Why a blog isn't the dream side hustle (but what the urge is really telling you)

You’re burnt out. Somewhere between the team restructure and the fifth “urgent-but-not-urgent” email, you felt your sense of self flicker. The dream of leadership turned into an endless cycle of managing up, soothing down and pretending to care about performance metrics you couldn’t explain to your own inner child.

Then, one day, you opened a fresh Google Doc and said:
“Maybe I’ll start a blog.”

This is not a mistake, in the same way that a missed turning on a long car journey that leads to a delightful picnic spot the Insta travel bloggers somehow never found. This is a message from a wiser part of you.

You want to be heard. You want to matter. You want to build something of your own, something that isn’t another cog in someone else’s vision. And what better way to reclaim your voice than by using it? Writing feels like a rebellion. It’s clean. It’s yours.

But here’s the catch: most of us, when we start blogging as a side hustle, aren’t actually stepping away from corporate culture. We’re replicating it; but with a different font.

Hands Up here

A lot of members have confided to me that they're wanting to start a blog or a community. Some have done so.

And it seems rather mean, ungenerous and plain old hypocritical of me to caution: this might not be the project to pour your energies into.

So consider these words addressed not only to you, but also to me.

For I am not the person I was a year ago. And I wish the same for you. Indeed if we get our total self to listen to the wisest parts of our self more often, we would all be immeasurably happier.

Just as we discussed in "I'll Go Freelance: Avoiding the obvious solution", sometimes our vision and sense of self has been so limited by the growbag of growth marketing we've been immersed in, that we cling to the nearest trellis...when we should be spreading our roots.

I am here of course to support and cheer on and challenge helpfully any other members who like me blog (this is essentially a blog, attached to a community, with additional resources and events). It isn't that it's hard. It's that in focusing on it, you might be missing out on so much more. And you might not be escaping what you most urgently need to leave behind.

Blogging Is Often Just Leadership in Disguise

When a corporate professional starts a blog, it’s often with the unconscious desire to lead. Not in the old-school org-chart way, but still to guide, to influence, to build a following.