Launch Day: Structure Without a Map
It’s been one year since I registered my website and wrote my first blog post. When I look back at how this site has evolved over the year, it makes me feel accomplished.
Initially when I first set out to create this website, my goal was to make myself a brand by establishing my presence. I still hope this website will eventually help me land that wonderful job in graphic design. At the time, I was working a survival job I hated—one that didn’t allow me to live on my own. I was living in my parents’ basement, and didn’t see a way out of it if I continued to work there. While I did manage to get myself debt-free with that job, I was not happy.
I was also about to take a break from working as I was going to have carpal tunnel surgery on my hand.
What I wanted the site to reflect was my professional side. I needed to get my brand out there and treat myself as marketable. My first post was interesting—if not a little vague. Looking back, it captured where I was at the time:
My identity at the time was structured and capable, but not fully expressed. I still needed to find my voice.
The System Experiment: When Structure Took Over
I had just discovered ChatGPT not long before I decided to create my website. I found it a very useful tool, almost like having a ship’s computer nearby as I figured out a direction. One bit of advice it gave me about trying to drive more traffic to my site was to post as often as possible. Thus began my daily posts saga, complete with various theme days of the week.
The goal was to post a blog post every day. I would usually pre-write the post the day before and schedule it to be posted. ChatGPT became my go-to to create the content.
Here are those initial categories:
I later changed some of the themes. Tuesdays became Tactical Tuesdays, Thursdays became Transferable Thursdays, and I added an occasional category for The Ones Who Shaped Me, which is a category where I wrote the posts myself, and it was always about something that helped shape me into who I am today (usually some sort of fandom). Then came a concept of theme weeks for awhile there…
I relied completely on ChatGPT, even pre-planning posts for the week for each category. It gave me the beginnings of a system, which is something I absolutely love. I built this system to stay consistent… but—something felt off.
The Friction Point: When It Stopped Feeling Like Me
For a couple of months I continued to post daily posts. I had a system going and it was working wonderfully—at first. After a while, I noticed that the content tended to sound repetitive. I was feeling disconnected from what I was writing. More importantly, it wasn’t really sounding like me.
While it did (and continues) to drive up readership and subscribers, It just didn’t feel like it was my voice or what I wanted to talk about at times. I began really enjoying The Ones Who Shaped Me posts more because I was actually writing them. The usual daily posts were becoming a chore. It also wasn’t really doing what I hoped it would—bringing more traffic to the site. Maybe a couple here and there, but it wasn’t working. The question I began to ask myself was why was I doing this?
Reclaiming the Signal: Finding My Voice Again
Something had to change. I will say that I learned a lot from ChatGPT about how to structure the posts. But I wanted to find my voice. I am a creative person, and do enjoy writing. Fundamentally, I wanted to use ChatGPT in the first place to ensure the message was always positive on the website, and it did succeed there.
I decided I needed to write my own posts and make them more meaningful. I began leaning into my SuperMell persona—and of course, Diana the cat. Then I began writing my own posts with the following:
Of course, I couldn’t keep up with the idea of writing every day, and decided to only write when I felt the need to do so. It’s a much slower process and pace, but it has helped me find my voice again.
Writing the posts myself made me want to explore my thoughts more often. The posts started becoming more personal and reflective. I chose authenticity over output.
After a while, I started to notice really only four categories seemed to pique my writing interest: Hero in Progress, Mission Logs, The Ones Who Shaped Me, and an exciting new addition I’ll talk about in the next section.
Building the Inner World: Emotional Cartography Emerges
This isn’t my first blog, incidentally. I’ve been blogging for many years, though those sites no longer exist or I’ve deleted them. I found my voice was too negative most of the time. If I wanted to create a presence of myself to show to the world, it needed to be more reflective of myself.
While there were certainly reoccurring themes on those old blogs, one thing I did was decide to separate my depression from my identity by referring to it as “The Depression Beast”. Initially, I described it as being a ferocious beast that would sink its sharp claws in me, dragging me down. Distancing the depression from myself gave it less power.
