"I am going to utilise MY knowledge and experience to help bring about the change I want to see in the world."
I feel like this might be my second or even third ‘welcome back’ post which is pretty shameful. In all honestly, I’ve never really been as consistent as I should have been with my blog, given the reason I started it anyway.
Lately I’ve been seeing some fantastic content being produced by fellow nature wizards shall we say, and it’s given me a huge sense of imposter syndrome. I crated patch the world to try and reconnect people with nature and do my bit to aid in its protection. But months down the line, and 0 blog posts later, I haven’t been living up to its purpose at all.
Let’s get my excuses that I’m giving as to why out of the way;
1. Time. I began Patch The World whilst in university. Once I had graduated did a few temp jobs here and there too see me through he struggles of finding a job related to my conservation degree. Now however, I have a wonderful full-time job working as a member of the ranger team for Birmingham’s parks. As you can imagine, this has reduced the amount of flexibility I have with my time. On top of this, October saw the launch of the website for my business Happy Nashers, which I have now been running for just over a year. Again, with greater flexibility running a business is slightly easier, however those of you who too are building your own brands will understand how incredibly time consuming, and at time mentally challenging it can be. With its day by day both, what was once a side income is slowly becoming more of a full-time commitment, which added to any already full-time position within the ranger team has seen my spare time stretched rather thin recently. I am slowly starting to develop myself a stricter routine to ensure that I don’t forget to live and breathe in the process, but sometimes it can be so difficult to switch off!
2. Content. This is one I’ve covered before. Lord knows why it’s taken me so long to realise that as a city dweller, I am not able to continually capture the marvels of nature without continually going out and looking for it. As established above, time isn’t exactly something I’m flush in at the moment, so travelling to known sighting locations for specific wildlife isn’t always achievable. Nor is then waiting to capture such a marvel (which can sometimes take hours). I convinced myself that that was the only content worth sharing or that anyone would be interested in seeing, and not capturing it meant no blog post to correlate with it either. As much as I’d love to have amazing content that documented conservation from the plains of Africa or the jungles of Costa Rica, right now that just isn’t an option. I live in a city, constrained by time and unfortunately a lack of fruitfully dispersed local wildlife, but that’s okay! I’m not sure why it’s taken me so bloody long to figure that out. In comparing myself to others content, I failed to share information about what I do have accessible to me and what still plays its part in the bigger picture of saving our planet.
So, what’s the conclusion. Well for starters, I’m taking a whole lot of pressure off myself and being far more relaxed about the posts I decide to write up. You wouldn’t believe how many I let slide simply because I don’t feel they fit the mould. Not anymore. There are lots of wonderful wildlife warriors out there, some with an incredible niche fountain of knowledge, others who travel the world to capture incredible images to show us how much value the natural world holds. But for now, Patch The World is going to be on a path to finding itself through trialling a whole range of topics. From living sustainably, to informative nature posts, to discussing careers in conservation. I am going to utilise MY knowledge and experience to help bring about the change I want to see in the world. That’s surely the best way to do it right? We are valuable because our differences bring variety to the table. In doing so we create an amazing buffet of knowledge to be devoured. Its time I contributed to the party! See you at the table!
Meg x
