Confessions of an Accidental Influencer

Nobody warns you about the demotion of being an empty nester. One day you’re the essential hub of a busy household, indispensable and slightly frazzled. The next, the house goes quiet, the last kid’s bedroom door stays shut, and you’re standing in the kitchen wondering what exactly your position is.

I remember thinking, quite seriously, that the interesting part of my life was probably over. I’d had my adventures. Travelled the globe. Created about 20 different homes. Brought up two children. And worked for various magazines and newspapers around the world. Now it looked like it was all going to be cardigans and crosswords (which I’m not very good at.)

Then, somewhere around fifty, a little bit wrinkled, feeling a bit invisible, and not really looking for a new career, I started a blog. And the joke’s on me, because that accidental decision turned out to be the beginning, not the epilogue.

And I stepped through a new door.

Nobody tells you menopause comes with a side hustle

Let’s be honest about the timing. Perimenopause had already quietly dismantled my confidence before I’d even worked out what was happening to me. Night sweats, mild depresson, and an insidious brain fog that made me forget words I’d used my whole life, gave me a general sense that I was somehow fading from view. Society has a way of putting older women out to pasture right around the exact moment we could use a bit of reinvention.

So at the age of 52 blogging, something I knew exactly 0% about, became my reinvention. Here was a space where nobody cared about who I once was. They cared whether I could write a good sentence, find a decent hotel, map out a good itinerary, or style an outfit that didn’t scream “I have given up.” They cared if I wanted to discuss hot flushes and the best leak-free underwear. They cared enough to be part of a community all going through roughly the same stage of life.

Blogging gave me something I hadn’t expected: a reason to look forward instead of backward. Thirty-odd years stretched out ahead of me, and instead of that being terrifying, it started to feel like an open runway.

The golden years, and I do mean golden

If you blogged in Australia in the 2010s, you’ll know exactly what I mean when I say it was a genuinely golden era. There was money in it, sure, though many of us hadn’t yet found out how to monetise - but more more than that there was a community. A proper one, not the algorithm-fed simulation we get now.

Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger events on the Gold Coast were the highlight of the calendar; hundreds of us descending on the same resort once a year, finally meeting in real life the women we’d been reading and commenting on for months. I remember standing at those events thinking: these are my people. Nikki Parkinson was out there proving a fashion blog could be a proper business. Chantelle Ellem’s Fat Mum Slim had the whole country taking a photo a day. Nicole Avery had built an empire out of being brilliantly organised. Caz and Craig Makepeace were rocking travel blogging with YTravel Blog. It felt like anything was possible if you just kept showing up and hitting publish.

I went home from those conferences buzzing, notebook full, business cards spilling out of every pocket, convinced I’d cracked some kind of code. For a woman who thought her most useful years were behind her, that buzz was intoxicating.

The imposter in the room

And yet, somewhere underneath the notebook and the buzz, there was the voice. You know the one. Who do you think you are? I was fifty-something, self-taught, learning SEO and Photoshop and Instagram grids from scratch while women half my age breezed through it as though they’d been born holding a ring light. I’d sit in sessions on “growing your brand” and think, quite genuinely, that someone was going to tap me on the shoulder and ask me to leave.

The odd thing about imposter syndrome is that it doesn’t seem to care about actual results. I was creating a community, receiving great comments, getting bylines, collaborating with major brands, acquiring brand deals, being invited to model for campaigns I’d never have dreamed of at twenty-five, and I still spent an unreasonable amount of time convinced I was one bad blog post away from being found out. I suspect most of the women at those conferences felt exactly the same and were all far too polite to say so out loud over the canapés.

What it gave me

Here’s what nobody tells you about starting again in your fifties: It’s better the second time. I knew who I was by then. I wasn’t chasing anyone else’s idea of success, I was just delighted to have found some new success of my own, that also helped other women in a positive way.

Travel writing gave me an excuse to keep exploring the world instead of settling into the smaller life I’d assumed was coming. Modelling, at an age when I’d been told my currency had expired, felt like an act of defiance. And the writing - the writing gave me back my voice, at exactly the point I’d started to feel like I was losing it.

I still get the imposter feeling. I still occasionally feel like a fraud in an arena full of twenty-somethings who can edit a reel faster than I can find my glasses. But I no longer believe the best years are behind me. Turns out they were just waiting for me to stop assuming that, and start a blog instead.

Onwards in defiance!

Out Out Damn Age Spot!

Here’s to being a Granfluencer. (You can read more on my blog Lifestyle Fifty)

Over to you … have you started a second act?

Until next time,

Jo x