With the initiation of this website and my SuperMell identity, I began toying with the idea of bringing the beast back into my vocabulary, and created Dr. Anxiety as well. After all, a good superhero always has an arch-nemesis, or nemeses as the case may be.
I started to find this approach interesting and decided to create a list of characters that represents various different emotions or moods I may find myself in. With ChatGPT’s image generator, I decided to see what we could come up with to visualize these characters. This began one of my favourite categories to write about: Emotional Cartography.
I began with a Who’s Who blog post, similar to the concept of DC Comics’ Who’s Who cards. From there, whenever I find myself in a certain mood or emotional upheaval, I decide to write about that character. It’s a way to help me understand the workings of my own mind.
One important thing I have discovered with this approach is that I no longer view the more challenging emotions as necessarily evil or “bad guys”. All emotions are good. They exist for a reason. Even anxiety and depression have their upsides, believe it or not. I think this category is quietly surpassing The Ones Who Shaped Me category as my favourite one.
The blog became more than content—it became a way to navigate myself.
Stardrive Systems: What Actually Works for Me Now
Ever since I began writing in my own voice, things have started to shape up. My voice was becoming more open and authentic. I have indeed found a way to balance my creativity with structure.
Now I do what I feel like doing in the moment and no longer want to feel guilty about not doing something productive. I work in microbursts of energy. I now prefer to choose a direction to go in rather than forcing productivity. Structure works best as support—not as control.
I still use ChatGPT to give me ideas about what to write about next, or possible theme categories to write, and it assists me with being my editor-in-chief. It’s my assistant, not the author of my posts.
Evidence of Progress: What I Actually Built
It’s been quite the journey getting from there to here. I have accomplished so much more than just this blog. My presence is getting noticed, and my Emotional Cartography posts are gaining a following among various mental health groups on Instagram and Facebook. In fact, the other day I had 33 unique visitors on my website. So my following has indeed grown a lot. I’d still like some more subscribers though, so feel free to click the subscribe button at the bottom of this post.
Another exciting thing that I plan on working on again soon is that I established a portfolio on my website, as well as a Home Page, About Page, Contact Page, and a Privacy Policy page. I also created a Pick Your Path page to highlight the current categories I use so if you want to read about the Emotional Cartography characters, for instance, you can just click the button and it will take you there.
I’ve learned a lot about website building with WordPress, and am learning more and more about what A.I. can do for me. In addition to ChatGPT, I’ve also started learning Claude, and I’m taking a course to Master A.I. from Coursiv.
This post isn’t just about reflecting on the past. I’ve actually built something! And it’s starting to get noticed.
Diana’s Way: Instinct Over Overthinking
No blog post would be complete without mentioning Diana, my constant companion. I’ve thought of her as my sidekick. She follows her instincts and never overthinks things. At this exact moment, she’s decided to subtly tell me I should wind this up and clean my place soon. She started playing with a scrap from a wrapper on the floor…
That’s precisely what you want in a sidekick. Someone to point you in a direction you need to go in.
Sometimes the simplest approach is the most effective one.
Current Status: One Year Online
When I look over the course of a year, I can’t help but feel like so much has changed for me since I started this website. I have a different job now. I was able to move to my own place again. Traffic to my website has grown and I’m getting constant messages from Instagram asking me to send them the link to the post (something I still haven’t quite figured out how to do on Instagram…).
Things feel so different now than they did a year ago. I would still love to get that foot back in the door of working in graphic design, and perhaps my A.I. learning may assist there as well. I also learned about Lean Six Sigma principles and finished the certificate. There are certainly some things that are still uncertain, but I’m finding more confidence is starting to show itself again.
The point is I’m not finished yet. I’m stable though, and I’m moving forward.
Final Thought: This Wasn’t Just a Blog
I started this site trying to explain what I do. A year later, I’m starting to understand how I navigate. And that’s something I’m still learning—one post at a time.
If you look back over the past year, what’s one thing that changed for you?
Big or small—I’d love to hear about it.