Look Who Decided To Show Up…Again

My last post was February 23rd of this year. In my (almost) 10 years of blogging, I’ve NEVER taken more than a few weeks off. I knew this time was very different. I’d be lying if I said life hasn’t been weird lately. A lot has happened. A lot has changed. I’m not even sure where to begin though. So this post will be more of a rant than anything. I’m going to try and organize them based on my thought process since publishing my last post, what has happened in life, and so on.

Buckle up, baby.

I just didn’t want to blog

Simply put: I didn’t know what to write about. I started just doing “Daily Outfits”, but that felt like such a copout to me. Since 2012, I’ve prided myself on being a blogger first. So to put up a mirror pic with some links just didn’t feel very me. If I was cranking out other content, I would 10000% not mind those kind of posts. That’s not why I want you to come to this website. I didn’t feel inspired by anything. I’ve spent years brainstorming topics to write long form content. I’ve spent a lot of money shooting outfits. When you do something for so long, you just assume it becomes second nature. I felt so stagnant — everything was just happening over and over and over. Until I hit a major wall when it came to content. So I got nervous, and pulled away from something that was consistently in my life for years.

And then something else happened.

I lost my job

Yeah, you read that right. In April, I lost my job. While I was kind of expecting it to happen, it still sucked. A LOT. Not only did I have to walk away from what I thought was my dream company, but I also had a lot of fear of what was to come — like you know, affording to live. Luckily, I had a few interviews since I was anticipating what was coming. I allowed myself to be sad for like a day or two, and then I really leaned into this new season of life. I tried to go into the mindset of “everything will work out in the end”.

And then something else happened…again.

I started a new job

Since losing my job, everything TRULY turned around within one month. I landed a job at a company I’ve known and loved since I started this blog (I mean just LOOK at this outfit. Quintessential J.Crew). I wrote about my first day a bit more in this post. While the excitement of being at this new company, working on a very new to me category, and being on a new team with new people was really promising, something was still weighing me down. In a way, I feel like I also spent the last few months just waiting for everything to come crashing down? Because seriously…how did I get so lucky? It almost was like I felt that I wasn’t worthy of this new job, you know?

I didn’t want to be an influencer anymore

Every day you hear more and more about the success of people on social media. Overnight, someone new becomes an “instant success”. We see the viral videos of “How I grew my following by 10,000 in 2 days”. We are ALWAYS consuming. It doesn’t stop. I was getting settled into my new role. I was annoyed that everyone I followed seemed to be focusing on negative things (i.e. any form of an algorithm on any social media platform). I wasn’t seeing brand deals I was seeing the past. The imposter syndrome settled in. So I just stopped caring, honestly. If being a successful blogger means giving up personal space to my camera, I don’t want it.

I stopped focusing on numbers, and just posted whatever I want. I feel like I’ve always sort of had this lens, but now it’s really less about this being a business. I’m mainly focused on living my actual life. If I happen to post my days on social media or on this blog, then so be it. But I’m sick of social media determining our self-worth. There’s too many people out there that are focused on going viral, having multiple zeroes next to your following and likes. Too many people willing to give up a lot of other things they’ve worked towards to live this “glamorous” influencer life. If this is the continued direction of the world of influencing, I didn’t want to be part of it.

So what does this mean?

I’m trying to go back to my roots and just not give a F U C K.

I want to provide tips based on my experience working in the fashion industry. I want to create meaningful connections with people who willingly choose to follow me and my life in New York. And that’s really it. I don’t care about the numbers – I don’t need them, I don’t think I ever have. I lost sight of how cool it’s been to have this space for almost ten years. But I have missed this creative outlet, so I want to get back to creating meaningful content that people need to read and/or see.