To YOU behind the computer screen,
Things are going to be changing on this blog (and for the better).
While I could start by saying that I am overjoyed to have hit a year on my blog (which I obviously am) I feel I need to say a few things before I can celebrate.
In the year that I have been blogging, I have found blogging to be extremely difficult. It was hard to determine why I found it to be SO difficult as my blog combined things that I love. And I mean LOVE. Think my favorite lipstick, product reviews, Dr.Martens, and a slew of other things that usually make for non-stop smiling. It seems like my posts should be my favorite thing ever. It’s just that they honestly weren't.
I wanted this blog to be real, or at least as real as an interweb blog written by me and read by you, could be. I feel like I haven’t achieved that. I felt like my blog was getting away from me. I’m a control freak and to me, my blog was getting out of control. When I started this blog I wanted it to express how visual of a person I am. I wanted this blog to avoid the overuse of “lovely” and “gorgeous” and all the fluff that I’ve seen in the blogosphere.
I have felt so much pressure throughout this year of blogging to be so perfect. It’s in the language that bloggers use (like “lovely” or “gorgeous”) and I found myself catering to this language. I also found myself writing posts on what other people would like. I scratched dozens of ideas because I thought they might be too weird.
My idea for the baseline of what I want to express hasn't changed. It’s just my gumption… or maybe execution... that has. I feel like I have made some great successes with my blog. Or at least as a blogger. HTML no longer gives me shivers, I upgraded the design of my blog immensely, and I got reads on my posts. While these are all successes they feel somewhat disingenuous to me. I felt my writer's voice becoming shaky as I reconsidered whether sentences would push people away. I'd judge is this “blogger enough” too much and obsess over an unachievable white background for a picture. I feel that my blog lost the “me” in it.
Additionally, I am a completely different writer than I was a year ago. I am a journalism major/ focus in school and I hadn’t been involved in Journalism at all before. I was a somewhat poet/ writer/ mainly beauty enthusiasts who was just looking for someone to talk to about lipstick online. If you boil it down, that’s what I still am. I just want the delivery of my posts to be different.
It is on that note that I’m sure there will be no more “lovelies” sprinkled in with words that mean less than they could. I want this blog to be beauty and style journalism (by a wannabe journalist) with the same goal of bringing people together over common concepts. I want it to be fun but to mean more.
This letter is from me to you. I wanted to write it frankly. For it to resemble the frankness and honesty that I am injecting into this blog. I am also writing it to say that I have to be more unapologetic. I have things to say that are different and I want this to function as a site that offers something unique. So, I’m writing to say that change is coming.
I don’t want to give it all away because I’ve been working on it for a while. But, it’s more fashion posts written with an inquisitive eye. I’ll be questioning the boots, the heels, the prints, and still encouraging them. I’ll be writing posts on beauty that don’t just haul products. I want to talk about the reason that something was released. The nitty gritty of the very not-nitty-not-gritty beauty industry. I am currently switching my writing style to include quotes from other bloggers. I’m also thinking that the word “posts” is going to be officially replaced by “article”. I want to share the opinions of others in the beauty community and support their blogs through my posts.
Finally, I wanted to say thank you. This blog would be nothing without you reading it. Through my inconsistent posting and sometimes basic musing you still read on. I’m forever grateful for that and I can't wait for you to read what’s to come. It’s really going to be exciting!
Sincerely,
Brynn