When Life Gives You Lemons...

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Or, in this case, when the internet gives you malware, make a new website.

I woke up Monday morning to an email from my (now former) hosting company informing me they had taken down my website due to malware. They gave a long list of instructions on how to get it back that was really just a list of links to tutorials, many of which were out of date. After a lot of back and forth and overall frustration supported by a few conversations with friends and former coworkers who are a lot smarter about all of this than me, I had two options:

Delete my site and start over.
Pay a small fortune to an expert to secure it and then likely have to rebuild a large part of it.

I chose to delete my site and start over.

Seems drastic, huh?

In some ways, it was. I have a lot of content dating back as far as 2016, some of which has performed strong on the SEO front. Was I really willing to delete all of that and start from the beginning?

Yes, I was.

I’ve struggled with this space over the last year or so. The previous version of my site had so much stuff. There were personal stories, workouts, questionnaires, book and album reviews, travel reflections, recipes with bad photos… It was a smorgasbord of “stuff” and every time I posted something new, I felt like I was just adding to the clutter and I can’t cope with clutter. Clutter makes me anxious. It paralyzes me. I’m someone who is greatly affected by their surroundings and while my website was digital, it was still – clutter. It intimidated me and it was my own doing.

Starting fresh had an appeal I couldn’t ignore. So I downloaded all of my former content, went through the steps of deleting my website, and now, here we are – a new, clean space.

The timing was right. I’m moving to Nashville in a couple of days and that, too, feels like a fresh start. New city, new job, new website.

New opportunity to hone in on my business and focus my content on the health, wellness, and storytelling I’ve been called to share and teach.

Sometimes we have to “blow it all up” to build it up. We have to go back to the starting box to take off in the direction we’re supposed to go. I’ve had a number of false starts over the years and I’ve never been afraid to go back to the beginning. I think about when I was competing in horse shows and would face my horse to the back of the start box when it was our turn on the cross-country course. He loved cross-country and would erupt out of the gate with an almost uncontrolled burst of speed and jumping the start gun earned a hefty penalty. So we would face the back of the box and he would prance and toss his head in anticipation until the start gun popped and then we were off with that same burst of speed and my dad yelling “slow down!” as I blazed across the field to our first obstacle. I feel like the last couple of years in this space – yes, years – has been me, facing the back of the start box, prancing and waiting for the starter gun.

The start gun finally popped off yesterday in the form of malware.

So welcome, friend.

Welcome to the new SarahWyland.com where there will be more meaningful, curated, quality content. No more “I need to post something, so here’s a recipe with crappy photos” posts or rambling pieces with no real point. This will be a space with purpose, created on purpose.

Never be afraid to start over, to believe in the magic of a new beginning.

It could be the start of something great, after all.

And all great things?

Well, they have to start somewhere.

We all have to start somewhere.

As part of this new space, I’ll be sending a weekly newsletter of curated content – health and wellness tips, mindset hacks and exercises, and a personal story or two. I promise I won’t spam! Interested? Sign up for the newsletter!