Re-Connecting with the Joy of Creating

Hello, you and you and you. Hello, hello!

It’s been so long now; I feel like this world has changed.

I gutted out my blog a while ago, hoping to give it a fresh look. Don’t worry, the old posts are not deleted and will slowly make their way back, with the look and feel of this place being refreshed. Think of it as a virtual renovation project!

You know, I have been (re)tapping into content creation lately, on Instagram (nonetheless) and Xiao Hong Shu. It’s a whole different ball game now, do you know? Remember we used to share pictures and words in this space, but now what people consume are voices, moving frames, fancy filters, theatrical transitions, and all these whirlwinds of content that I haven’t quite caught up with. To top it off, I threw myself a mega-challenge of doing everything in Chinese! So you can imagine the state of my mental desk lately, with coffee stains, scribbled notes, and blackened jars of scented candles, results of some late nights..

Imagine this: You take a sabbatical from work, then you come back to new faces, new equipment, and new vibes in the office. #OOTD is now called fit-check. Your old trusty team has now familiarised themselves with the new manager, your office still stays the same, but everything around it has changed. The person next door is younger, has more energy and funnier than you, and you now find yourself being slotted into training every other day.

That is how I feel coming back.

Frustrated? Slightly.

Willing to relearn and take on a challenge? Absolutely.

Intimidated? #NGL, very much so!

Right then, I gave myself three months on XHS and managed to garner about 150 followers from scratch. Which I thought wasn’t bad. I mean, if I set up a stage in my neighbourhood, minus my unquestioning parents, unwilling siblings, a shrinking pool of close friends, and an ultra-supportive boyfriend, I’d still have about, say, 100+ keen listeners? That’s a lot to be grateful for!

These days, things we see online are blown out of proportion. So I try to have a healthy relationship with the attention (sorry I mean “engagement”) I’m getting, be it a lot or very little, whenever I publish something. It may be the over-thinking Michelle, but I would remind myself every now and then to keep my head down and focus on creating instead, and not be too bothered by the numbers. Because after all, it takes time to hone a creative skill, you can’t be discouraged by external factors when you really want to excel at something. So focusing too much on the audience’s engagement is in a way a misdirected energy.

Anyway, just a short one here today because I want to document this feeling and this nervousness and uncertainty as I creep back into “content creating”.

And I want you to be the first one to hear this. I mean, we did have a pretty close relationship – you were with me since I was a student, and now I’m turning 32 this year.

Seriously, where has the time gone?