If there’s one thing that I’ve been asked about 100 times in the last month, it’s this…
Jess, when are you coming back to Periscope!?!
Well, the wait is over.
I’m just not coming back.
So you might wonder what made me decide just to stop scoping altogether. To be honest, there are a few reasons, but it’s nothing dramatic. I didn’t get uber offended by a troll or annoyed by someone in the Periscope community. The reasons are a little more innocuous.
Let me tell you my Periscope tale, in brief.
I started scoping in June 2015. I was on there daily, usually 2-3 times a day, for about 4 months. I took a break over the winter holidays and then came back in January. Then I started getting really busy and couldn’t scope more than a few days a week because of my schedule since opening Cosmic Wisdom Academy. But I was trying to commit to still fitting it in. Then in February I moved and took a break for a week or so to get that handled. All that was happening while I was in the middle of leading a 40 day mantra challenge on Periscope, which was not ideal timing.
Then I was back to scoping about every other day once the mantra challenge was over until sometime in April when I got sick with the flu. I was legit sick for three months. I tried to come on and scope a few times, but always had a coughing fit or just looking like death warmed over because I wasn’t well. So I had to stop again.
But, to be honest, I was also losing interest.
Back when Periscope was the new thing, there was a whole “best practice” of doing daily scopes, two or three times a day, providing solid content each time. The idea was to provide a sort of interactive webinar almost. Come with something to talk about to teach or help people and then interact along the way. And that was fine in the beginning.
I realized early on that, for me, I was better off doing free readings for people and just kind of having spiritual and magickal chit chats rather than doing scopes with heavy content. Each time I did those kinds of scopes I spent an hour or so preparing for it and always had to come with notes because I didn’t want to forget something. It wasn’t fun. But the readings and meditations and Q+A ones were so I kept doing them until everything fell apart.
However, all that said, I personally was getting bored hearing myself talk. And each time I had to take one of these breaks naturally my live views would drop a little each time I came back, and that make things less fun. But I totally own that as my own fault/problem.
I also really missed blogging!
I’ve really enjoyed doing the whole live video thing, don’t get me wrong, but it took away from my blog. Because I was bringing a lot of topic-based content to Periscope I wasn’t blogging anymore. I was tired after doing a scope, and I didn’t want to then run off to write a blog to recapture the energy and message from a great scope.
I tried to do the whole repurposing my scopes and turning them into videos on my blog, but they didn’t work well that way. Without the comments visible and knowing who I was talking to and what was responding to it was weird. And a lot of my scopes needed to be edited to get to the “meat” of things because there was always a lot of chitchats. I wanted to be able to give my blog visitors just the content, but I didn’t have time for editing all my scopes, so my blog suffered.
My blog is my baby and writing is my first love, so I was sad to see my blog and my whole website go dark for months.
And I just didn’t have the time anymore.
Again, with the Academy, and wanting to do other things like more writing, it was just hard to find the time. Without question, every time I would plan to do a scope for 20-30 minutes it would go for 2 hours! I just can’t do that anymore, especially on a daily basis.
When it comes to personal care and self-care, my time is super important to me. I’m a massively grateful on a daily basis that I don’t have to have a schedule and that I can go with the flow and do what my body wants me to do. A lot of the time that involves staying up a little later, since I’m a bit of a night owl, and sleeping in the next morning. I often don’t get up until 9:30-10:00 am. That means after about an hour of waking up and going through my morning routine I want to just dive into my work for the day. Spending the first hour or two of my day on Periscope ends up throwing me off for the rest of the day.
I want to build MY community, not A community.
This was a big part of my decision to not come back to Periscope despite saying I was going to and telling people I’d be back soon. When I sat down and really thought about it, I decided that I wanted to focus on building unity and community around me and my message with people honestly and genuinely want to do that with me. For some people that might sound really ego-centric, and in a way, it is a bit, but that’s the business side of this. The truth is I don’t want to talk to just anyone like I was doing on Periscope, but I want to talk to people who want to talk with me and want to hear what I have to say.
I want to create a family online, and I can’t do that when I’m all over the place.
With that in mind, I’m going to be taking advantage of a different livestreaming option.
Now we can do live video in Facebook groups! I’ve done it a few times with my students, and I want to start doing it within my group, the Gypsy Soul Tribe.
It’s not going to be like Periscope where it’s unplanned, and I just pop up. I’ll be planning things with times and dates and topics. Naturally, there will be the much loved Coffee and Cards for doing free readings, and then we’ll do meditations, Q+As, and the like. When I’m ready to start doing these, I’ll be creating events in the groups for things so people can plan to be there if possible and as a family, we’ll work together to find times that work well for a lot of people.
Want to join us?
Just click the button below and join us in the group! Be sure to introduce yourself when you get in so we can all get to know you and welcome you all proper like! And I look forward to connecting with you all through the live video stuff again super soon.
Linda says
Love the path you are taking and the fact that we will be building a community/family together! Count me in!!