When I began this little blog, almost 4 years ago now, it was such a simpler time. Everything was cute, and not remotely competitive, and the whole thing just really lit up a spark in me.

I began this journey by taking all of my photos on my little Samsung Galaxy S3 phone, having it leaning against a pile of books, or some other 'make-shift' tripod I would imagine up. All of my images would be square, as to fit the protocols of Instagram back in the day, and, to be honest, the image quality would be absolutely. shit. 

I wrote small blog posts, giving you run downs of my outfits, or little beauty reviews, and it was simply something I was doing to pass my time, as a hobby, and as a little creative outlet for myself. It was never something I sought out to be a job or profession in anyway.




"Making art shouldn't be a competition."

So considering the shit image quality and the small blog posts, you might be thinking 'Why on earth has she titled this blog post about stripping her blog back to basics?' , and, well, it's not the image quality and the amount of writing that I necessarily want to go back to, but it's the feeling that blogging used to give me.




Don't get me wrong, I've always loved blogging. That has never stopped. However, I've found that over the years, I have seemed to become more and more lost in this industry - forgetting myself, and my passions, multiple times along the way.

I see all these amazing bloggers, with amazing photos, amazing clothes, and amazing careers, and I just feel this intense urge to 'compete'.

At the end of the day, this is one of my jobs - I do this as a form of income. Competing is a part of being in this line of work.

The thing is though, within that urge to 'compete', I end up forgetting all the reasons I fell in love with all of this in the first place.



At the dawn (OF TIME) of my blogging journey, I fell in head over heels for taking my own photos. Self portraiture was my thing.

I loved standing in my garden, in the sunshine, changing from outfit to outfit, or using my white bedroom wall as a simplistic backdrop, whilst I'd stand dancing to some blaring music playing on my Spotify.

I loved editing my images and choosing which VSCO filter to use, and I loved learning to pose, and not being afraid to self-shoot in front of people.

That was one of the things I REALLY loved.




I also loved letting my images speak for themselves, not talking too much about an outfit, and just letting the images out into the world, without worrying about linking back to every product under the sun.

It was nice to just literally say 'here's today's outfit!', and have a big bunch of feedback from people, just from that.

It was nice to not always have to say a lot, or to over-explain myself.

That was another thing I loved.



Basically, what I'm getting at is, I miss when things were a little simpler.

I miss when I could just take a photo of my outfit, and that was it.

I miss when I didn't feel inferior to other bloggers because I don't have a photographer constantly on hold to snap my latest look.

I miss when I didn't always need to have something to say or some huge topic to rant about.

But, I guess I'm just trying to find a balance now.

"Let's take it back to the start."

I'd rather put content out there that I enjoyed creating, rather than trying to force out content that's just wayyyyy too hard work or stressful, just for the sake of 'competing'.

I want to feel the way I did when I first found my passion for this. I want to have that 'spark' back.


The content I'm loving making right now is such a mixture of 2014 Me and 2018 Me.

I love shooting basic photos, keeping to minimal backgrounds and self-portraiture, but have also found a passion for writing more, and discussing more lifestyle and mental health topics over the time - I've found my happy 'blogging' medium for now, but it's not to say I wouldn't strip it back to even more basics if I felt like I wanted to too in the future. Sometimes I don't always need to say as much, and I need to remember that!

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