Hi, world! Welcome to The Wellness Diaries.

I’ve been feeling off track the past year or so with my blog. I haven’t felt inspired, my creative juices have been stifled, and I’ve been overall stuck in a rut. The algorithms (or what’ll get clicks on Google, etc.) have been running my blogging life. This year, I’m putting a stop to that.

It’s time to get back to the basics.

Why’d I start blogging in the first place? Because I’ve always been in love with blogs.

Since I got my first laptop in my early college days, I found healthy lifestyle blogs. The gorgeous photos, the heartwarming stories, the feeling of having a friend behind the screen (even though you’ve never actually met). It all hit me in such a deep way. I felt connected in a way I never had before in the online world.

I’ve known since those days back in 2012 that I wanted to be a blogger.

So what went wrong with my first blog?

Nothing went wrong, per se. It just wasn’t right, if that makes any sense.

When I first started Vitality Vixens back in 2020, it felt like home. Like a place to escape to. So I could try to deal with all the scariness in the world that year. With Covid changing all of our lives, I needed something comforting. My blog was that comfort blanket for me, a distraction, and a vessel I could channel my extra energy into.

The complete lack of socializing is something my introverted self secretly loved. But you can only deal with so much isolation, even as an introvert.

The initial iteration of Vitality Vixens was a beautiful mess of creativity. It was fun and I did literally whatever I wanted. I think one of my first posts was “We played tennis!” and simply included a blurry picture of Jeremy and me at our apartment tennis court, along with a few lines about how fun tennis is.

That’s what I want to get back to.

No more only posting what I think will get the most clicks.

No more only creating videos that will get views on YouTube. (In fact, no more creating YouTube videos at all. It’s exhausting.)

No more trying to run multiple platforms at once (a blog, Pinterest, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter…)

Just back to the basics.

Post what I like. Follow the light. Get inspired, creative, and in the flow. Whatever feels good at the time, write about that. Whatever doesn’t, avoid it like the plague.

To be honest, I don’t care if this blog gets 0 views. I don’t care if I never make a single dollar from it. While being a full-time blogger is my dream, it’s not worth it if I’m not actually writing about things I care about. Things that matter.

I’m sick of only doing reviews. “Niching down” is what all the “How to become a full-time blogger like yesterday!” articles tell you.

But to tell you the truth… Finding one niche and sticking to that is a death sentence for creativity. It’s boring as hell.

Unless you’re one of those people who is truly and deeply passionate about fishing, or painting, or gardening, or anything else. (If you are one of those people, I envy you.)

For the rest of us who like a bunch of random things that don’t really fit together into one category, niching down is an outright bad idea.

I get the reasoning behind it, I really do. Obviously only writing about one thing makes it 1000x easier for social media algorithms (or Google) to narrow down what you write about, and shoot your content out to people who are interested in [fishing, painting, gardening, etc…]

But for me, it didn’t work. Google and social media loved fitness brand reviews. I, however, have grown to dread them. Recording videos and writing the blogs felt like a chore. Like something I had to do to keep getting views and stay relevant.

The whole point of being a blogger was to write about things I love. To connect with people with similar interests. To inspire people. To be creative. And to make a difference in people’s lives.

So, what I’m saying in this long-winded rant is…

That’s exactly why I started The Wellness Diaries.