{This post is dedicated to all the UK beauty bloggers who have inspired me to do what they do.}
When I first started blogging, it was because I wanted to document my adventures and explorations in the beauty world. I wanted to share with anyone who was interested in beauty my finds and pretty product packaging. I wanted to talk about what worked for me and what didn’t, what I couldn’t live without and what the disappointing misses were. Beauty blogging began as a way for me to take note of ingredients that I would fall in love with, and ingredients that my skin should never get within a mile of. It was such a pretty, exciting project to embark on!
But somewhere along the way, it seemed to lose the lustre it once had. It seemed like almost everybody was now a beauty blogger, and my content wasn’t exciting or special anymore. I was trying my very best to “keep up,” even though I knew that from the moment I signed my name on the dotted line to be a teacher several years ago, my blogging career would die. I should have trusted my gut feeling and focused instead on other things, such as making beauty blogging fun for me again, but I guess I’m not one to give up easily.
That orange flame never came back. But in the past months, something else took its place – a cotton candy pink unicorn flame of fairy dust and gold shimmer.
In any case, it has been such a crazy roller coaster ride, trying to blog about beauty and teach at the same time – because people couldn’t see me as my two separate identities, but merged them all the time in cases where they shouldn’t have. Just because I was blogging about my next favourite lipstick (a rather frivolous thing to do), didn’t mean I couldn’t also be professional in the classroom. The saddest thing was that I had saved enough to buy myself a DSLR for filming video tutorials but it came at the wrong time and I had to put off filming videos till years later. I wanted to keep the two me’s separate, but it was impossible.
It was also a constant battle to always try to make every single blog post better than the last. “If you wouldn’t put a post in your blogging resume, it means you had failed in the creation of that post,” said a blogging professional. That got to me, because I realised that I didn’t really have Instagram-worthy posts. Who was I kidding? I didn’t have good lighting (was still staying in an apartment with no window that would provide the dispersed, natural sunlight I needed), there was practically no space for me to do flatlays with white backgrounds, I didn’t have an available-at-request Instagram boyfriend or photographer who would work for me for free, my skin was allergic to every other ingredient… even when sponsorship requests were coming in. In short, I had opportunities but lost it all because of limitations in what I could do, and there was no way I could have overcome that.
Beauty blogging became un-fun. It became something I had to do to keep the makeup-loving side of me alive amidst all the other commitments I seemingly had to prioritise because those were the things other people expected me to take seriously. Blogging was me desperately fanning a dead flame, hoping to supply enough oxygen to keep that glow lit up so that my dream wouldn’t completely fade to nothing, and instead would still have the chance to be revived.
That orange flame never came back. But in the past months, something else took its place – a cotton candy pink unicorn flame of fairy dust and gold shimmer. Fine, I am sprouting rubbish but you get the idea. I’m dusting the ash off my Balmain shoulder pads and re-inventing this space. Blogging now feels new and exciting again because I’m returning to the basics of doing it – and it is liberating.
I am now still blogging because, apart from me no longer working in the public sector, I like doing it and I am good at writing and photography. Blogging is not a priority, and because it isn’t, I am free to make my own choices. I am blogging not because I need or want sponsorships to prove that I’m worthy as a blogger; I’m blogging because I still want to share with the world – with you – my beauty escapades. I’m blogging because I want to go on a journey with you to a better way of life, or a more hygge way of living (I’m super into everything hyggelig at the moment).
I’ve shut out the noise and distractions, and really just gone head first into the intent of creating each post. I don’t care how my blog’s Instagram feed looks because now I don’t need it to be professional-looking. I don’t answer to brands breathing down my neck after giving me tons of freebies that I don’t need. Although I still do sometimes feature sponsored products and new launches, they’re not the basis of this blog and they never will be. I can write about all the hygge and beauty and France I like because that’s what the new me is all about. And I invite you to share this journey with me.
They say that when a door closes, another one opens. Or you can choose to open the door again because that’s how doors work – and that’s what I’m doing.
Hello you. My life is mine, and I’m taking it back.
Love,
Roxanne