Like, content creation is so freaking hard. It makes you vulnerable to create, and then to share your creations with others requires more vulnerability. It opens you up to criticism when views are high, and engagement is flowing. Imposter syndrome is real, and it will kick your a$$ when engagement is low or "nobody's even looking."

       It is a draining process to create content, and it's capable of burning even the most organized, strategized, and experienced content creators out. I am none of those things. By spring of this year, I was feeling Imposter Syndrome like a Mo-Fo and my vision for this brand, which once felt crystal clear and defined, suddenly felt very blurry and unclear. Branding a business is deep! If you've never done it, it's a whole lot more than a concept, a logo, a name, and some colors. When I created this brand nearly three years ago I had only a smidge of the concept and a whole lot of faith. I was taking a giant leap of faith when I launched the website and social media accounts. I tend to leap into things with only a fraction of the vision and none of the details. Unprepared to say the least. I take a leap-out-the-airplane-and-learn-the-parachute-on-the-way-down approach to many things (except actual skydiving).

       If you've been here since December 2020, I appreciate you most! You are the ones who watched me flop around through most of 2021 like a fish out of water trying to define, refine, and relay the niche, vision, and mission for Dazzling District. While I participated in a branding coaching series in 2021 and as I dug deeper into the learning and coaching, when I began to feel my dazzling flicker. In 2022 I continued navigating life, building a business, and maintaining my dazzling with a little less success. You were here for that too. Each month that passed my dazzling flickered and flashed a little less, but I kept showing up, because you were showing up here too.  If you are reading this at all, I appreciate you sooo much! You found your way here when the universe aligned it, and for that I am grateful. In the beginning of November, I filed for S-Corp status and obtained an official business EIN to level the brand up to official business from hopeful hobby. Committing in faith to a vision that was growing blurry to my human eyes, on my human timeline. I knew that if I genuinely believed He was calling me to this, then He would make the way even when I couldn't see the way. I was supposed to be obedient. Filing wasn't forcing it; it was filing in faith. I filed. I panicked. I froze.

           I lost all focus by the end of the year, life outside of the brand was getting intense. Enter 2023, it all just intensified.

       On January 2nd, 2023 (the eve of the day my three youngest daughters were supposed to return to school from the holiday break) the transmission on my family van and children's school transport vehicle just quit. We knew it was going, but it was then that it finally quit. It quit with 4 payments left on the loan. Two months after receiving my EIN number.

       January is historically a challenging month for me, post-holidays hangover, seasonal depression, cold, wet, snowy weather, these things alone make January a month I know I need to be more diligent in my care. Add isolation from having no functioning means of leaving my home and the nostalgic feeling of being a teenager dependent on your parents help to get you places, except now I'm 40. THIS particular January was gearing up to be one of the more challenging ones. I may have had a few emotional meltdowns throughout the first quarter of the year still, but I didn't collapse despite the financial strain and isolation. I was still "working the brand vision" and creating content for social media. I made a concerted effort to remain focused on my care routines and we shelled out a whole lotta dollar, dollar bills y'all, to get the transmission fixed, ($4579 to be precise) and a few months later the van was back in our possession and running. Until March when a myriad of other things needed addressing... still not paid off, but oh so close.  We nickeled and dimed our way through more repairs. I made the final payoff on the loan as we headed into the second quarter of 2023.

       I was optimistic that the year would only improve from there. Cautious, but optimistic. Cue April, we celebrated Easter and navigated into the second half of the month excited for better weather approaching. Then I opened up papers in the mail from our mortgage lender that stopped the airflow in my body for an entire minute. Without going too in depth into my family's personal financial woes and all the nitty gritty details, let me just sum this part of the year up as the "Money is a real-life need" portion of the story. Shit got really tight. Between college expenses for our oldest girl, van repair after van repair, the ever-increasing cost of groceries, gas and utilities, my SAHM-life for 13 years, and trying to start a non-traditional business, in a confusing economy, on a shoe-string budget with no team of staff or investors, it was a crisis point for me and my vision. It was a crisis point for me and my mission. It was a crisis point for me and my faith story. I was in crisis.

