Lo, the prophecy has been fulfilled. I was awake this morning at my target time and sitting here at my desk at 10. Just like the past couple days, I sat down with a burning idea for a blog post, so I started that before flipping open a new tab to write my status post in order to get one up during the actual morning.
I had a dream last weekend… lots of dreams running together, but in one of them, Jack was having a conversation with my mother. I assume I dreamed this because we’re all going to see each other next week. But in this dream, one of the things that happened was my mother told Jack that I’m a better writer than I am a company. And it seemed extremely profound in the dream, as things often do, but more impressively, it still seemed profound to me when I woke up, and an hour later when I was completely awake.
Back in 2014, I made the decision to try to deliberately build my brand. After years of not having a strong “official web presence”, I registered the domain Blue Author Productions and used a service to build a site. I put that name on my Patreon to signify that it wasn’t just sponsorship of one story but everything I might create and produce.
It seemed like the right move. Everyone talks about the importance of Building Your Brand, something I’ve never really bothered with because my brand was myself. But surely I could do better than that. I needed to. Growing One’s Brand is how one expands, right? And it seemed to work well for a while. I had the site. I could put everything I do up there in one central place and refer people to it.
But… it wasn’t a great site for blogging, and I kept trying to blog there and then gave up and re-started my own WordPress blog, and after that, my focus on the Blue Author Productions website slipped away bit by bit. I had actually forgotten it existed until it renewed itself last spring.
I’m going to wait until I get back from Late Family Christmas to actually do anything about it, but I think I’m going to deactivate the site and redirect the URL to here after making a decent info page on this blog.
Because I am a better writer than I am a company. My brand is myself, but it’s a one-way relationship, not an equivalency. My brand is me, but I am not a brand.
Dream wisdom from my mother.
The State of the Me
Doing okay. Slept disjointedly last night, but evidently soundly enough.