3 Life lessons I learned while blogging

About a decade ago the internet was getting accustomed with blogs. They were plain online journals and many of them belonged to teenagers. Nowadays, those teens are all grown up and many of them are still in the business of blogging. I am one of the people who had a blog for more than 10 years and during this time I learned a lot about myself. Maintaining a blog is more than just writing a couple of things and posting them online. You meet amazing people, you get to do great things and share them with your followers. And you also learn a lot of life lessons. Never underestimate yourself One of the most important lessons I learned while I had a blog was to never underestimate myself. There were two situations which taught me a lot about my own value as a person and as a blogger. When my first blog started to gain a nice number of followers I was contacted by a cosmetics brand. They were asking me to write an article about their latest product. They were willing to post a link to my article on their social media account. After I rejoiced at the thought of being contacted by a rather large company, I wondered why should I write a free article about a product I never used. So, I thanked them for the offer, but declined. Their reply was stunning: “Who do you think you are to refuse us?” rnOh! Well, that was clearly unprofessional from them. And it made me think of who am I. I was a girl whose small blog clearly appealed to their target audience and they needed me for reaching out to that audience. The second time I realized my personal value was when I reached out to another blogger for a guest post opportunity. Her blog was three times bigger than mine, but she had no problem accepting my offer (Thanks a ton, Chris!). rnI realized I started my blog to share my experiences, to share who I am. It was never about compromising or getting free stuff. It was always about writing, about my passions, about not being forced to do something I don't like. Holding on to your true self and refusing to compromise is what makes you strong and defines you as a person. Never underestimate your own value, as this is the only way to keep your head up and stay true to yourself. It's OK to make mistakes I am a perfectionist, so I am horrified about making mistakes. When you are writing a long, passionate article you are prone to making grammar mistakes, which is a nightmare for me. When someone pointed out that I made a mistake in an article I freaked out. And then, there are other types of mistakes, like sending a wrong email or forgetting to send it altogether. rnIt took me a long time to learn that it is OK to make mistakes. When I eventually accepted this, I started to be more aware of the mistakes I made in my own life. Gradually, I evolved from accepting my blogging mistakes to accepting my everyday life mistakes. From the moment I did this, I noticed that I was able to learn from my mistakes and avoid them in the future. In the last five years I developed myself a lot after accepting my mistakes and focusing on forgiveness. At the end of the day, we are humans and we do make mistakes, no matter how hard we try to avoid it. What we learn from them is the important thing in life. Make things happen When I had my first blog I always waited to do things, pushing them in the future, when I will have a better platform or a better camera and so on. Until one day, when I realized that moment is never going to come if I kept waiting for the perfect moment. There is no such thing as the perfect moment. You are the one who creates the moment by doing things, by making your dreams happen.rnDon't wait for the perfect job to come, in order to travel. Don't wait for the perfect man in order to enjoy your life. Just start doing things, start living the way you want.rnAfter more than a decade of blogging I felt it was the time to move on from it. And I just did. I have no regrets, because I am now involved in new interesting projects, which enable me to put to good use all the things I've learned while blogging.