I work from home. Actually, right now it’s 5pm and I’m still in my pajamas. I’m in bed… Okay, I’m really lazy today but it’s raining outside so shoot me.

I have a point though, I swear. My point is this: As with most freelancers, there isn’t a hell of a lot of separation between my personal and professional lives. I don’t have an iPhone for this reason – I need a few minutes during my day (this usually involves subway travel) where I can be turned off. So when I’m bumming around at home, writing about publishing and digital books or helping new (and sometimes established) authors tweet their way to stardom, it’s booksbooksbooks salessalessales publishingpublishingpublishing around the damn clock.

Which is cool. I love publishing and books and sales and Twitter. But when I finally sit down to blog, the last thing I want to do is write about what I do.

So Instead…

For the past couple posts I’ve been talking a lot about my personal life and my struggles as a new entrepreneur and finding sneaky (or not so sneaky) ways for people to come up with my tagline. And guess what? These are the posts with the most comments. These are the posts people retweet and email me about and inspire discussion.

If I were a dude.

And since I’m a little slutty when it comes to comments, I feed off that and I do it again the next day.

And every day I worry “shit shit shit I need to write about publishing or else I’m not going to get new customers and I’m going to lose a handle on my niche.” But a weird thing has happened in the past two weeks; I’ve gotten two new clients and a ton more Twitter followers and an all around better handle on the people that want to pay me to do things for them.

In fact, I’m a little shocked. Especially after that post I wrote about learning how to be professional, well, I figured that would really spotlight how unprofessional I am and people would stop hiring me. Thankthelord but the opposite has happened. One (awesome) author emailed me last week and when I asked how/why he found me he wrote: “I was nosing around online and linked to your site from a list of cool literary blogs.  I like a girl who can pull a great stunt. While cursing up a storm.”

Ha!

It’s All About Trust

Now, despite helping me stay uncrazy, not writing about my work has allowed prospective clients to get to know me better. I, for one, would prefer to hire someone I feel I know.

Example: I recently hired Jamie and Nicole (girl crushes) to design my blog header. I know about their company – Shatterboxx Media – because I’m an avid blog reader and both their blogs are rockin’. I know about Shatterboxx because Jamie is the QUEEN of getting digital attention and I found press surrounding her job hunt a while back.

I don’t know the company by recommendation, Jamie and Nicole are based in San Francisco. They’re not the most famous web design company on the planet as they’re relatively new, but I feel like I know them, and trust is the most important thing when working with someone. That and the fact that Jamie’s portfolio is KICK. ASS.

Here’s the thing: Blogging, which started as a career move, where I only blogged about my job search and attempted to highlight my publishing knowledge, has blossomed into this really cool and fun thing where I write about my (and try to help others on the same) post-grad-freelance-social-media-bad-ass path. And doing so, while bringing in the occasional client who’s just as crazy as I am,  does in fact keep me sane.

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