       First thing I did? I cried out, audibly, loud, and in complete crisis, for my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I literally dropped to my knees and sobbed in fear, in panic, in complete disbelief that I was sitting in this position, slumped in a heap on the ground, in the midst of an internal crisis like this, again, after everything I had overcome and learned in 2019. I felt like all of my magic, all of my dazzling, all of my spark that I had worked so hard to ignite, was sputtering, and trying to fight extinguishing. I began to doubt that I had discerned the still small voice of God in my heart correctly. I began feeling like a failure in so many areas and as I was the common denominator, I began to doubt myself. Feeling all of this, I took it to Him in prayer. I've prayed ugly before, this wasn't the ugliest, but it was definitely an ugly prayer kind of situation.

       I heard, "Be still daughter. I've got this too".

       I doubted instantly, with a list of "But, God's..." a mile long. Every tangible, flesh fueled piece of the problem I couldn't hash out in my own human mind, buzzing around like static in my brain. I was growing physically nauseous. My body was trembling. I'm at the hot flash season ladies, I felt like I was literally burning in the pits of Hell.

       I heard, "Be still daughter.  I've got it all figured out already. Do you trust Me?"

       *Gut punch* Sobbing ensued.

       I heard, "Slow down. You're trying to run daughter, and I haven't even hardly begun to give you the assignment. Pace yourself so I can prepare you. This is all part of the preparation. You just focus on the basics for now."

       The basics. The things He had walked me to in 2017, my most challenging crisis season to date. The tools God gave me to be prepared to pick my broken pieces back up when I was trapped in a pit of despair, so that I could escape the negative cycles and patterns that plagued my life in that season. The season that changed everything for me. The season that brought me to this brand. The season that became the catalyst for the assignment He would place on my heart, to build a community that encourages, nurtures, and empowers women to empower themselves enough to ignite their own dazzling and seek out their truly divine purpose in this universe. The season that ignited my own Dazzling Spark in the first place. He was reminding me of the things that He wanted me to focus on. I obeyed. I made my way in blind faith through the next few weeks. By May 1st I was fully embracing that I was going to survive this season by focusing on getting back to the basics. All things publicly for the brand halted.

       If you follow Dazzling District on either Facebook or Instagram, you may have seen my story announcing a sudden public halt at the beginning of May. I intended at the time, to resume content creation, publicly posting and writing blogs, emails & newsletters again by the end of the summer, but that plan changed. During the month of May I had learned to practice extreme faith. I was walking through a season where my faith was being tested like it never had been before. I was stuck in a season of waiting when all I wanted was to be doing! Something. Anything. This is why, when overwhelm set in early the 2nd quarter of the year, I knew I needed to put the brand and its social media presence on the back burner. I can't preach what I'm not effectively practicing, so I let myself step back and start ascending my personal staircase to dazzling once again. God was preparing to take me to a new level. I let myself fill my cup first.

I filled my cup & Threaded my faith in humanity back together this summer and with guidance from the still small voice, I found my own voice again.

       In July Meta launched Threads, its newest, text-based social media app and having never entered the Twitter-sphere, I curiously tip-toed back into social media. I heard a whisper inside telling me to ignore my fear of mob-mentality & Twitter-trolls and just curiously explore this new place with little expectation and the goal of being authentically, uniquely, me. I complied. Playing around on Threads was therapeutic. At first it was a little like shouting into a void, slowly it began to morph into a more active and engaging community filled with positivity. All the reasons people were beginning to dislike the competition were somehow magically void on Threads. It felt a little like the cool-kids-club.  A fantastical, positive space in the wide world of the web, and one where other Creatives were seeking respite from the toxic nonsense that they faced everywhere else in the online space. I began to use the voice I had found again, to share authentically, and without an agenda for the first time since launching the brand social media. When I did, the community began to grow. As this was happening, the chaos unfolding in my personal life was working itself out, while I fought every urge inside of me to meddle and problems solve where God had clearly told me to trust Him.  My faith was growing, and my dazzling was sparkling again. By the time my kids were beginning school this past fall I was confidently still waiting.

