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I am liveblogging the first breakout session of the Blogher conference, "Finding and Following Your Passion." Here's the description from the conference website:
"Many people define blogging as writing with passion. How do you define passion? Do you follow your passion when you write, when you work, when you go through your day? Could you? Is blogging the only way and time that you allow yourself the freedom to follow your passion? Join bloggers who are blogging about and with passion every day."
Speakers for this session are musician and blogger Christine Kane, , Sheila Scarborough, who writes about travel AND drag racing (among other things) and Carmen Staicer, she of the ELFF Diet.
Christine Kane said this is a small session and this may be because the concept of "passion" is a more nebulous topic - the whole bottle of "be, do, and have." We should start with what we are and the rest comes from that.
How did they start a blog just with the simple seed of what they were passionate about and how it grew.
Christine Kane: Why I blog and why I'm here is because of that idea of reaching other people. I've been a songwriter and singer for 15 years. It's about creativity, what it takes to be a performer and hav a career as an artist. I wanted to challenge myself to step out of little "songwriter wanna-be" and realize what it takes to help other people with what she knows.
Carmen Staicer is here because she started a diet and weight loss blog. It's an offshoot of her first blog, about her life with six kids. After her fifth and sixth kids were born, her youngest was diagnosed with a mild form of autism. She was self-medicating with food, depressed. In September, 2005, she made a new year's resolution to lost weight, no matter what. She talked about it so much on her blog that her readers were unhappy. She then started the "ELFF" Diet. It stood for "eat less food fatty". People were offended! She changed it at her husband's suggestion to "Eat less fatty food." Since starting that blogh she has lost 75 pounds. She is training for a half-marathon.
She is passionate about helping other women - encouraging them to exercise: "Yes you CAN take a martial arts class. She wants to tell people that they can do it.
Sheila Scarborough's interests are travel and drag racing and NASCAR. She comes at the blogging thing "from both sides of the brain." Her main blog is hosted on an Australian travel site, "Boots 'n all". She retired from USN about a year and a half ago, became a full-time freelance writer. A friend from the Houston Chronicle said if she was going to be a writer, she needed an online presence. She began a family travel blog. Growing up in and then being in the Navy, she traveled the world and uses that experience.
Christine says there's a slow build to being able to be vulnerable, and finding your voice at the same time.
Next question from Cory, who has blogged since 2003. If you take joy in writing and telling stories, you take joy in building memories. When she writes she hopes there's a response, but at the same time it's for her. It's her voice. Once she had her daughter it clicked for her, because she's changing so fast, it's the first time she can really track. Ultimately it doesn't matter to her if no one ever read it.
Christine says some people have that healthy, great attitude...others want people to read and want to be heard. Cory says that would be great, but in response to the fear of getting started, specifically, try to approach it as a gift to yourself and try not worry about other people.
NotSoSage says her process started slowly, where she didn't know what she was doing, and just started writing about stuff. Because of her life circumstances, she may not be able to do what she wants ten years down the road. She's using her blog as a way of telling people about things that aren't very well known. She has a second blog talking about the way health news is reported in the media - deconstructing it. She started off blogging her life.
Christine talks about getting caught up in stats. What the thing about blogging with passion - the mistaken belief, and same
