My love-hate relationship

For a few years now, I’ve been having a love-hate relationship with websites. Well, mostly hate…

My first website was on a wordpress.com platform that I designed myself in October 2014. Well, designed is a big word for what I’d created, but hey, it was a start.

I remember how badly I was shaking when publishing my first few posts. Miraculously, some people read them and left a few kind comments.

In those days, I checked my stats obsessively. Growing my audience became a goal, so I spent an inordinate amount of time following other bloggers, engaging with their content, sharing my blog posts wherever I could, and entering 30 day from A to Z blogging challenges…. It was a lot of work, but not a very effective business strategy.

Unfortunately, I didn’t know how to use a website effectively at that time. Still, I learnt how to be comfortable writing imperfect posts, press ‘publish’ and stop worrying about my grammatical mistakes.

I decided to upgrade my website a couple of years later, so I approached a company which offered basic templates and did some design work. It was all a bit low end investment, but at least I could sell sessions on my website, well, once I figured out how to actually operate the system.

As I was finding my feet with my new website, two things happened. First, I kept getting notifications about the loss of my domain name. I didn’t understand what it was about and decided it was spam, since as far as I was concerned the company was taking care of that kind of detail.

It was 1st of January 2017 when I woke up in the morning to the fact that my website did not exist. I panicked – was all that content gone? What’s happened? I lost my domain name, because after all, the email reminders were not spam. I got cross with the company for letting me down. They patiently explained that they didn’t concern themselves with domain names and that it was my problem. A colleague of mine helped me to buy my name back for a much higher rate, but still… A few days later my content was back online.

I took a deep sigh of relief and… went to a meeting with a senior colleague at university. She was doing my annual professional review. At the end of the meeting she casually mentioned that she googled me and that I have a whole other thing going on on the side. I must admit, I got scared. What if my website was interpreted as a lack of commitment to my day job?

I went home and closed down my website. I know, pretty dramatic, huh?

Anyway, for a while, I gave up on websites. I decided to concentrate on social media instead, but something was missing…. By then, I realized that I liked blogging.

I was talking to my writing buddy about business and she said ‘I can design your website! No problem!’.

I was excited.

This was someone who loved my work and seemed techy savvy. So I said ‘yes’ and we set out to create a brand new website about writer’s block (yes, I spent the first 4 years in business helping writers to get un-stuck, as I was writing a book myself and knew that pain very well).

But soon after, I realized that there was no such thing as writer’s block. Instead, writers got stuck because of their fears of judgment, criticism and punishment, most of which stemmed from their childhood.

‘Cut the middle man,’ I decided, and tried to course correct. We tweaked the website to reflect this new direction.

At the time, I was working with my Compassion Key teacher and designing a group programme on healing from sexual trauma.

So, guess what I did… Yes, the website changed again.

Sadly, my friend decided to quit, but by then I handed over all the control over website to her and I had no clue how to operate this new website. I felt too overwhelmed to ask, and in the end, I let it go. I ignored notifications about the domain name, and lost it again.

You won’t be surprised to know that I refused to have a website for a few years after. If you’ve been following me for a while, you might have even seen my ‘home-made’ sales pages in Mailchimp that looked basic and pretty ugly. But it got the info out and I was still searching for a clear message that I’d like to put out into the world.

I felt reluctant to commit to a specific niche. The tools I use work on everything! Why should I limit myself to a specific topic? I want to have freedom to talk about money today, relationships tomorrow, and sexual trauma the day after.

But… it’s not about me. The net effect of my ‘creativity’ was harmful for my business. It confused people who followed me as I kept ‘jumping’ around various topics.

So in the end, I decided it was time to commit.

Commit to a specific topic.

Relationships.

You know the ones which start sliding. Perhaps at first your partner stops buying you flowers and date nights get squeezed out by work and chores. Then it gets harder to talk about things that matter to you, because there’s never time for that. So you start feeling lonely and resentful. Conversations get charged and you end up snapping at each other. All sorts of emotions start coming out. And sex… well, what sex? All fun and play seems long forgotten.

That kind of relationships.

I can help you to turn things around or to set each other free.

Well, drum-roll, I’m really pleased to share with you my new website. Check this out! I’ve been working with this amazing woman who has been incredibly patient with me, determined to turn my love-hate relationship into one of pure love.

Guess what?

I love my new website.

I hope that you love it too. Would you check it out and let me know? I’d love to hear your thoughts.