The end?!

It’s taken me a few days to write this post. I have made a big decision – I feel I have come to the end of my blogging journey. Let me explain.

I set up Organised Jo three years ago as a place for me to share and help others who were in the same situation as me. Being a working mum is hard, and as I had already had 8 years of juggling life, work and kids I wanted to show others the tips, tricks and routines that had helped me.

Organised Jo has taught me so much. It has shown me that I like a challenge, I mean I knew nothing about how to set up a blog let alone sort a domain name and use WordPress. So after many evenings of teaching myself and seeking help from others my blog was born. Three years later I have written 150 posts and shared them with you.

The blog has also shown me the power of social media, a place where you can meet like minded people and through engaging and taking part how you can have an impact on someone else’s life. It was through this love of social media that led me onto developing my skills further and in November 2017 I signed up to the Digital Mums Social Media Manager course, which I qualified from in November 2018.

Having a organising blog though means there is a pressure that you have to be organised all of the time. The blog was a place I could share all my organising projects and routines that I implement to help us as a family. But it also meant I needed to come up with new ideas and content, and recently I have struggled with this. The pressure for me has been time, and as we all know, being a working parent and juggling being a wife, mother, home maker, school, kids activities, work, professional and personal development and self care means more often than not one or more of those things gets dropped.

The girls are now older, more independent, but that has also brought a change in our routine. They don’t go to bed till later and I’m not sitting down until about 9 pm, by that point after a full day at work I’m tired and finding it hard to then be motivated to create some more.

So, what next, I’m not 100% sure yet. My eldest starts secondary school in September and I want, need, to be more present while she, and us, transition in this huge next step.

I also want to focus more now on my next steps carer wise, use what I have learned through my Digital Mums Social Media Manager course. I want to use my knowledge and skills to help people understand how to use social media to help them and their idea/business. How I do that, I don’t yet know.

With regard to the blog, I will keep paying hosting for Organised Jo as my posts are still helping people. The blog is still receiving hits everyday from people that have found me through search engines and Pinterest.

For my social media channels I am going to change the names on my Instagram and Twitter accounts and start posting more personal work orientated things. On Facebook I’m going to hide the page for now, I may delete it in the future. I am still thinking this all through and if I find after a few months that I don’t want to bring everything back to life I will delete it.

I have loved blogging. The community is amazing, and I have truly found some great, awe inspiring people on my journey (shout out to all my Devon bloggers who have been such a supportive group). I can’t wait to continue watching them flourish and grow. Also the comments you get back from people who have read your blogs, after someone has tried out one of your ideas, is just amazing. I have had that warm fuzzy feeling of job well done so many times.

But what I won’t miss is the constant imposter syndrome thoughts that go on around my head. I often find myself comparing my blog, and me, to others, and that’s not healthy. The pressure to not only come up with content for blog posts, shoot great photos (damm you winter and a job that takes up all your daylight hours) and to be on social media posting more content and constantly engaging is hard hard work. Being consistent takes up a lot of time and energy.

Making this decision has actually felt like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, which I know means it is the right thing to do. But I do have so many mixed emotions about it.

So finally, a thank you. Thank you for taking the time to follow and engage with me. Thank you for sharing my posts and liking my pictures. Thank you for making me smile with all your wonderful comments and feedback.

Thank you and goodbye (maybe for now, who knows, goodness this is hard)!!!!

Jo

Xx