       The downtime I took this year has not gone unused or squandered. Though I was being steered by the still small voice and hearing a call to prioritize my rest, my nutrition, my hygiene, and my personal care, I was still productive in ascending my personal staircase to dazzling once more, and I was intentional to continue listening and looking for opportunities to discern my divine purpose and assignment from the Author of the Universe. I learned even more about myself, I grew, I challenged myself in scary new ways, and ultimately, I am coming back with a more refined version of this dazzling vision. A year ago, I prayed and meditated over my intention word for 2023 and the word I felt called to was COURAGE. I believed then that I was going to live with more intentional courage in 2023 but I thought it was going to look so very different than it did. I thought it was going to be the courage to show up in different ways, I never expected it was going to be the courage to pull back. That's exactly what it looked like though. The courage to pullback, to learn, grow, challenge, and refine this dazzling vision.

In January, while meditating on my business and brand goals for this year, I felt very called to focus on 3 things:

1.) THE BOOK, before anything. The book first, the brand is the book. The book is the cornerstone of this brand.

2.) The Business Plan for the business, for the building, because this was never meant to be an online only brand.

3.) The Box Subscription conceptualizing, because Happy Mail is the best mail, and it keeps us connected from afar.

       The book, the business plan, and the box. Those were the 3 things and until I focused on them, none of my social media posts, engagement, or analytics would mean a thing. None of it would matter, it would all be vanity. The book will be the tool I use to speak to people's hearts, the business plan will be the tool I use to open the doors that will allow me to speak to people's minds, and the box will be the tool I use to get in their home to speak to people's spirit. These three things will be the tools I need to build a community that encourages, nurtures, and empowers women to empower themselves to ignite their own dazzling and seek out their truly divine purpose in this universe. This year in my social media halt, I let go of the metrics, I let go of the vanity, instead, I focused on myself, my mission, and the vision that was given to me for this place. These 3 goals were with me all year. I worked them, I developed them, I let myself listen for the direction without steering the details too much or holding on too tight to one the vision.

I WILL GO AS IF I'M GUIDED, EVEN THOUGH I FEEL I'M GUESSING.

~Steven Furtick, pastor/Elevation Church

       My pastor gave me the quote above this past week during Sunday service and I scribbled it down, sure not to forget it. It struck me immediately when he said it. I'd been working on this blog all week, and thought it was about done, then Sunday during church these words hit me. I didn't have these words until that moment, but I feel like I have been living them all of 2023. I've been going as if I were guided, even though I felt like I was guessing. It was in this quote that I felt quite confirmed in the direction I chose to take this year. In the brand. In my personal life. In my family. I was being guided, by the still small voice in my heart, but I definitely felt as if I was guessing. To others, maybe I looked even more flighty than I normally do. To those who know me well, I may have looked downright delusional. To complete strangers, I may have even looked inconsistent or untrustworthy. Hell, half the year I may have even agreed subconsciously with most of these things, except there was a certainty inside of me that I knew I couldn't explain to others, and as scared as I was, I leaned into my faith. I leaned into the whisper. I listened to the still small voice for direction, and I created more moments to seek the still small voice whenever possible.

       I have a plan going forward, for returning to the public side of this brand, but you know what they say about plans? You make a plan, and God laughs. Maybe I'll say, I have my assignments. The book. The business plan. The box. I don't know the details yet, but I'm more focused on the assignment and in my faith than ever before, and I'm excited to see where He takes it all. If you want to follow along with my journey to make 2024 the year that I finally get the book published, I invite you to do just that. Follow along, on Threads, on Instagram, on Facebook, on YouTube, and most importantly, here on the website. If you have not yet signed-up to get on the Dazzling District mailing list to receive the monthly newsletter and other occasional communications, do so using THIS LINK. Don't wait because starting soon, the mailing list is going to start receiving more regular communications! Coffeetalk will be making a comeback in a flashy and fun new way. Finally, thanks for being patient with me this year, and for showing back up for me here!

~ Live Dazzling

Rebecca Jackson