I didn’t start off as the crazy widow. My inspiration back in my high school days became a widow at a young age. So did I. In 2008 I began writing freelance articles on the things in life that I knew: becoming healthier, travel, road trips, camping. Later that year I wrote about the things I had recently learned: cancer, angiosarcoma, sarcoma, hospitals, uprootment, and finally, grief.
Some people try to create their online personas to become someone they think people will like, admire and promote. There is a certain mold and guide to follow. Others are handed their personas through life circumstances. Mine started out as a mold I intended to create and ended up with a persona created by life.
Which one is more marketable?
I find myself streamlining my writing towards a different avenue other than grief, trying to reach outside of my life and into areas that I actually enjoy, such as travel writing. Each time I am sucked back into grief support writing. It is my niche. People find my blog and writing because they need grief support and help. Often I am able to write something relative to an event occurring in their own lives. This is probably one of the many reasons I have struggled with finding a secure career fit.
Marketing yourself is difficult no matter what angle you attempt. If you want to become a certain type of person, you have to be believable and trustworthy. You need to be an expert in what you’re presenting to the world. For me that turned out to be an expert in my personal grief journey. For you it could be something in which you never cared to be an expert. It may just happen.
Evaluate your life and not what people think you should be. What characteristics about your personality and life experience have brought you to this point? It will be those items that will carry you further into the future rather than fighting for a persona that you cannot own. It is never easy to embrace what life has handed us, but it is much easier to move forward with that baggage in hand rather than having it pull behind you, always slowing you down.
What is your online persona? Is it something that is truly you? Something that life has handed you, or something you have tried to create?
Guest Author:
This week’s guest post is from my friend Brenda Boitson, a Lancaster local whom I first met via Twitter, where she is known as CrazyWidow. She has related her story on her own blog, as well as here in her previous guest post, Social Media as Therapy. Brenda also happens to be a writer and is currently working on her memoirs. One of the ways that Brenda has decided to honor her late husband, is through a campaign she calls Keepin’ it Kevin for Team Sarcoma, as she seeks to raise money to battle the disease that claimed her husband’s life. Please check out herFacebook page, and consider contributing to her cause, which is hosting a Keepin’ it Kevin Bike/Walk/Run this Saturday, September 24th.