Authentic Ramblings and Origin Stories
Authenticity is hard. Those are the first words I wrote on this blog.
The Simple Chicken’s origin story begins with me in a painkiller induced haze after having my tubes tied. I was shook at the thought of no longer being able to have another baby, even though we had decided it was what was safest for my body and best for our family. I needed something, a project. So I built the website and named it The Simple Chicken. One reason for the name was that we were about half a year into our little homesteading experiment that was supposed to be so simple and was decidedly not. The other was because I was terrified. I joked to my husband that I was going to build this thing all doped up and full of false confidence and then be too chicken to ever post anything on it.
And I was. For months.
I used the excuse that it wasn’t all set up. That it needed more work. That there were bugs to fix before the launch. The truth was that it was simply too scary to put words out there.
“Perfectionism is the tool of the oppressor,” and authenticity is hard, because authenticity is imperfection and everything we are taught to avoid. I wanted to be authentic right out of the gate, but the blog started off as more of a puff piece with funny stories about our chickens and my foibles and flaws on the homesteading front. And then I would retreat even further into what I thought a blogger was supposed to do and attempt to write about sustainability and give tips and tricks and get so mindlessly bored that I would quit after about 3 entries.
When you try to get into blogging, and when you look at building an audience and monetizing, you are told, repeatedly, that you must have a niche, a hook, something sellable. Yeah…I don’t fit that bill. Authenticity isn’t exactly a niche market.
I think I’m ok with not having a niche. It sure beats being lulled to sleep by the insistent blink of an unmoving cursor as you try to contort yourself into some box that will make you more palatable for the so-called average reader.
After a week of fighting with the blog, I’ve made it so my early subscribers can actually receive posts in their email again. That is probably as far as I will ever get since I’m not willing to share my home address or pay 20 dollars a month to reach a wider audience who probably won’t find me anyway since I’m not good at being categorized.
I’ve also realized that if I keep it small, I’m more likely to keep it real. A wonderful writer friend described my more recent posts as raw, and begged me not to polish them. Raw is a pretty perfect description for how I feel as of late. It’s been a couple of months of peeling off armor that had done more chafing than protecting and I feel extremely raw and more than a little exposed. Vulnerability is still kind of my kryptonite, but I’m getting better at it. And writing from a place of vulnerability is anything but boring.
Sometimes it feels like I should rename the blog, but I think it may still be kind of perfect. Because here’s the thing about chickens: they are not freakin’ simple. When you coset them they will try to find a million ways to die, but then they will turn around and survive multiple fox attacks, take on roosters twice their size, and find their way back from all sorts of calamities. Chickens are freaking weird, and unpredictable, and have a total inability to be anything but authentic.
They’re also pretty funny, so don’t worry, you’ll still get some puff pieces.