Please Note: This is a Thought From My Journal™️, which is an actual entry from my journal. It is lifted as-is from my journal without any edits, except when a sensitive detail needs to be removed or changed. This means there will be grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes. (Because who worries about that in their journal?)

I tend to not spell out the words because and with. The shorthand I use is b/c = because and w/ = with. I might swear (especially when impassioned) and I tend to put words in all caps for emphasis. Oh and I can write in run-on sentences. (Because again, no one is worrying about this in their journal.)

Also, I don't always write in full sentences in my journal. I sometimes think better in poetry format, so you might also see a free-verse style poem as my thought.

Entries are in no particular order and will vary wildly in length. The date of the published thought does not correlate with the date of the journal entry. (There, of course, might be exceptions to this rule). There are quite a few older entries, from the past few months to the past 2 years and sometimes all the way up to 5 years ago.

The thought will be written as a quote for formatting, but again it is from my actual journal. Not all of the entries are happy in case you were starting to think I was perfect. (Spoiler Alert: I'm not. I struggle and some of these entries show my Struggles and various emotions).

It was written recently (within the last few months).

I was on Facebook in one of my groups and noticed someone complaining about Instagram again. There have been quite a few discussions/complaining about Instagram. None of this is what caught my attention. It's the fact that for the majority of these people they feel like they HAVE to be on Instagram. And that's the kicker.

Feeling like you have to be on any specific platform or doing a particular strategy because why? Because you followed someone or multiple someones who taught it was a necessity for growing your business or you talked yourself (pressured?) into thinking this strategy was a must because it is going to be The Key to success in your business.

Except this begins to happen with ALL platforms and strategies that pretty soon none will be The Key because there are too many to juggle.

The other piece of these discussions of people staying on Instagram is that they don't want to be on there and that caught my attention because 1) they don't want to and 2) they are not having any fun (probably) because they don't want to be there.

Okay full stop:

I know how all of this feels. I know how it is to follow people that tell you XYZ is The Key for your business success. And then it gets confusing b/c you follow more people that add different strategies/platforms into the mix.

Then what potentially happens is now, you have all of these voices telling you different things, sometimes conflicting/clashing opposite views.

This happened to me along my past 5 year journey in the online business/creator/marketing world.

I was getting bogged down.

Eventually, it was not fun. At this point, I realized somethings gotta give. Life is way too darn short not to have fun in any area of my life, including business (maybe especially business).

It's okay to take business seriously b/c making money is a very good thing.

But being all serious was starting to exhaust me almost to burnout.

I needed lightheartedness, joy, ease, simpleness and fun with a capital F. And that's what I've been doing.

No more being on 5,127 platforms and incorporating all of the strategies under the sun. Nope.

I made the crazy decision to go off and do business my way (which is pretty much different in any way) because it felt good and made sense to my soul. (My brain, however is still trying to catch up. 😂).

Right now, I'm all about keeping things simple, easy and fun, otherwise I wouldn't last much longer.

And I know deep down in my bones that I have MORE to give this world and my business is the way to facilitate that.