Blogging Groove

I seem to have gotten my blogging groove back and I'm so excited to be posting on a regular basis. I've pretty much abandoned how I was doing things before (although I might bring back tea time, maybe as a once a month feature) but I am enjoying this much better. I feel like I've taken the chains off my content and am completely comfortable posting about whatever comes to mind. I hope that you guys enjoy this new way of doing things as well. It's by no means "professional" but that's not the kind of blogger I want to be anyways. I thought it was for awhile but it really just doesn't fit with the kind of person I am.

Anyways, I have a lot of posts planned, some kind of ramble-y, about pretty much everything I've been thinking about lately. My brain was in a cage before and I've let it out and now my mind is overflowing with things I want to share in this space.

So yeah, hang around if you're interested in what the inside of my head look like these days.

Also enjoy this picture of Eli.

x

Things I Don't Care About Anymore

Does anyone else, as a blogger, feel the never-ending pressure to care about pretty much everything? Or is that just me?

Lately I feel like the blogosphere is just bogged down by unnecessary posts and advice and honestly, things I just don't fucking care about. People get so wrapped up in their branding, in tailoring their content to the right people, making sure their pictures look just right, and advertising everything they post on every social media site at exactly the right time using just the right wording, that I feel like the whole point of blogging gets lost. Okay, so your blog looks nice and has lots of redirects to your other stuff, and you have a few thousand followers, and some company wants to affiliate with you to bring in business. That's great.

But I still do not care.

That sounds harsh, I know. It's just, that when it comes down to it, all that stuff is nice, but if you're not being creative or engaging, if you're not being real in your own virtual space, I'm not interested. I follow bloggers because I'm intrigued by their lives and what they have to say, because they seem like real people.

So, we all likes lists right? I do, so here's one for you.

Things I Don't Care About Anymore

• Your blog brand. I literally do not give a single fuck what your blog looks like or if your graphics use the same font or if the colours match the designs on your other social media sites. It's nice if they do, but I am not considering it to be important at all. I realize mine does all match and work together. This is due more to boredom than anything else.
• Tutorials for things there are already 5000000 tutorials for. You did a thing, good for you, but I don't see the point of posting another DIY for something that already has a million google search results.
• If your photos are all the same size. What a stupid thing to focus on, in my opinion. It's there, I can see it, that's good enough for me. 
• Making content "shareable." I would actually rather see posts that can't be condensed into 140 character tweets. I like long-winded thoughts, posts with depth. And I love twitter, don't get me wrong, but blog content shouldn't be tailored to it (or facebook, or whatever.)
• Posts where you recap everything you posted in the last month. Because I know what you posted, I read your blog, and if I thought it was interesting I already read it. I don't know, those kinds of recaps always seem kind of pointless to me.
• The endless tips and advice on how to live healthier. I am all for a healthy lifestyle. I eat well, workout, and drink my 8 glasses of water a day. But I am sick of seeing people talk about it all the time. It's not like it's anything new. It's all kind of common sense stuff that has been repeated to the point where I would rather bang my head against a wall than see it again. Because just duh, obviously, veggies are good, yoga is good, don't eat too many cookies or you'll feel crappy. DUH. (this does not apply to when people post about their personal journey with health.)

And because I don't want this to be a super negative blog post (I'm not a super negative person you guys, I swear), here are some things I do care about.

this is how I express happiness over stuff on the below list, obviously

• Pictures of your house, your cat, your friends, your food, your crafts, the trees outside your house, cool graffiti at the train station, the new shoes you bought, YOUR FACE. I love snapshots from people's lives. I love those little looks into your day. Because that's the real you, your real experiences, not something contrived or thought up just to up your pageviews.
• Your thoughts on social issues, fashion, movies, music, books (I am super fucking interested in the books you read), people who walk their cats, assholes at the grocery store, the soup you ate for lunch. I care very much about your genuine thoughts on all of that and more. Extra points if you use over the top language to talk about otherwise un-extraordinary things. A fucking medal if you write a sonnet about doing laundry or something.
• Your art. Whether it's painting, writing, sketching, graphics, video editing, jewelry designing, or gluing macaroni to construction paper. Whatever it is that you're doing creatively as an outlet is something I care about and want to see.
• Cats. I really care about cats and I will read anything you posts about cats, whether its your cat or someone else's. You can make 10 posts about cats in a row and I would read every single one of them. And if you think I'm exaggerating I assure you I'm not.
• Teen Wolf. I care about Teen Wolf a lot, so if you post about it (nobody posts about it, I don't know what's wrong with the blogging world) then I am 100% fucking there for whatever you have to say. (Okay, this one's pretty off topic, but I just have a lot of feelings about this show and I needed a fifth bullet point.)

See? There is plenty of stuff that I do like to see, just not the stuff that's usually in those "how to be a successful blogger" posts. And for the record, I don't care about those either.

x

p.s. I hope you enjoyed my gif use in this post. I thought it was pretty spot on.

Blogging Confession

This space has been so quiet lately, and part of that is because I honestly don't know what to say. I don't know what I want from blogging anymore. I don't particularly think that I want to give it up, but I also know I can't return to the way I was doing things. Not because it was bad, but because it doesn't feel right anymore.

I love the blogging community -the people, the content, the dialogues that open between individuals all over the world. It's incredible. And I love weekly features, sponsor programs, giveaways, all of that. But I feel like I have been trying to fit myself into a blogging space that is just the wrong shape for me. I am not, by nature, an organized person. And despite how positive I try to make this space, I am not always a positive person. There's a lot of dark things in my life, I struggle with anxiety and depression, and sometimes I'm just angry. And I try not to let all that seep into my online life, but it's difficult sometimes.

And when it comes down to, although the upbeat and loving persona you all see on this blog is a part of me, it's only a small part. That's only who I am sometimes, and it's tiring to try to be that person for my readers every time I post. I feel like I'm lying, something that I really don't want to do.

So here's the truth of it. I love bohemian aesthetics, exploring spirituality, spreading love, and all of that. But I also love to be up to my ears in books, write about monsters and magic, get trashed and dance all night, marathon fantasy/supernatural tv shows, talk about literature and mythology, swear like a sailor, bake at two in the morning, and sometimes dress like I'm ready to kill a man.

I don't have a "brand" -something that for a long time I thought I needed to be a successful blogger. I have spent a lot of time trying to pin my brand down, never satisfied with what I came up with. But now I can honestly said that I don't want a brand. I can't fit my personality into a single aesthetic and I'm sick of trying.

I'm not sure where that leaves me in the blogging world, but I do know that I want to be more honest in my posts. We'll see where it takes me.