich and I’m not even making a full time income.  But I’ve realized that I can do this.  With some more time and some more hard work I can make myself a full time income on my own terms.

I love how I’ve started this while I’ve been in New Zealand.  Travel and a new business endeavor?  Yeah.  Life is ridiculous and complicated and hard and awesome.

So I’m off on this new endeavor and I want to blog about it.  I’m not sure how it will end up.  I’m sure though it will be a learning experience.  I would love to read more about these kinds of things from anyone who has done it before or about the best ways to go about starting a small business.  If you have any book or blog recommendations I should be reading then let me know in the comments.

And other than that… I don’t know what to write about. ;)

I’ve decided to do site/internet activity updates, similar to what many other bloggers do.

Writing

Some of my favorite posts here include the post about changing your life through blogging and why instead of personal branding you should just be yourself.

On my personal weight loss blog I explained why it’s called “A Merry Life.”

This month I also wrote a couple guest posts, including “Don’t Procrastinate On Weight Loss, Take Small Steps Now” and “A Detour From The Skinny Goal” both about living healthier.  My goal for the next couple on months is to write more guest posts, because these were easy and fun.

Awesomeness

An item from my life to do list was accomplished – I took my mom on a vacation.

I found out New Zealand is awesome, just like I thought it would be.  After years of wanting to come here I finally managed to get here.  I’ve got two weeks left in the country and plenty left to see.

If you missed the post, you might want to go back and see the pictures and video from when I bungy jumped in Taupo, New Zealand.  Another item off the life list and the introduction to life as an adventure junkie.  (I loved it.)

Other Stuff

I’ve left my ad network that previously was used on my other sites.  I wanted more freedom with what I could do with my own content and felt like there were too many rules without much benefit.  It seemed like it was worth it when I thought they were paying the rates they claimed, but when the pay and page views no longer matched up I realized it was time to leave.  Now I’m looking into other ways to monetize and will be working on that this next month.

Other than that just pondering the direction I want to take with blogging in the future, when I get a free minute that is, because mostly I’m just enjoying New Zealand right now. ;)

Two of my new favorite bloggers Matt and Sean both recently posted about starting a blog to improve your life. Sean writes about it as one step to take to improve your life and Matt agrees that blogging is the one thing you can do to change your life.  It might sound strange to the people who don’t understand the opportunities blogging can open up for you, but for me it makes perfect sense.  My blogs have changed my life and made it immensely better. 

BLOGS TAKE YOU PLACES

The funny thing about blogs is that they take you places.  Sean’s took him from Portland to Thailand.  Matt’s took him from Nashville to a new life and job in Chicago.  Mine has taken me from Memphis to Vermont to New Zealand.  Because of our blogs we connected with the right people who helped us make these moves and plans possible. Blogging can take you places if you are open to the possibilities that will grow out of your blogging.

BLOGS GIVE YOU SUPPORT

No matter what you want to do – be it become location independent, lose 50 pounds, pick up a new hobby or start a whole new career, there is a community of people online who have already done it or are doing it now.  Getting online and starting your own blog gives you a chance to connect with these people.  When I started trying to lose weight I didn’t have the support I needed in my life so I started blogging.  Now I have a great weight loss support community that helps me in my journey to be healthier.  Blogging is one of the fastest ways to connect with like-minded people.

BLOGS GIVE YOU DIRECTION

Many of us bloggers started blogging without any direction.  We have found our paths or at least a good directional wind in life because we started writing and putting ourselves out there.  In some ways I’ve done this already and now with this blog I’m trying to do it again.  I’ve not been writing here long (and I still can’t decide on a blog name) but I’m beginning to see how I’m drawn to travel, lifestyle design, and business related blogs and blogging.  The more I blog here the more I will be able to clarify what it is I want to be writing about and what I want to be doing with my life.  Blogging can help you figure out what you want to do with your life.

START BLOGGING NOW

I agree with Sean and Matt that a blog can and will help you achieve your goals, no matter what they are.  I also believe a blog can help you define new goals and explore new experiences.  No matter what you want to do we all seem to agree that a blog can help you.

If you aren’t a blogger yet, I suggest you start a blog on anything that interests you.  Start writing and find out what a blog can do for you.  

Today I spent the morning hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and then walking through Gatlinburg, TN.  This afternoon was made for resting and I decided to randomly surf the web/blogosphere with no intentions.  This is something I rarely do as I always have a purpose when I’m online.  The results were very disappointing.

