I followed my first fashion blog in eighth grade. Now retired, Elaine from Clothed Much sparked a desire that has lasted throughout high school to this day. I wanted a blog of my own, where I could share my outfits and personal tips for dressing well. I took outfits photos with my used Canon Rebel T2i and a tripod whenever I was home alone. I reached out to a few of my favorite bloggers to ask for their advice on how to start. I researched how to blog. I wrote a few posts. I even came up with a name, The Style Documentary. I told a few friends that I had wanted to do this.
That was years ago – I’m a junior in college now.
There are numerous reasons why I haven’t started a blog. I’ve let life get in the way – I’m too busy right now. I tell myself, “I’ll do it during summer,” or “This will be my winter break project.” I’ve gotten close a few times; I’ve sat on an unpublished Wix site for a few months with blog posts ready to go. It’s been on my New Year’s Resolutions for a couple of years now, so why haven’t I crossed this one off?
Then I think about the bloggers I follow: “My pictures don’t look like theirs… I could dig out my old DSLR, but I don’t really want to go through the hassle of using it and I’m too broke for Lightroom. Do I really have to run an email list? I don’t want to annoy my real-life friends. How am I going to be different than all other bloggers out there? What if I get bored of blogging and it sits on the Internet forever?”
Plainly speaking, fear is the reason behind these excuses. Fear of what happens when you put things out on the Internet for others to read and judge. Fear that I will compare myself to bloggers who have done this for years or get bogged down by the bloggers who urge you to follow their path to a six-figure income in seven easy steps. Fear that no one will read my blog.
The thing is, these fears will always be there, but I don’t have to listen. I don’t need to be like other bloggers to be successful. (What is success, anyways?) The desire for my own blog is still there – it never has gone away. I don’t need to know everything about blogging right away. I’ll learn as I go. I don’t have to take and edit my own pictures for every single post; I can use free stock ones until I am able to update my equipment. I don’t need to run an email list right now. Fear has told me that I have to be perfect and have everything down before I could begin. That is such a lie! Baby steps will get me where I want to be. Waiting until I have “everything down” gets me nowhere.
While my plans aren’t completely the same, I still want to share my thoughts with like-minded people. This isn’t your typical “get to know me” post, and that’s okay. Every time I tried to write a “get to know me” post, it felt unauthentic. This is me. This blog is for me, for personal and professional uses. To me, the content – my writing – matters more than anything else. This is my corner of the Internet to do whatever I please.
Welcome. Stay as long as you like.
