Yesterday I wrote a blog post that included a fair amount of swearing. Well, more swearing than normally comes out of my mouth in the span of two weeks. It’s not my preferred way of communicating, but I guess yesterday I was in that sort of mood.

Although the post ended up getting a lot of hits, and some positive feedback, I felt weird about what I’d written.

I’m managing editor of a magazine now, I thought, Is this really the message (the persona) that I want to be sharing? That night I opened up one of my journals, and I started to write. What is the Positivity Project? I wrote at the top. When I first started this blog, I started it for a very specific reason. This reason didn’t really have anything to do with helping other people.

My friend Jax (when I first met her) identified the real reason right away — although I don’t think she knew that’s what she was picking up on. “When I first met you,” she said, “I got one impression of you, but then when I read your blog I got an entirely different idea of who you were. The two persona’s don’t really go together.” This was not the first time I’d heard this. I think this discrepancy even made me feel proud. It made me feel somewhat mysterious.

I started the blog to share the inner world that I kept hidden out of fear.

Somehow I wasn’t so scared to share it in writing. My blog became a sort of testing ground. If I wrote about this feeling, would others accept me? If I shared my flaws and my deepest insecurities, would others find my repulsive? I grew up feeling so alone. My blog became a platform where I could test the theory that maybe I was just like everyone else. Underneath it all, there was a desperate need for approval.

More than anything I wanted to belong.

That was a little under three years ago. A lot has changed since then. On Sunday, Jax and I met up and engaged in a conversation, or series of conversations, that lasted over five hours. We drank copious amounts of tea and talked about everything from feminism, the environment, creativity, our ambitions, our dreams and, yes, even love. During this conversation, she brought up the comment she had made before about the disconnect between my physical self and the self I shared through my writing. “The disconnect isn’t so apparent anymore,” she said. I realized she was right.

The gap was lessening, and lessening quickly. I no longer felt so alone. I did feel as though I belonged.

The entries that people most often reference when they talk about my blog are the challenges that I’ve done: training for a half marathon, 30 days of Cold Showers, my E-Squared Energy Experiments.

So what is The Positivity Project?

Suddenly it hit me. What gets me excited is exploring self-improvement – success, fulfillment, passionate living — in an honest way.

I listen to self-improvement podcasts almost every day, but the voices sharing their experiences are almost always men – intense men. Men who work in the self-improvement industry. Although yes, some might also refer to me as intense, there’s very little else that I have in common with these men. I am a woman, I am an observer, I am an artist. I’m interested in writing fiction, performing on stage and reading Somerset Maugham on the beach. I’m not a self-help expert, nor would I want to be.

I am a consumer – a consumer who is interested in testing the principles that we’re all exposed to on a daily basis through impersonal lists and by uber successful entrepreneurs who, let’s face it, are just not that relatable.

I started testing these principles three years ago. So far many of them (but not all) have actually worked. No one is more surprised than me.

And that’s not all! Despite my more selfish reasons for writing this blog (in the beginning at least), the messages that I’ve received from people reading about my stories have opened my eyes to the possibility that working towards my dreams, and writing about it, could empower someone else to do the same thing.

I take a deep breath. As the disconnect between these two aspects of who I am grows smaller and smaller, I don’t really have anything prove anymore. I don’t really have any need for a testing ground. My testing ground is my life.

This new concept – this new intention – involves stepping away from victim and towards leader. Am I ready for that? Yes, I think out loud (Not joking. I literally just said yes out loud).

It’s time to push it even further. It’s time to explore this project in a new, more empowered, way.