Let’s Talk: Being in a Rut

Ah, the dreaded rut. It happens to all of us, and it’s arguably one of the most frustrating things you can go through in your personal life from a day-to-day functionality perspective. Today I wanted to share my own rut I’m going through. I’ve rewritten and reformatted this post a hundred times now trying to formulate how it is that I’m feeling and express it in a way that’s productive. I’m realizing more and more with each rewrite that I just need to focus on sharing and not on helping, because sharing can probably do much more good than I realize and give you someone to relate to since it can be an isolating feeling. With that being said, let’s dive into this Let’s Talk chat on being in a rut.

My rut started back in August, was in full swing in September and still hasn’t truly faded away as we’re now halfway through December. Some days are better than others, but it’s a subtle, overall lingering feeling on my best days. If you’ve been in one before, I’m sure you can feel my pain. I would define this particular one for me as having a lack of confidence, feeling stuck and having a lot of uncertainty about myself, my life, my career, my blog, my body, what I’m doing, what I’m not doing… the list goes on. I just haven’t been happy with how I look or how I’m feeling. I spend a lot of my time longing for something else, wishing things were different and not really being present. I can’t really get out of my own head.

This was definitely sparked by my rough patch these last few months. As I’ve stated in previous posts, the job search was rocky on me mentally and emotionally. Every day of my three-month search and waiting period left me feeling more and more defeated, diminishing my self-confidence in many ways. I wasn’t feeling like myself, and I’m still not 100% in some ways. I thought it would be fixed overnight when I started my new job, assuming that was the sole issue since that was the big event going on in my life at the time. However, I’m still feeling the same emotions a month and a half into my new position, so I’m realizing this life change brought other things to the surface that are completely unrelated. Needless to say, securing a stable job with longevity again wasn’t the quick fix I thought it would be.

This lack of confidence in myself has bled into other areas of my life, including blogging. To be completely transparent with you guys, I feel washed up as a blogger — like no one cares about anything I share or post anymore. My blog views really haven’t varied much, but my social following is beyond stagnant, my engagement is down and a lot of brands who reach out to me these days are only interested in gifting (not paying) because of my follower count… even though I’m a four-year veteran with a strong track record of paid collaborations. I feel defeated and tired of “hustling,” and therefore not always engaged on my end. I’ve been doing this for so long that I feel like everyone else in the industry has surpassed me. I’m not doing this to be the best, but feeling like an overlooked ant at the bottom of the heap isn’t reassuring. I’m at a weird place with it that I’m starting to wonder who I am doing it for. I’ve lost confidence that my work is valuable and that it means something to people. Why take time out of my day to share a podcast I enjoyed this week on my Instagram story if potentially no one cares anyway? Why spend time curating blog posts I’m passionate about if people may just skim them? I know that sounds really negative and it’s likely just part of the rut I’m in, but it’s how I feel. I only post when I want to and when it’s fun for me (still two blog posts a week), but sometimes it all just makes me feel bad about myself. The “I should have been able to go full-time with this by now” thought in the back of my head haunts me sometimes too. It’s such a toxic headspace.

I think why this is affecting me so much is because blogging has been such a big part of my identity for so long. It’s been my drive, my future path and my passion all rolled into one. It still is some of those things in some ways, but my hope for what it could turn into has dwindled. It is what it is now, rather than it is what it could be, if that makes sense. Without that hope, it’s hard to be inspired. I find my fingers hovering over my keyboard a lot, not knowing what to type.

On top of this, some of the engagement that I am getting online makes me feel really undervalued. And when I say “some,” I’m moreso referring to a specific type of DM. A blogger, who I don’t know and who doesn’t follow me, DM’d me on Instagram a few weeks ago asking for one of my brand contacts. She must have only spent just enough time looking at my account to find a brand connection of mine that she wanted for herself before messaging me because she had never reached out to me previously, never liked any of my photos or shown support for me in any way — not even a quick follow before DMing me (not that it would have been much better)… and she still hasn’t. To me, this is comparable to someone at school who has never even looked in your direction before (I’m sure we ALL just had a former classmate come to mind) ask for your test answers — it’s very much a “I don’t know your name and I don’t care to, but will you help me?” attitude. It also has *”subscribe to my channel!!!!” comments on other people’s YouTube videos* vibes. It would never be appropriate to pass out a brand contact’s information without their consent, and it especially doesn’t make sense to risk that relationship by giving it to someone who doesn’t even care about me. Wow, did this make me feel insignificant.

Believe it or not, this happens a lot and this girl wasn’t the first. This has been a strong representation of how the blogging community has felt to me lately — a little toxic and self-serving. Everybody wants to be a blogger, but no one wants to but the work in themselves. They want to use others for knowledge and “shortcuts.” It has changed so much in four years. I don’t need to be a top dog in this realm by any means, but I would like to be respected regardless.

Beyond blogging, this rut makes me not want to leave the house or have any social interactions. If I can’t bring my best self to the table, I’d rather avoid it altogether. It has me in my head a lot, overthinking things and wishing for the next chapter. I feel creatively frustrated and like I’m meant for more than what I have right now, and I don’t really know how to explain that. I have the itch to start a business. Switch things up. Try something new. Completely regroup. Is this my quarter-life crisis?

As messy as this brain dump of a post was, that’s a summary of how I’m feeling. I don’t really know how to close out this post because I feel like I didn’t share any positive takeaways with you guys, but these are some things that I needed to get off my chest — which is what Let’s Talk posts are all about, I suppose. Thank you for listening. I really mean that. If you have any tips for getting out of a rut or personal experiences you’d like to share, I’d love to hear them. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, these past few months have been hard, and I’m hungry for a resolution. Maybe the new year will be the change I need.