Blogging celebrations!

It’s anniversary time! You’re welcome to join me in a delightful pot of tea & a scrumptious treat…

Today we have a delicious gf Hazelnut Torte with layers of strawberry cream & a pot of French Earl Grey tea, as it’s our anniversary week!

Yes, Tea with Jennifer  is one year old! This website was launched 12 months ago…

I have two large slices of cake & poured a cup of tea for us, let’s go & sit in the shade of our beautiful Jacaranda tree.

It’s summer here & it’s a relaxing place to sit as we reflect upon this past year together.

Blogging

Blogging has become such a wonderful blessing in my life, especially in the precious new friendships made here, nurtured in our time of tea & reflection together, thank you dear friends!

Blogging has also highlighted an important truth to me.

No matter what age, stage or season of life we are in, each of us are called to fulfill a purpose & we need to be truly authentic within that purpose!

Let me explain the above statement a little more clearly.

When I started this website my aim was to humbly fulfill a call, to share my professional & personal life experience with others who are facing the challenges that life has a habit of confronting us with.

Many of these challenges, I have already traversed, survived & thrived through.

Because of an amazing relationship I chose many years ago, shared in My story…

Naivety

Although, rather naively, I came into the blogging world believing a blogger wrote an article & then it went viral because I’d heard so many things on the Internet going viral!

As I was researching to set up my website I quickly learnt that the vast majority of websites do not go viral after publishing a first, second, third or subsequent reflection!

A blogger has to work extremely hard to promote their tiny space in this blogsphere.

This is done by joining blog communities in blog link ups, blog hops, blog parties, using social media, reading, reading & commenting.

And being really inventive with categories, tags & how your website is set for servers & search engines!

Therefore, I set about putting in the hard yards.

As I don’t use social media I joined many family friendly blog link ups each week & went about adjusting my Website settings.

So many new friends started visiting & continue to faithfully return as my regular tea & reflection guests, from many different nations & cultures worldwide each week.

Which is such a privilege & delight…

However putting the hard yards in had started extracting its toll.

As 90% of my cyber time was being spent on promotion with only 10% on writing, hence my quiet time for our all important tea & reflection began to suffer.

I was also becoming harried & stressed.

Stress is counterproductive for me, as stress is one of the triggers for Fibromyalgia to go into a flare, which is what happened!

As seen in my reflection When we have nothing left to give…

And I had started getting distracted by WordPress statistical data…ahhhh…which is not me at all!

I do realize they have their place in monitoring your Web site’s impact & place in this blogsphere…

But I am much more interested in you, my dear friend & how you are traveling each week in the midst of life’s challenges, not in blog referral statistics!

What was happening to my authenticity, purpose & call?

A great imbalance had occurred!

I took a long hard look in the blogging mirror at the behavioral patterns this promotional tour had begun to develop…Hmmm…It had become a detour!

We often get detoured in life, when we start focusing on peripheral things that seem so interesting, enticing or even important at the time.

But end up completely distracting us from our true purpose…

So as I do when problematic issues appear or develop in life.

I pause…

Pour myself a cup of tea, sit quietly, reflect, journal & have a good old chat with God…

Then I go into action!

Authentic = original

I started by looking at my original call & purpose for this website…to humbly share my professional & personal life experience to offer hope to others going through similar struggles!

So, I now keep purposefully focused, managing my time at community blogging events much more wisely, which has taken the stress away.

And I view statistics as an interesting tidbit of info but not a focus!

“Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began & finished this race we’re in.

Study how He did it.

Because He never lost sight of where He was headed – that exhilarating finish in & with God…”

Hebrews 12:2 Refer 2

Taking the above action has restored His peace & harmony within my soul, returning me to my true authentic purpose & call.

So dear friend, let me ask you the following question in this brand new season;

Have you become side tracked, traveling on a detour that has you feeling harassed & stressed, focusing on things that you know have started compromising your true authenticity & purpose?

Something to ponder, don’t you think?

Until next time,

Jennifer

 You’re most welcome to join me in The Reading Nook

Or in Prayer

---

© 2019 Jennifer M. Ross, teawithjennifer.blog All Rights Reserved. Photo by Pexels.com

Blog link ups