Life as Marcella

Life update and why I switched platforms

Hello, and welcome to my new site, Life as Marcella. If you’re new here, thank you for joining me, I’m happy to have you as part of this little community. But if you were a past reader of cellinasite: Story of My Life or Lovely Little Chapters, you might be wondering why I created (yet another) blog and website. Well, here are the answers. Story of My Life was created in high school and serves as an almost-relic, a time capsule if you will, to the past. It commemorates things I deemed worthy of sharing through high school and parts of college. It’s messy, and quite honestly, the young woman who wrote those entries was lost. She didn’t know what she wanted or who she was. Or, she was too afraid to admit it.

Ten years later, do I really know the answer to those queries? Not really, but I feel many steps closer.

Lovely Little Chapters was an experiment I did for myself during a very dark period of my life: while I was struggling with Postpartum Depression. I started researching ways that I could make money online to distract me from the haze of motherhood. Blogging was almost always suggested. I used a course, followed the steps, only to find out (at the very end of course) that the way for most bloggers to make money is through affiliate marketing. Okay, I wasn’t going to do that; especially with my whole five followers.

But then, an idea sparked. I could use blogging as an outlet for my social media content creation. Only problem? The character I created online wasn’t genuine. I wasn’t being honest or myself. I had to hide aspects of my life, and I didn’t like it. So then I stopped content creation, and decided to focus solely on writing my book.

“Great!” my laptop cheered. “It has been two years in the making!” I focused my attention on writing my story, and for the first time since my oldest was born, I felt like I was doing something I was meant to do.

By the time I thought about blogging again, or starting a new content creation space, I got… nervous. I didn’t know where to start. The blog space I had created for Lovely Little Chapters didn’t feel like me. I didn’t know what to do… so I stopped. I thought about blogging, or writing an update, but it never went further than a fickle thought.

How ironic that my last post on Lovely Little Chapters was recommitting to restarting—never truly giving up?

When I decided that I would try again with Lovely Little Chapters, content, and marketing my book… I found out I was pregnant. Life really hits ya sometimes. At first, I thought it would be easy. I was one of the chosen ones that didn’t hate pregnancy. I never got sick with my first two. Yes, I was tired, but I could nap when my baby napped.

Well, did this pregnancy knock me on my butt. I’m over halfway, and still get nausea in the evenings. I’m not allowed to lift heavy. No runs. Napping? Who’s that? Not with two young kids, and dreams to chase.

And when it came time for me to announce my pregnancy, and restart my Lovely Little Chapters blog, my subscription ended. I let it expire because the hosting platform I was bamboozled into using was going to charge me a whopping $250. That was far too much for something I barely committed to. Besides, despite how proud I was to have built that website myself, it was absolute trash. I was not made to be a web developer. Thank goodness for AI.

Now, I understand what my goals are–at least, more so than when I started Story of My life or Lovely Little Chapters. I’m not just writing to write. I’m not writing for affiliate links. I’m writing because I want to be an author. This is my space to voice my thoughts that are safe to leave my journal. It’s a place to find a community of readers and like-minded people. It’s a place for updates on my drafts and manuscripts. It’s a place where I can be me. Not a fake personality on social media, but me and my life as I become the main character in my own story.

Thanks for reading,

Marcella