Throughout June I was absent from Instagram and YouTube and this, along with reading Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, has been the inspiration behind this month's essay. I've had a number of realisations during the lockdown and my time away from social media - with the main one being my lack of project completion. So I thought I'd explore that in this month's essay, as well as detailing how I'm going to go about finishing things in the future.

Influenced by my non-fiction book proposal that I'm working on, I decided to look at blogging and how, without being too dramatic, it changed my life. Yet I was so scared about taking that first step and creating my first ever blog post.

Fear has stopped me doing many things in my writing career but sometimes I managed to overcome it and push myself. And I'm so glad I did.

This essay is all about my fear of success. It builds upon last month's essay where I explored my issue with earning money from my creativity. It's been so insightful and I've gained a lot from exploring these two themes.

This essay is a topic I've been thinking about for some time. I learned a lot about myself writing this one - and saw so many repeating patterns in my behaviour.

As I do every time I write an essay I asked my husband to edit it for me. "This," he said, throwing his pen down, "needs to go up in a frame on your office wall. It's basically you writing a manifesto to yourself and you need to read it every single day." He stood up. "And at the end you need to write, 'cue Rocky music!'"

I’ve been having trouble creating essays for Patreon. So I asked myself why was Patreon such a struggle when I could speak to camera and share my writing process on Instagram and YouTube? And I think the answer is money related. All this time I didn't think I had a problem with charging people for my work but, it turns out, I do. I feel bad for charging for my words. I feel as though the reader is doing me a favour. It's patently obvious I don't value my worth.

Just when I think I've got a handle on this whole creativity, confidence and digital media thing something else pops up to throw me off track.