Setting boundaries are very important to live a healthy life. For me, setting boundaries is a new concept that I’ve been putting into practice this past year – all thanks to therapy. Because it’s a newer practice for me, it’s been a learning process implementing and sticking to it. When it comes to the blog, I feel like I’ve not been living up to my best standards because I haven’t set clear boundaries about what I want to keep private or what to talk about. Which has caused me to flake and not live up to my potential.
HOW DID WE GET HERE
I figure that I start this new year laying out the ground rules, mostly for myself, to refer back to whenever I’m deciding whether a topic or situation is something I feel comfortable with sharing. As I’ve shared previously, I’m an introvert and a very private person. Only close friends and family really know the behind-the-scenes of what’s going on because they know me intimately and I trust and value their opinions about me. With the blog being such a public platform, at times, it’s difficult to write posts because I’m teetering where or not I should share something that I’m not comfortable with just for the views. But I also realize that because of me wanting to keep things so close to the vest, my actions and posts may come off as disingenuous.
I must admit that social media can trick you into thinking that you have to share every waking moment of your life. And like I said, that’s not true to my nature which is why I sometimes feel like I’m faking it which you can obviously tell since I’m not a good faker. So here are the two important boundaries that I’ve set for the blog.
01. NOTHING TOO PERSONAL
Sharing personal information in an appropriate way without over or under sharing is my goal here. That means I will only share what I’m comfortable with and just enough details without oversharing. This will allow me to be vulnerable in this space that I’ve created while also setting boundaries about oversharing. I feel like I already do this now with my content but I feel like it needs to be said formally on the blog.
02. SAYING NO TO OPPORTUNITIES THAT DON’T ALIGN WITH MY BRAND
I must admit that I’ve been so excited when brands reach out to me that sometimes I accept campaigns that don’t always align with this brand that I’ve created. It’s important for me that I’m not saying yes to every opportunity for a couple reasons:
- I don’t want to align myself with brands I don’t really believe in. Because I’ve been so thirsty for attention from brands, I’ve say yes to a few collabs that I wasn’t sure of initially and after partnering I knew it was not the best descision for me. But I went through with it anyways. I’m going to continue to trust my gut with all new opportunities and partner with brands that I believe in.
- Not every brand is a good fit. It very clear, like everything else in this counrty, there’s inequentities in the content creation space. One of which is underpaying Black and Brown content creators or only exploiting them to bring crediability to their brand. I will not be accepting work from brands that don’t have a good track record with Black and Brown creators or don’t feature any creators of color on any of their platforms.
The reason I wanted to break down those items is to be able to reference them when brands reach out to me. If they fall into either of those categories, it’s an immediate no for me. So, I’m looking forward to all the opportunities that I will have this year to work with some amazing brands.
HOW ARE YOU ESTABLISHING BOUNDARIES THIS YEAR?
