Our holiday to sunny Cornwall was one of the best holidays we’ve had in recent years. It was the first time that I actually relaxed – truly, relaxed – and it was also the first time we didn’t have a checklist of a thousand tourist attractions to tick off. We just went with the flow and it was so much nicer. It was also incredibly hot, which I wasn’t really prepared for as I packed clothes for a cooler climate, so I had to make a lot of last minute choices whilst running around our Airbnb in a panic. But I managed to put together a few summery gyaru outfits with the clothes that I did have, so here’s what I wore during my holiday in Cornwall.
It was 8pm on a Monday evening (well, yesterday, in fact), and I was trawling through my blog archives, going back to my first year of blogging in 2011. Gosh, it was embarrassing to look at; my posts were filled with emojis, with cringey language like “lawls” instead of lol, and were sometimes no longer than a paragraph. My photos were awful (as were the blog watermarks that were plastered over them) but I was excited to be on this little corner of the internet, and it was evident in my writing. With a twang I realised that I really, really missed those carefree days where I wasn’t serious about blogging. Over the years my blog posts – although mostly cheerful – have become more carefully planned and filled with relevant jargon in order to be noticed in the online world. But back then I really didn’t care about my reach or engagement.
So what happened? Why did blogging become so serious?
Okay, I fucked up, again. I allowed myself to get down in the dumps because my lil’ blog over here wasn’t get enough attention as I wanted it to. It got so bad that I was stressing myself out and just piling lots of things onto my to-do list, and my searches were filled with stuff like ‘how to grow your blog’ and ‘how to get more pageviews’. It was triggered when someone posted in a group “can you please help me grow my blog because I only get 200-300 pageviews a day?”.
Only.
People are right – comparison is the thief of joy and it stole all of my happiness right then. Gosh, I was so far away from that! What is wrong with my blog? Is it worth even blogging any more? I know I shouldn’t be moaning because people have different measurements of success, but it really got to me. I was lost focus of what I wanted to do because I was feeling so upset that I wasn’t good enough. Again.
That’s until I read ‘The One Thing’ by Gary Keller. I’m not really one for self-help books, but after finding it harder and harder to be multi-passionate, I decided to give this book a go. My mind was blown. My goals were back in focus and my dream future was becoming clearer.
After this I realised that I wasn’t ever going to become a full-time blogger. There were so many signs that I dismissed earlier that suddenly became crystal clear. Firstly, I never really had the time for blog events and attending blogger meet-ups weren’t really my thing unless I knew someone there. Secondly, I was secretly thankful that my inbox wasn’t flooded with sponsored emails. I just couldn’t write a sponsored/gifted post with the same enthusiasm as I would have if it was just a normal outfit post unless I truly believed in them. And thirdly, I couldn’t be bothered to learn about SEO. At the end of the day, I write posts because I wanted to, not to boost my rating or whatever.
What I do know, however, is that I do love blogging but only because it provides me a creative outlook to write down my thoughts. The more I tried to pressure myself to promote my blog and get it in front of people, the more stressed out I was. And that reflected badly on my writing. I even had to take a break from this blog (and this is my first post after said break) because I found myself crying to sleep as I lost sense of purpose. But I don’t really need a reasoning for blogging – doing it because I love it is a good enough reason.
I’m going to take it easy so that I can focus more my ‘One Thing’, which I know to be my art. It’s something that I’ve done my whole life and it’s been in the dark for too long. I want it to grow. I want to be known as a hand-letterer and be damn good at it.
So, I’m happy with just being a hobbyist blogger.
Love,
Lizzie xx
P.S. Are you a hobbyist blogger or do you do it full-time? Or are you somewhat in-between?
You know that saying “blink and then it’s gone”? Well that’s what 2017 felt like to me. I blinked, and now it’s the end of the year and I have no idea how I got here. There were a few things that made 2017 amazing, and seeing as I didn’t do this last year (such horror) I couldn’t miss out on doing one this year, so here are my highlights of 2017!
When I first started agejo I didn’t think I’d love it. Sure, it looked cool and sexy, but was it really the style for me? I was in that stage where I wanted to try out as many substyles of gyaru as possible, but sure enough I fell head over heels in love with agejo.
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