October marked 2 years of the Girlymicrobiologist blog, and this post will be the 135th published. I started writing this post as I prepared to go and give my first ever conference speech linked to a blog post rather than a scientific publication (thanks IPS). This has gotten me thinking about how much writing this blog has changed both me and my life. It’s a weird thing to say, I know, but it has become so embedded in who I am and is now such a mainstay in my weekly life that I think I would really struggle to stop. That said, I still struggle sometimes with both the kind comments I receive and when people refer to me as a writer, as I’m still learning so much, and still feel so new to this. To be honest, I’m not sure I’ve earned that kindness. Anyway, I thought I would take this moment to share some of what I’ve learned about both myself and the blog 2 years on, including the things that have surprised me.

A question of identity

Identity is such a weird thing. For instance, it took me years to be able to say I was a scientist when people asked me what I did for a living. I was surrounded by these amazing people doing this amazing job and I didn’t really feel I stacked up enough to count myself as one of them. I kind of feel the same way about calling myself a writer, I’m someone who writes, but at what point do you qualify as something other than that?

I asked the wonderful Nicola Baldwin (playwright) who obviously writes for a living what her thoughts were on what makes someone a writer and she said:

A writer is someone for whom writing has become their primary mode of thought

Nicola Baldwin

This was so interesting to me as writing the blog has definitely changed me and the way I think. I think one of the reasons I feel a bit guilty when people say they like it is because it is actually a somewhat selfish endeavour, in that the writing of it benefits me. I don’t know about anyone else, but life is so busy that I often don’t prioritise reflective time to understand why I feel the way I do, why I handle scenarios the way I do or how I could do it better? Although I didn’t realise it when I started, the blog has allowed me to do all of these things. It gives me permission to spend an hour on a Friday evening writing about something that sparked a thought during the week. Without even realising it, that time has become a time where I reflect, just in real time via words on a page. It’s enabled me to learn so much more about myself, my values, and beliefs that it has very literally changed the way I think and see the world. The blog was started with the aim of helping others, but I never realised how much it would also help me.

I don’t think I would have understood Nicolas’ comment a year ago but now I completely get it. Writing has become part of who I am and how I think and a tool for processing how I feel about the world.

My grammar still sucks

I don’t write well. I don’t know how to use a comma, and my grammar is apparently horrendous. I thought all of these things would stop me. What the last 2 years have in fact shown me, is that if you write from the heart, if you put your soul out there on a plate for consumption, people will be kinder than you could have believed possible. No one has come back and attacked the message because they didn’t like the way it was delivered. The flaws in that delivery have been overlooked as long as the message was true.

This in itself has taught me a lot. I think if you can find the courage to stand up and be yourself, no matter what the medium, people respond to that. You may not always succeed, you may not always do it well, but people respond to your intent. Writing this blog has really helped me realise that, and it has therefore enabled me to become braver. I feel stronger in sharing the hard stuff, in sharing the truth as I see it and in trying to give a voice to others when I can. Before this experience I would have been held back by trying to make the communication in itself as perfect as I could. Now I realise the power is in what you are trying to communicate, not the perfection of how you achieve it. I could do less writing and take myself off to spend time perfecting my underlying knowledge, but for right now my passion lies in the communication and not in the tool. So, you may have to put up with my poor grammar for a while yet, after all I’m a work in progress.

Vulnerability is where it’s at

You have all given me the courage to face things, write about things, and confront things that I never knew I would be able to. At a conference recently, someone gave me a hug and thanked me for writing this blog and talking about the things we talk about. In reality, though, the thanks should definitely be from me to you. As I’ve said, the kind words and support from everyone who reads this, and the patience with which you have stuck with it, have given me the courage to share who I really am, warts and all. I hope that I can, and do, use this blog to share the failures as well as the successes, as there is learning in both.

When I started writing this blog, I genuinely thought I would pick up a few readers from family. Now, with over 1000 readers a month, I realise that it isn’t about how important or qualified you are. It’s about how much of you you’re willing to share. When I started, I thought that getting people to read a blog would be linked with how professional I was perceived to be, how worthy, how senior. Now I realise it’s about how much of a risk you are prepared to take in bringing your whole self to the table and knowing that you have no way to control over how that will be received or the response you will get.

We too often let ourselves get in our own why by asking ‘why’ we should be the ones to do something, when in fact the question we should really be asking is ‘why not’. If we wait for someone else to give us permission, if we make ourselves small in order to not be noticed in the hope that we will fit in, in those moments, more than any others, we need to find our courage to stand up and be seen.

Done is better than good

Sometimes, when I meet people, they comment on how I get things done. This is always slightly amusing to me as I have to admit to being, probably, one of the laziest people I know. If I could recline on a chaise lounge all day with a book and a cup of tea, I would be in heaven. As I know this about myself, I suspect that I therefore push myself quite hard to deliver. If I don’t get blog posts out on time, it eats at me, much to Mr Girlymicro’s irritation. He believes that, as this something done for pleasure, it shouldn’t need to be on a schedule. I know however that like exercise, if I don’t do it for a while it becomes easier to just ‘skip a week or two’. Plus, as I’ve said earlier, it’s become such a key part of who I am I would struggle without it.

