Goodbye, Jennifer Nicole.

First off, I want to say that I've been blogging for years (like, before it was cool) and I've had several different blogs, with several different names, and subjects in that time, too. I started all of them with the best of intentions, but sadly, they all fizzled out.

Personally, I blame it on being an Aries, and the belief that we have tendency to go after new things with a ton of excitement, only to lose interest in them before we ever complete them. I can also blame it on a professionally diagnosed case of ADD. So, there you go, I have astrology and medicine on my side.

Anywho...

I've given this blog, a wannabe DIY blog, almost 4 years and (at least) 2 name changes, and it worked pretty well for me.

However, a few months ago, I started to grow out of the whole "paint-every-piece-of-furniture-that-I-own" phase and, at the same time, I also started to figure out that I do not have the talent, patience, or budget to continue to do project after project.

{Plus, it's also a little hard to fit a table saw into this apartment.}

As I slowly began to realize all of this, I began to contemplate what I should do with the blog, itself. I didn't want to stop blogging completely because I do love to write,
especially about myself, but the whole DIY thing just wasn't working anymore.

As I thought about all of this, I went back to my blog and wound up on the stats page. I started noticing what posts had the most views and the most comments, meaning that they were also the posts that people enjoyed reading the most. I also noticed that most of these were the posts that I had enjoyed writing the most.

There were other things that these posts had in common, as well.

They were all about events and experiences that I'd had. Many of them were the posts where I had opened up and shared some of the details of my life, showing my vulnerabilities and imperfections. All of them, written from my heart.

Some were funny. Some were anything but funny.

They weren't written to impress people or  just because I needed something to post.

They weren't written for anybody else, but me.

It was at that moment that I knew exactly what direction I wanted to take my blog in and what I wanted to write about.

I wanted to write about things that were a part of my life in some way, whatever way that might be. They could be experiences, observations, thoughts, hobbies, opinions...whatever. I just wanted to write for the fun of it, with no guidelines or boundaries to care about. I didn't want to have to stick to a subject. I wanted a blog that portrayed my personality. Basically, I wanted some type of diary of who I was, and what my life was like, and if people found it interesting enough to read, that would make it even better.

I also knew that I wanted whoever it was that read it, to not only be entertained, but to also feel like there was someone out there that they could relate to. In my own past, as a stay-at-home mom who is a
huge hermit little bit of an  introvert, it was the blogs that I read that made me feel less alone and more like a human. There were actually several different blogs that I read on a regular basis, but the blogs that I loved the most, though, were the ones where I felt like the blogger was authentic. The subject didn't matter as much as the bloggers authenticity and their willingness to show their own vulnerability.

This is not a difficult concept. In fact, a lot of  successful blogs are built on it, which is also probably part of the reason for their, most likely, unintended success. Unfortunately, it was impossible for me to build all of my previous, and most recent, blogs on that concept when I was too busy hiding who I really was.

Those days are over, though.

So, I decided that it's time to grow up, put my big girl panties on, and blog about what I wanted to blog about, not what I thought people want me to blog about. I wanted to blog about me and my life, not a life that I created because I didn't think people could handle the real one. I wanted to blog as myself with my true personality, not as a person with a made up personality that I thought people would like more.

With all of that in mind, I began the process of "revamping" my blog a few weeks ago. First, I decided on a new name and then created a new domain based off of that name. Then, I switched from Blogger to self-hosted Wordpress. I also added a new design theme in order to give the blog the "fresh start" that I think it deserves. It's still very much a work in progress, and I still need to migrate my posts over there, but eventually it will be finished.

(I hope)

In the meantime, I really hope you'll join me over there, even with all of the "construction" still going on, and I want to make sure to let you know that you don't have to be a single mom, or even a mom at all, in order to feel as though you can relate to what I have to say on it. You also don't have to have Adult ADD, be a cosmetic junkie, or be in a relationship with someone, and you definitely don't have to be a Lesbian! In fact, you don't even have to be a woman (although my demographics say that 90% of you are) to be able to relate to what I have to say.

You just have to be human.

That's it.

Hopefully, if you do decide to follow me over there, you'll find that to be the case.

If not, then you just wasted several precious moments of your life reading this, and you will never again get that precious time back.

Bummer.

P.S. - I almost forgot, the new blog is located at:

 www.thelmomdiaries.com. 

Hope to see you over there. 

Jen