A Blog is Born
Puzzling over my social media feed
On my 50th birthday, my social media feed exploded. Not with congratulations or hilarious memes, but with ads for knee replacements, Botox, senior dating and golden years cruises.
Overnight, it seemed, I had shifted demograph, from prosecco-sipping, girl-about-town, to cocoa-drinking, wrinkly old crone. I was horrified.
Before 50
After 50
Like many women of that ‘certain age’, I was determined that my life wasn’t about to become a gradual slide into decrepitude, like the advertisers seemed to be suggesting. In fact, the future seemed rosier than ever, and I was happy to embrace the strands of silver in my hair. Or I would have done, if my hair was actually turning grey, but blonde hair like mine tends to darken with age, and my crowning glory was rapidly turning mousey brown.
But I digress. I knew it was time to fight back against the stereotypes, and live the life that I wanted. Yes, even if it included mini-skirts (it didn’t) or an action sport like airsoft (it did). And so I designed a Grand Plan to launch a new blog, demonstrating that life really does begin at 40 … or 50 … but totally failed to launch it. The plan gathered dust in a drawer.
The Grand Plan
Study, study, study. But forget to actually write.
The following year, I was laid up with a back injury, and revisited my notes. What a super idea, I thought, as I doodled in my notebook and expanded the Grand Plan to include e-books, courses, mentoring, magazine articles and a full social media and marketing plan. Yes, I said to myself, the time is right and I’ll actually launch the blog.
However, with the clunky working title of ‘Delightfully Ageless’ - which I realised later was a theme rather than a title - I fretted over what domain name to choose and how to build a brand for something so vague. Imposter syndrome also kicked in, and I worried that the diploma in online marketing and digital strategy that I had been awarded two years previously was probably, by definition, already two years out of date.
Then, when I returned to my demanding day job, the Grand Plan was returned to the drawer, where it marinated for a further three years.
Imposter Syndrome
Learn HTML, CSS, Javascript. That’ll do it.
Nope.
My imposter syndrome didn’t help. If you’re going to write a blog, it argued, it’s not enough that you have a perfectly good personal website on WordPress and that you’ve been building sites since Dreamweaver began, and you know all about e-mail marketing, and content management systems.
No, you need to understand advanced HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Once you’ve done that, you’re on your way! Two semesters in college later, and I had a distinction in front end web development too. But I held back from launching the blog, because I didn’t know anything about entrepreneurship. The Grand Plan remained in the drawer.
You can see where this is going, can’t you?
It wasn’t until 2020 arrived, with its astonishing avalanche of obstacles, that I finally decided to dust off the Grand Plan. It was now curling around the edges, and the pages were yellowing, but something inside me had changed. Or had it? Sadly, not. That wretched imposter was still holding me back.
Wretched imposter syndrome again
The imposter said that only thing to do was to get a qualification in entrepreneurship. Being an over-achiever, it had to be in the most prestigious university in the country: Trinity College Dublin. Then, and only then, the imposter reasoned, you might just know enough.
While I was studying in Trinity, I became unemployed, and found myself with a LOT of time to focus on the Grand Plan. The blog title evolved from ‘Delightfully Ageless’ to ‘Rosy & Silver’ and then finally to simply ‘Trish Groves’, and I finally felt confident enough to register the domain name, and build a website. I wanted the website to look good, and work perfectly, without all that messing about with code and plugins, so I chose Squarespace. Partly because some of my favourite YouTubers like Jenny Mustard recommended it, but also because Squarespace offered a generous student discount. Perfect!
And the list goes on…
The result of these years of procrastination and wrestling with imposter syndrome is the blog you are reading today. I realised along the way that the key to getting started is just, well, to get started.
This blog may not be perfect, but it IS a start. Thank you for joining me on this journey!
