Making a Change for Self-Care: Why I Walked Away from Content Writing

Last week, I wrote a post called How My Wellness Journey Is Helping Me to Be a Better Writer. In it, I said that one of the things I have done as a part of my wellness journey was to give up the content writing side of my business. It’s odd to think of this as an act of self-care, I know. But my personal wellness journey is as much about the mental and emotional aspects of my health as much as the physical.

I have been a content writer for over a decade. I’ve worked in different industries, with different people, with different companies, and had the opportunity to write about lots of different things. From Software-As-A-Service and network technology to men’s health and fitness, from marketing for entrepreneurs to the delights of being a rural alpaca farmer, there aren’t too many topics I haven’t covered. I’m good at it, too; I don’t mind saying. And there are many aspects of the process that I enjoy. Lately, however, I’ve felt like so much of my time and mental energy has been directed towards writing content for other people. Too much, in fact. This has come at the expense of writing my own content—the most important to me of which is my novels.

As you can imagine, making this decision and acting on it was a scary step. For one, I have regular clients that I write for, and those relationships took years to build. For another, content writing has been a steady and reliable source of income. Giving up those hard-won relationships and the surety of the resulting income was not something I took lightly. But I chose to move ahead because I spent a lot of time examining what I want and what I’m willing to sacrifice. Simply put, I am no longer willing to sacrifice the writing I want to do for the writing I feel I should do for reasons other than my own personal goals and dreams. And so the factors that, in the end, I judged as more important than those which voted for continuing with content writing are below.

Productivity influencer Ali Abdaal once pointed out that there is a difference between trading your time for money, and spending your time developing sources of passive income. I had to confront the fact that content writing was the former. It was a one-and-done opportunity from which I saw no residual financial benefit (other than a continued relationship with my client, who would continue to funnel work my way). My income depended entirely on writing one article after another. Writing my books, on the other hand, allows me the ability to accrue royalties while I develop my author platform. Spending time on this type of writing provides me with the opportunity to develop a catalogue of books that not only offers immense satisfaction for myself, but it also supports me and my family. While the content writing is an immediate financial gratification, writing my novels is a more sustainable one in the end.

I also had to confront the fact that content writing takes up a lot of brain power. Even if I did have the time to put into writing content for other people and writing books for myself, I simply don’t have the mental energy. It’s carried me dangerously close to burnout, in fact, trying to do both. I realized that I had to sacrifice one for the other, and it was up to me which one I was willing to sacrifice. Because content writing needs to be done for other people (I’m a hopeless people pleaser, btw), and because there are looming deadlines, I’ve always just allowed content writing to be the thing that got my attention. Even though that is incredibly counterintuitive to what I want. Me, Veronica.

What little nugget of wisdom I was left holding after all this analysis was that content writing has taken up so much of my life that I had grown to resent writing in general. It got to the point where I didn’t want to do any writing, no matter what kind. Since my livelihood depends on the ability to produce words and turn them into something, that’s a pretty big setback, wouldn’t you say?

I certainly decided it was. And so, I made my decision, I wrote my thank you emails, and I cut myself off from that stable, sure, time-and-energy-sucking endeavour that was content writing. It’s been hard, and at first I definitely felt as though I was forgetting to do something, or that there was some unresolved thing which wasn’t allowing me to rest and relax. But I got used to it. And now I’m focused on writing 100%! It feels amazing.

I’m sharing this experience in case anyone out there reading this might feel the same, or share a similar struggle. To this I would say: If you have something that is not fulfilling you and taking your career (or life pursuits) somewhere you know it needs to go, I urge you to take a good hard look at what’s on your plate and make some hard but responsible decisions. It will be tough at first, but as long as what you’re cutting out of your life makes room to focus on something else that will serve you better, you’ll see the rewards as I have.

There is still a part of me which is disappointed that I have walked away from content writing. I hate quitting, after all, and in many ways this has felt like quitting. But when my rational mind gets to talk, it reminds my inner guilt trip that I couldn’t reasonably do both. I certainly couldn’t do both well. And I know that I want to do my own writing well. It’s been a few weeks now, and the joy of writing has come back. I spend time developing my stories in my head now, which is something I lost when content writing was taking up so much space in there. And I enjoy sitting down and bringing the worlds I think about to life. I have joy again, and that’s huge. Because, after all, why do we writers write if not for the joy it brings? To others, and to ourselves?