The idea of blogging first sparkled in me in 2016 when I moved to Germany. I knew that my time in Germany would be a cherished chapter in my life – exploring places and life. I wanted to document all my travels and I thought I’d nail a travel blog! I planned that once I have a few posts ready I would create my travel blog. When I actually started traveling, I found it hard trying to enjoy every moment while juggling notes, recordings, and photos. The whole blogging plan came and went until the idea eventually faded away. Turns out, loving travel didn’t necessarily mean loving travel blogging. I found way more joy in soaking up every bit of each place I visited, relishing the moments, and vibing with the people I was with.

In 2021, I moved to Canada in the middle of the COVID chaos – I didn’t know anyone here and had no chance of meeting people with all the COVID restrictions. That’s when the blogging idea came up again, this time I wanted to blog on life in Canada. Once again, I planned to write up some content before creating the blog. But during this period, life got a bit tough and I felt uninspired and believed I had nothing meaningful to share.

Fast forward to mid 2023, I found myself in a very frustrating job search phase. I was feeling super low and my confidence in everything was crashing. I decided to roll with things I’ve always wanted to do, and blogging creeped back again. I had to select a niche topic for the blog. I recalled my volunteer work mentoring students since 2018, in a group and individual setting, helping them navigate their personal and professional growth. Throughout my interactions with various students, they had a lot of questions regarding my choices, failures, challenges, mindset, transitions, consistency and so on. I consistently shared stories from my life to address their questions which they found very relatable. It dawned on me that this could be the ideal niche for my blog.

This time I started by figuring out how to create a webpage, getting my own domain and getting up my blog page set. The internal doubts grew louder – I am not great at articulating well, I might not stay consistent, and wondering who would read blogs nowadays with thousands already out there and so on. However, I talked myself through it – I will probably get better at articulation through the process, its okay if I am not consistent or even discontinued because it would at least tick that box of giving a try, I will just scribble about the stories I would usually tell my mentees (hence the name Shilpa Scribbles) and I rationalized that even if no one read my blog, I had nothing to lose, and it was worth investing my time in something more fulfilling. Before all this self-motivation faded, I started right away!!!

So, after years of inner debates, here it is—Shilpa Scribbles. While I have no idea how and where this journey will lead, I am betting someday I will look back on this post with a smile, and wonder why I over complicated the process of starting a blog.

So, what is it that you are overthinking & overcomplicating in your life right now?