I’ve also talked earlier about letting go of perfection, and therefore knowing that getting something out that has meaning is better than trying for something really polished. One of the other things that I’ve learnt is to have a goal and just keep at it. I’ve posted before about never being the smartest or best person in the room, what I do have is tenacity. I know that for me to achieve something, to get somewhere, it requires me to just keep at it. This blog is no different. Everything I post I learn something, be that about me or how I’d like the post to be. If you look back to the posts from 2020 they are different to the ones in 2022, although they have the same core identity. Some of that is me changing and growing as a person, and some of that is me developing a better idea of how I want this blog to be. These are things I have only learnt by doing, they are not things I could have perfected before I’d started. Sometimes you can’t jump in fully developed, there are some things you just have to learn as you go. Frankly, that’s part of the joy of it, you are an explorer in your own mind, and you develop as you go.

What is it that I have to say?

It took me a loooooooong time to get from my first ever blog post to here, after all there was a 5 year gap between posts one and two. When I started out I felt like I needed to be like other blogs written by other people. There are so many great blogs out there that summarise research or talk science/leadership, mostly they have 101 references, and are aimed at specialists. I discovered pretty early on, after writing post number one, that that wasn’t the blog I wanted to write. It then took me quite a while to decide on not what I wanted to write about, but what I wanted to say. I think in the end, this blog is about everyday challenges and everyday scenarios. It’s about the things that I think most of us face in one way or another, and it’s about the good, the bad and the ugly. At the end of the day, I hope those of you reading it feel just a little less alone in the challenges we face and that as a community we become better able to have conversations about these challenges, as well as celebrating our successes.

In the last 2 years of regularly posting I’ve learnt a lot, but one of the main things I’ve decided is that I’m happy just ignoring the rules. I no longer write 900 words with three pictures, which is what all the guides said I should when I started. As this blog has grown I’ve developed the confidence to just write what I want to say, no matter how long or how short. I’ve decided that the message and our conversation is what matters, not limitations placed on the structure by convention. Sometimes things will be 500 words, sometimes they will be 2000, it will be what it will be.

The other thing I’ve realised is that I never know which posts will take off and have thousands of reads and which ones will just be a few dozen. In some ways, every time I post is like Christmas, the outcome is always a surprise. There are ones (like 50 shades of Grey) that took off and got 1000s of reads when I thought it would appeal to a very small and specific group. These surprises are a real treat for me as I suddenly discover that thoughts that are whirling in my head are actually not just in my brain alone. Suddenly, you realise a challenge or problem you’re working through, thinking it was just you, is something that lots of people are getting to grips with. Suddenly, I’m much less alone.

Ideas are not the problem

When I first conceived of writing a blog I was worried about whether I would have enough things to write about. I have to tell the opposite is true. I started with 40 seeds of ideas written on a piece of paper and hoped that would see me through. These days I usually have somewhere between 120 and 190 posts in draft. Some are just titles, some are mostly written and for some reason haven’t quite gotten finished. Often the reason for that is that I write what speaks to me when I sit down to write. I can plan for something to be the topic that week and then something happens, I have a conversation or am part of an event, and suddenly different words than expected pour out onto the page.

One of the other things I’ve learnt is that sometimes I have to step away from a thought for a bit to let it percolate a bit. I will have ideas or even start to write something, and it will just feel like hard work. I’ve discovered that when I’m writing the right thing, the right thing for me at the right time, words will flow and I’ll sit and write 1000 words without a pause. I should have realised this sooner as a similar thing happens to me when I try to write grants and papers when I haven’t finished my thinking. I think the difference with the blog is that sometimes I also have to be ready to put something out there. I can also only write something if it’s true. So, I can have planned to write something really uplifting but if I’ve had a really bad week or faced something tricky that is what I write about instead, as it’s the thing I need to process that before moving onto other things. I always want to be honest in what I write, and so I’m never going to sit and sell things as sunshine and roses when it doesn’t actually feel that way in the moment. Feel for those poor drafts who’ve languished unfinished for over a year. Their time will come.

As I sit here on a Friday night 2 years on I still don’t know if I’m a writer, but I do know that writing this blog has become part of me. This blog wouldn’t exist without you though, without you being prepared to sit and read my rambling on a Friday night, without you being prepared to share some of you valuable time with me and my ever so weird brain. I am more grateful than I can express for that and the generosity you have all shown me on this journey. Few things have brought me so much joy in recent years than the interactions that I would never have had if it wasn’t for this blog, and it has given me opportunities I would never have imagined. Every interaction has taught me so much about me and connecting with you all has meant so very much, you all have my thanks. When we meet face to face I definitely owe you all a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

All opinions on this blog are my own.