I love how bloggers and “social media gurus” talk about building “personal brand” by one of two ways.  They either lay out a list of how-to items to make your super special personal brand stronger or they say the basic line: Just be yourself! Either way it seems that people don’t listen or have meltdowns trying to carry out the advice.  Everyone out there copies the original bloggers and no one says anything new.  Everyone wants to build a personal brand for themselves but is afraid to do anything different or unique.

There are very few original voices and ideas online.  Everything else is just a less exciting copy of that original version.  It is quite disappointing.

I understand how it happens.  When you want to blog but have no ideas about what to write or who you are or what your super special personal brand should be, it just seems easier to search the fanciest blogs and then do what they are doing.  Clearly their ideas are working.  People like them and read what they say.  If you just do the same thing you will get the same results.  Right?  Right?  That must be what people think.

Matt Cheuvront, one of the few good bloggers I recently found out there, wrote a guest post about personal branding and questioned whether we (20 somethings) are too young to worry about it. His best point: “There is NO right or wrong in the personal branding world. Your personal brand is YOU – whatever that means, for better or worse, you are who you are and once you embrace that and run with it, everything else will fall into place.”

Ah.  Be YOU.  Be who YOU really are.  Run with it.  Don’t try to build a personal brand around what you think you should be or someone you think you should act like.  That doesn’t just go for young people but for anyone.

Why spend your time being fake hoping someone will notice and like the fake version of yourself?  Seems like a fruitless endeavor to me.

First, stop trying to be someone you aren’t.  Second, don’t take other people’s advice on how to be authentic.  If you need someone to tell you how to be yourself then YOU AREN’T BEING YOURSELF. Being authentic and real comes from inside.  It’s just who you are.  No matter what the subject I’d rather read about it from someone who is being themself rather than trying to be something or someone they are not.

Perhaps it is just me, but I don’t understand why we all seem to need someone to tell us how to be who we are.  Unless we are all trying to be the same?  Oh, is that the goal?   I sure hope it isn’t.

I have to admit, I’ve been obsessed with reading all these lifestyle design/leave your job/personal development/go travel and do what you want blogs. I suppose a lot of other people have the same obsession as they all seem to have decent readerships. Perhaps it is the desire to live vicariously through people who are living boldly and doing what the rest of us only wish we could do.

I know that what drives me to read these blogs is the desire I have to work for myself. All of these people are doing exactly what they want – most of them creating an income on their own terms to finance their travel and unconventional lifestyles. Their success in creating income without having traditional jobs inspires me to do the same thing. Instead of wanting to go find a full-time job and join the “rat race” I want to follow all of these people in creating my own job so I can do what I want, do what I love.

My path probably won’t be the same as most of theirs. I’m not planning on moving to Thailand anytime soon, nor do I really want to. I’m not planning a round-the-world trip, nor do I really want to. I’m not trying to drop out of working so I can travel all the time. I probably will end up moving abroad again, partly because I love living abroad, partly because my current relationship. I love the idea of living in another country, in a beautiful location, but I like that idea of settling there. I’ve moved around enough in the last five years that I am starting to crave the stability of living in just one place. I want to work for myself and be able to travel when I want, but I don’t want travel to be my whole life. Travel just to travel, to mark countries off a list, doesn’t seem as appealing to me as it used to be.

So my path is a little different than a lot of the nomadic bloggers I’ve been reading. I’m hoping to be an expat more than I want to be a round the world traveler. I’m craving new experiences and a new culture, but I’m also craving roots. But I still find the blogs to be an amazing source of inspiration for me in regards to creating my own income online without having a job and living where I want. Watching their stories unfold as they do what they want to do helps me feel more sure that I can do this on my own terms as well.

The future of this blog will be the exploration and documentation of this journey, wherever it leads me. I’m trying to create my own “job”, earning money online through blogging and freelance writing. I’m trying to eventually move abroad and include a little bit of travel in my life as well. I’m trying to do what I want instead of what people tell me I should be doing. I’m trying to be one of those bloggers who others look at and say, “Wow, she really does do what she wants to do. That’s pretty cool.” And I know I will be, however long it takes me to make it happen.

Since I’m in Memphis for a few weeks without a formal job or even a car, I’ve found out I’ve got to do something to keep myself busy.  There is only so much television I can watch before I feel like my brain is melting and I’m turning into a zombie. So, here is a list of the things I’ve been working on.

