I’ve been mulling over this post for a while now, writing it paragraph by paragraph. I know you’ve probably seen dozens of similar blog titles, and the conclusion is the same: blogging can absolutely change your life and make you realize things you hadn’t thought of before. Today I wanted to share some of my blogging revelations that slowly made me into the person I am today. I guarantee that this isn’t another standard copy/paste inspired by someone else’s list!
NOBODY IS PERFECT:
How nice would it be if life was filled with nothing but flowers and colorful macarons, and by looking at some people’s blog posts and Instagram feeds that life looks like a reality. If you think everyone with a dreamy IG feed really lives in a huge house filled with white furniture, marble, peonies, and pretty decorative trays all over, think again. In reality more likely than not the “dreamy space” is made of 4×4 lightbox placed somewhere in the corner of a messy dark basement, and filled with cheap contact paper covered cardboard backgrounds, fake peonies bought on sale at Michael’s, and thrifted trays with cracks on the bottom. And let’s talk about those perfect selfies that make some of the most confident of us want to put a permanent paper bag on our heads. In the world of photography staging, strategic IG feed planning, and apps like Facetune, it’s just pointless trying to compare yourself to others. When Instagram first launched I was dead sure everybody else had this amazing life filled with unicorns and sunshine. Now that I have my own 4×4 lightbox in the corner of a messy office I know at least part of it is lab-created, so to speak. In the end it all comes down to having the right equipment/apps/props powered by your creativity, so if they can do it, you can do it too. “But I don’t have the money for a fancy DSLR!”, you say. First of all, a DSLR is not necessary, a phone with a decent camera and a couple editing apps like Snapseed and VSCO are enough to create beautiful photographs with dreamy filters. In fact, the camera I use to take photos for this blog is 7 years old, it has only 15mpx resolution which is just 2 more than Samsung Galaxy S4 that a lot of people have. So yes, if your phone model is sort of recent you can pretty much take as good or better pictures than my old DSLR.
ONE’S FAILURE IS ANOTHER’S SUCCESS:
I fall prey to this one all too often, and it’s something I really need to work on. Sometimes it’s important to remember that what seems like a failure to you may be something your followers could only dream of achieving [social media stats, pageviews, skin problems etc]. I found myself occasionally complaining about things that would belittle others’ aspirations, and I’ve learned that it was wrong to do that. It’s a hard thing to be mindful of because complaining about stuff is in our nature, #firstworldproblems and all, but it can be done and I’m trying to put in a lot of effort into making sure nobody is offended.
SPEAKING OF OFFENSE…:
We often say that people love to get offended by everything these days, but sometimes it’s hard to know how deeply someone is hurting over something you said on the Internet. I used to get a lot of hate mail when I ran a deal/freebie website, mostly from people who couldn’t snag something in time, blaming me for sharing the deal or promo too late. Glamorable barely gets any of that, but a couple weeks ago I received an email from an angry reader who said she will no longer read my blog because I mentioned that I support LGBTQ in my MAC Finally Free lipstick review. While I am totally against bigotry, religious or whatnot, instead of ignoring her and deleting the email like I used to do in the past I sincerely apologized for offending her feelings and for causing negative emotions, even if she won’t visit the site anymore. I did it for her, but honestly, doing this made me feel better, too. Lesson learned, being nicer to people who are angry with you pays off both ways.
PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT ON THE INTERNET:
Have you ever followed a bubbly youtuber that you could totally see yourself being friends with, only to meet her at some event and find out that she’s a typical mean girl? And what about that classy, calm, and reserved blogger who turned out to be a party girl that mastered the fine art of trucker vocabulary? You just never know on the Internet, people let you see only what they want you to see. Wish I could say that I’m different, but I’m probably doing the same thing unconsciously.
BLOGS I LOOK UP TO:
I used to admire all of the successful blogs just because they were successful and I wasn’t. After all, it’s not easy to make it in today’s blogosphere that is filled with millions of personal websites just like mine, so it’s hard to get discovered. I am subscribed to a lot of blog feeds, but after analyzing which articles actually grab my attention [beyond scrolling down just to see the pics and read the 2-sentence bottom line] I realized that there is one common tendency. The blogs I look up to combine high quality images, clean website design [regardless of the platform], and their blog posts actually teach me something. A fashion story to promote a clothing brand turned travel guide to the blogger’s latest vacation destination paired with dreamy photos from faraway lands? Sold! A beauty story with a clear brand feature that educates on certain ingredients or digs in for some cosmetic science? Amazing! Bringing science into a lipstick review sounds a bit ridiculous, but those same beauty bloggers managed to make it interesting beyond color pretty, lipstick red by adding a personal story to the article, so in the end I still learned something new. As soon as I realized that these are the blog posts I really want to read, I decided to try and be more like that myself. You can find some of my early attempts at writing more compelling content here, here, and here. What do you think?
My list was NOT inspired by any of these [or any other blog posts for that matter], but I loved reading the following posts from fellow bloggers:
- 5 Things I’ve Learned About Blogging by Wonder Forest
- Six Things I Learned in Six Months of Blogging by Time Travel Blonde
- 5 Things I’ve Learned From Blogging by Kate la Vie
- 5 things I learned {about blogging} in 2015 by A Subtle Revelry
Do you have any blogging revelations to share? What are some of your favorite bloggers that you admire? What frustrates you the most about blogging or bloggers you follow? Let me know in the comments below!
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