It’s the end of January. We’ve survived the first month of the year. I think we all deserve a round of applause. No matter how the month has gone. The little wins count just as much as the big ones. Maybe even a little more. I’ve spent most of this month talking about resolutions and making the most of this year. For me, I feel like I’ve stayed on top of my goals. At least more than I usually do. I can’t say how long it will last. But to wrap up this month, I’m doing a little soul searching. Or is it more of reflecting? Maybe a combination of both? I don’t know. I’ll let you be the judge.
Today, we’re figuring out what my niche is. Do I have one? Am I worthy of being included in one? Are they important? We’ll be answering all of those questions and probably more right here.
To start, what is a niche? I’ll be honest most words have multiple meanings, so I like to make sure I’m clear on what I’m discussing. We’ll focus on the adjective.
Niche: denoting products, services, or interests that appeal to a small, specialized section of the population
At least that’s how Google defines it. In social terms, it reminds me of cliques. Cliques have never been my thing. I’ve just never felt like I’ve belonged. I’m a proud outcast. Don’t get me wrong! There is nothing wrong with being part of a clique. Just like there is nothing wrong with not being part of one. It’s all about personal preference and what makes you comfortable. I’m not advocating one way or the other. I’m just trying to get to the bottom of niches.
When I started blogging and podcasting, I had a vague idea of where I wanted to go. I know what I love. I know what fills my heart with happiness. Creating a lifestyle blog felt like the right fit. I could incorporate everything I love. I could also mix up my content. Creating content can lose some appeal when it starts to feel stale. My biggest fear with picking a “niche” was feeling cornered. It almost feels like signing a contract or being married. It’s like once I start doing this thing, there’s no doing anything else. I feel a little silly writing that because I control my content. I have a say in what I chose to do. However, I know that it’s smarter to build up in one niche before branching out into others. When I was thinking about my podcast, I had two options in mind. Keep the lifestyle trend going or venture into the crime community. I’ve said it before I’ll leave the crime content to the professionals. So, I made my way into the lifestyle community.
Am I part of the lifestyle realm?
So, when you create a podcast, you have to decide on a genre. You’ll find my podcast under self-improvement. Do I think I’m a self-improvement podcast? No, but I do hope that I’m helping. I hope that by being authentic, I can help or at the very least be relatable. I also hope that the topics I choose resemble the genre. It’s hard to pick a genre when you attempt to encompass a variety of things. I don’t recall there being a “talk about everything” option. But if there was, I feel like I’d do much better there.
Do I belong here?
We’re always honest here. I can honestly say I don’t feel like I belong. Then again, I’ve never felt like I belonged anywhere. The growing confidence in me decided to let me have this one. I ventured into this realm because I’m passionate about it. I enjoy every aspect of it! It’s great to feel like you belong. But that feeling isn’t everything. Sometimes it’s more important to do the things that you enjoy.
Is my content worthy?
I don’t know if I can answer this. What qualifies content as worthy? If we’re counting worthiness by the number of listeners, I think any listeners at all make me feel worthy. It means the absolute world to me to see people listening to my podcast. It’s the same when I see people reading my blog. The numbers don’t matter to me. What matters to me is that people enjoy my content. If we’re counting worthiness by the quality or context of my content, that’s a so-so for me. I put my heart and soul into my work, but there is always room for improvement. If we’re counting worthiness by the enjoyment of producing the content, I feel beyond worthy. I live for creating my content. It’s my favorite thing.
At the beginning of this post, I mention how it’s the end of January. That was true when I wrote the post. It’s also true in regards to when this was supposed to go up. However, I suffered some technical difficulties. If you listened to the podcast that goes with this post, you’ve heard the story. My laptop crashed, which momentarily lost all of my audio files. After a small break down and a few tears, I was able to recover the files. Before I was able to recover the files, I started questioning my worthiness. I wasn’t sure if I should take the lost files as a sign. Should I be podcasting? Do I deserve to be doing it? I do all of this work on my own. There are going to be times when things happen outside of my control. Those moments don’t get to determine my worthiness. I won’t let them. Last week felt like a failure missing my podcast day, but things happen. I’m going to brush it off and keep going.
I wanted to share that in case anyone needed to hear it. Sometimes the world hands us lemons. So, we make lemonade.