I’m becoming a pharmacist lifestyle blogger. You heard it here first.
A what…?
What pray tell is a “pharmacist lifestyle blogger”? Even I laugh at myself as I type that… Pharmacist lifestyle blogger…
Let’s be real… I know being a fashion blogger, DIY and home décor blogger, travel blogger, and the like are all the rage, but becoming a pharmacist lifestyle blogger?
Seriously… I’m wondering who would really care. It sounds so unglamorous, yet, I am undeterred.
If you’ve been following this blog for any period of time then you’re probably all caught up because it’s been quite a while since I last updated it with the latest goings-on. However, I did say from the get-go that I job-hop quite a bit and since for the past approximately 18 months (at the time of this writing) I’ve been working as an Epic Willow Pharmacist, that’s pretty much all you’ve heard about from me.
So as I contemplated writing another blog post, the thought struck me… I’d really like to try my hands (more like my fingers) at this lifestyle blogging thing. But I’m not a fashionista or a mini Martha Stewart in-the-making, because these are the types blogs I typically see in the lifestyle blogging niche.
I’m a pharmacist, and in the grand scheme of things, as far as writing about “lifestyle topics” goes, it’s what I know. So why not?
Maybe it’s a bit selfish on my part (more on this later)… I don’t want to stop writing about my life as a pharmacist, but I want to write about other things too. There’s much more to me than just my pharmacist life…
You may or may not be able to tell that I started this website, pretty much this blog, on a whim. Well, kind of…
When I got the job as an Epic Willow pharmacist, I wasn’t as much interested in hearing the technical parts of being an analyst, I wanted to hear someone sharing real-life stories of what life was like as an Epic pharmacist. But there was no one. I found lots of dry boring info, but not real in-the-trenches stories. Thus, this blog was born.
Beginning the new job was exhilarating… I couldn’t wait to document what I had done and what had happened each day, but as I got more into it and things started to pick up at work and life got busier, I stopped updating you all and this blog as frequently. I did feel bad about that because I felt like I had let down all the folks like me out there who were looking for just that kind of behind-the-scenes info to gobble up.
So I plan to be better about that… But be forewarned that as I write this, I am already planning on what my next career move will be. I don’t dislike being a Willow pharmacist… It’s just that, I think I’m ready to move on to my next gig.
With all those thoughts running through my head, I started taking a deeper look at some other bloggers and wondered why and how they had such wonderful income report posts and if I could achieve the same from a blog of my own.
No… Don’t worry… I don’t plan to turn this site into an ad-infested den of pop-ups and banners, but I am curious…
I want to try my hands at blogging professionally but I want to do it very tastefully.
Thankfully, being a pharmacist affords me the luxury of not having to rely on income from blogging so I am free to take my time experimenting with what works and what doesn’t work.
So I’ve been reading tons of articles about “becoming a lifestyle blogger” and one message that stood out to me in a big way early on (hmm… Can I say “bigly” like you-know-who?)…
Okay, I digress… A message that really stood out to me was the concept of knowing my “why”. Knowing “why” I am doing, or about to do, what I plan on doing. Someone even went as far as to suggest that the “why” of my audience was even more important than my own “why” since it is you that I am serving.
But isn’t the whole premise of a lifestyle blog a selfish one to begin with? Nobody really cares about your lifestyle (if you’re an unknown person, and sometimes even if you are known) until you start talking about it to begin with… And then you capture (hopefully) the attention of the people you’re trying to attract.
All that to say that according to these “online experts” I may already be starting off on the wrong foot, but oh well.
Why Will This Pharmacist Lifestyle Blog Be Different From Others?
There are lots of other pharmacist blogs out there, the idea is not a unique one.
I’m just as entertained as the next person by the usually funny angry ranting pharmacist blog. But that’s not me. I love being a pharmacist and even though I get the pharma-rage, I just can’t do it.
Then there are the super serious “I’m a pharmacy professional and I write for real pharmacy publications” blogs. Again, I appreciate those as well, but I don’t plan to regurgitate the same not-terribly-interesting information you can easily find on the APhA website or other professional pharmacy-related sites.
It won’t be another “single in the city working gal” blog or a “mommy blog” blog, nor will it be a “married Suzy homemaker” blog since none of those really defines me.
I’m just a pharmacist with a life, and to the extent that I don’t cross the line into “Kardashianism”, I’ll be sharing the parts that are relevant to this site with you.
Here’s My Plan
I plan to do other things to help set me off in the right direction.
For starters, I plan to stop winging it and just posting all willy-nilly. I have scoured the internet for blogging courses and read more reviews of the courses I found than I care to admit. But if I am going to spend my money on a blogging course (or any course for that matter), I want it to be a good one… And “good” not by the standards of those getting paid to sell the course a.k.a affiliates or affiliate marketers.
So the choice came down to two options for me… Elite Blog Academy by Ruth Soukop (~$800 at the time it was open for registration, and there was a LOT offered in this course), or Building a Framework: The Ultimate Blogging Handbook by Abby Lawson ($27 for the eBook and workbook; $97 for the eBook and workbook and video tutorials, printables, and access to a private Facebook group for course subscribers, and some more things).
There was actually a third option that I seriously considered which was even more affordable, somewhat – Blog By Number by Suzi Whitford ($17.99 for the eBook; $47 for the video tutorial course and eBook; $197 for everything plus a personal review of your site by Suzi) – but there were just way too many reviews from affiliates for me to really trust all that they said.
Ruth and Abby I know for a fact are tried and true so I felt good narrowing my choice down to just the two of them… And I actually have a sort of distant connection to Abby (very very distant connection), so she had a slight upper hand to begin with 🙂
Alright, so even though I’m working and can technically afford the $800 course, I do have a slight aversion to risk and knowing my blogging track record, that would be a lot to pay if I didn’t follow through in the end. I mean, the course might be all that and a bag of chips but if I fail(ed) at executing what it teaches I would almost not be able to forgive myself for that type of “opulent wastage”.
So the Abby Lawson course it is! And at such a reasonable price point, I think I’ll even go ahead and splurge on the full-blown course.
So to wrap this up, I’m going to be taking you on this new journey with me… And also my new job hunt journey, but I’ll talk about that in a separate post… Watch out for it! 😉
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