My Thoughts, Part I: The Evolution

Hi hi hii! Long time no chat :) Lately I've been pretty absent around here so I wanted to share what's been on my mind and where I've been. Mainly I want to talk about some thoughts I've been having related to a few different subjects-- consider this part one of a personal series!

Since I've been home from school I've been lucky to have a few free weeks before starting my internship, so I've spent most of this time catching up with high school friends. It's been really interesting to discover where everyone is at with their lives, whether it be with relationships, internships, studying abroad, or anything else. All of these great conversations in the last few weeks have inspired me to share my thoughts on different subjects with all of you. It's been a while since I've shared a deeper blog post, so I hope you enjoy my broaching of a few hot topics (hah, ew I can't believe I just said hot topics).

It feels fitting for the introduction of this series to begin with my thoughts on blogging and the evolution of not only my platforms, but the blogging community as a whole. So here goes my petite dissertation on: the advancement of blogging:

It's no secret that I've haven't been as committed to blogging as I used to be. I can't begin to describe how grateful I am for this platform and the challenges it has brought me along with the skills and lessons that I have learned from it. However, it isn't news to anyone that blogging a handful of years ago was worlds different than it is now. When I started my blog, Instagram didn't even exist yet, and if you told me I could've made a dime off of sharing my favorite nail polish colors and DIY projects, I wouldn't have begun to comprehend that concept. 

I started this blog in March 2012 (over seven years ago!) as a joke with my friends. At the time, my biggest worry in life was what I was going to wear to school the next day. I wanted a place to share my pink-and-green preppy style, and what I felt was an extremely posh little life for an eighth grader. It was fun! I know I've said this before, but I never imagined I would keep my blog up and running for more than a week, let alone seven years. I especially never thought this website would grow into the biggest part of my resume, monetize, and earn me more opportunities than I can count.

Blogging started off as something easy, fun, and exciting. I connected with other girls who all loved reading each others' posts, making new online friends, and sharing our lives with each other. It was truly an organic, precious community. I am still close with blogging friends that I made at the very beginning!

That said, now a days, writing a post takes hours of time. Writing a post means I'm dedicating half a day to my laptop to produce content that I feel like no one really cares about anymore. At the beginning of all of this, I didn't care at all what people thought about my posts. I had four readers for the first year, two of which were my eighth grade real-life best friends. But it didn't matter! I wrote a post almost daily on random shit, and it excited me more than anything. Now, I feel constantly pressured to produce content that people will want to read or click on, rather than just what I feel like sharing.

Blogging has become so oversaturated, and there will always be new people who have better photos, better style, etc. I think it's important to remind myself why I started and that I can still post what I want to, when I want to, without having to doubt my content or its' value.

So, simply put, I miss that. I miss the old version of blogging where I shared what I wanted, when I felt like it, and it was just for fun. With this new series, I'm going to try to channel that former blogging concept by sharing whatever is on my mind. I'm not really committing to doing this at any certain time interval, but more when there's something I feel excited to talk about.

There are truly so many things in my life that are far more important to me than clothes and shoes and great sales, and I want to invest time in talking about what feels valuable rather than frivolous. Don't get me wrong, blogging about clothes and style is really fun at times, but it makes me feel shallow if I'm running a website that feels like it lacks depth and character. Reading through my OG blog posts, I can feel the excitement I had when I hit publish. I miss sharing fun things that excited me and formed a community, so I hope to reintroduce those kinds of posts here.

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If you've made it this far, thank you for reading!!

Please share your thoughts below! I would love to know what your thoughts are on this topic and your own opinions on the evolution of blogging.

Look out for more of my thoughts coming soon... if you're into it.

xoxo