Some people ask me why I blog and I’d like to give them a serious answer they may want to hear about how it helps build and market my business or brand, or how it engages with my followers or clients but in all honesty, that’s far from the truth.

It’s never been about business, marketing or Google rankings for me.  It’s way more personal than that.

I’ve been writing since I was 15.  As an active journaller, I filled notebooks with my thoughts, observations, and reflections of my education, travels, work and home life.  At one stage back in 2006, I even had a personal blog called Ramblings where I shared my knitting, travel and reading pursuits for six years.

Since 2012, however, I made a personal choice to start blogging about what I was truly passionate and that was the joy of personal and social learning and work out loud.  It was a risk to share my thoughts in a public forum especially if those thoughts were contrary to the standard thinking of people in my field of corporate Learning and Development.

Through the process of sharing my reflections on this blog, I started to find my own voice again.  It had been lost previously in the quagmire of constant change and volatility of a busy corporate environment where I felt like a cog in the wheel with my identity being stripped away from me.  The pressure to conform, follow unwritten and unspoken protocols to meet the expectations and demands that people placed on you: from the way you work, dress and act were immense.

This blog helped me build confidence in myself and my work and to do it in my own unique style and manner.  It helped express my thoughts in unique and creative ways – because that’s who I am and how I do things.

The blog is my online solace, my own little corner of the internet that is all mine.  My blog is me.  Quirks and all.

This blog post was written as a submission for the upcoming Problogger 2016 #PBevent event as part of the Shoebox competition.  If you would like to know more about blogging or to buy a virtual ticket to download resources and material that will support you to start blogging too, check out the Problogger Virtual Ticket or click on the icon below.