PROJECT A: WEIGHT LOSS BLOG

I’ve been working on A Merry Life, my healthy living blog. I posted a list of 13 Christmas gift ideas for weight loss, which made me some money from Amazon commissions (yay spare change!).  And I hit my 500th blog post over there and talked a little bit about being dedicated to a healthier lifestyle.  I mentioned a few weeks ago that before I left Vermont I wanted 500 subscribers to that blog.  I hit that goal and I’m now almost 100 past it.  Things are going really well with both my own weight loss efforts and growing my blog in that particular niche.

Oh, and I also wrote a post about how to create a weight loss blog since many of my readers had asked me that question.  Although it’s for a weight loss blog, it can be used to create any kind of self-hosted wordpress blog, even a travel blog.   *update* I went ahead and edited it a bit for a page on how to start a travel blog. Get to work!

PROJECT B: MEMPHIS PHOTOGRAPHERS WEBSITE

I’ve also decided to turn something that was previously a personal project of mine into a more useful site.  I previously was using shootmemphis.com as a site for my personal goal of documenting Memphis through pictures.  It has a long way to go, but I just recently decided to change the site to more of a Memphis photographers directory and resource.  It will be a lot more fun if the site isn’t just about me, so I’m going to start working towards making that happen.  It’s a nice project for my time off from real work.

PROJECT C: SUPER AWESOME TRIP ABROAD (YAY TRAVEL!)

I’ve got a few other web things happening, but even cooler than those – I’m also starting to figure out the details and plan things for my upcoming trip abroad!  I haven’t done much travel planning yet, and though I’ve known about this trip for a while it is still over  a month away.  Up until now I haven’t been able to get really excited about it.  Once it hits the 30 day countdown next week, I will tell you more about it because it is really exciting. Really, really exciting!!!

Seems like enough to keep me busy for the rest of the month once I add in exercising, my project 365 and lots and lots of holiday fun!

Right now I am living in Ludlow, Vermont, population approximately 1,000.

Four months ago if you had asked me where I would be living right now, Vermont would not have been an option.  I might have said Memphis, or even Portland or Nashville.  But never the tiny village of Ludlow, VT.

So what happened?

A long series of events, really, that all start with the blog I write.  If you weren’t aware, I also write a weight loss blog called A Merry Life.  I’ve been writing it for almost two years (it started out as a photography blog) and have a nice group of readers involved.  I write about trying to live a healthy life, about dealing with my body image issues, and I even occasionally take my clothes off for a good cause.  It’s been an evolution in personal development more than anything, but has also created some amazing opportunities for me.

Those opportunities have all come from the people I’ve met who read my blog.  One such person is the fabulous, Marsha Hudnall, who helps run the health spa for women Green Mountain at Fox Run.  She read my blog and we communicated on Twitter for a while before I attended BlogHer09 in Chicago in July.  There were tons of people I wanted to meet at BlogHer and she was one of them.  We met briefly, maybe 5 or 10 minutes, after a lunch I attended.  We chatted in person about what we did, what was happening, how we enjoyed the conference.  I briefly mentioned that I had just quit my job to travel and was trying to figure out my future plans while on the trip.

I didn’t think much of the meeting since it was so brief, but afterward I recieved an e-mail proposal asking me if I wanted to accept a staff participant position at Green Mountain where I could utilize my skills in all things internet while also participating in the program which would be great for me on a personal level.  I would be blogging for them and doing other great tasks I enjoyed so it sounded like a win for everyone.  Without much thought I accepted the 3 month gig and moved myself up to Vermont.

Two of my three months in Vermont have already passed and the experience has been amazing.   If I get a chance to snowboard while I’m up here there won’t be any comparison: best experience ever.  (It probably will be anyway, I just really want to go snowboarding up here.)

So thanks to my blog I was offered this interesting and unique opportunity.  I’m lucky that I chose to be open to these kinds of experiences and it came at the right time for me.  I’m glad that I’ve found ways to use the skills that I have in a way that helps other people indirectly.  I’m not sure where I will be after this, or what my future looks like, but I’m excited that right now I’m working for a place that is amazing and helps women change their lives.

And okay, even though the population is next to nothing, I’m pretty excited to be living in the gorgeous Green Mountains of Vermont for a while.