Real Talk: New Landing Page, Blogging Finally Resumes and Getting Out of my Head
Hello there! If you haven’t been on my website for a while, I want to welcome you back again. And yes, my homepage has finally gotten a much needed update! Hopefully, you like it and the upcoming changes on the website and blogging content!
So, it has been a while since I've consistently posted anything on my website. I’ve tried a little bit this Spring but I didn’t really get into it as I have before. To be honest, I was feeling very uninspired and didn’t really know where I wanted to take my blogging. I wasn’t sure what I really wanted to do with it anymore. When I started this website and blog, aside from housing my professional makeup artist portfolio, I wanted it to be my escape where I can talk about and share my creative interests be it in beauty, fashion, travel, reading, cooking, etc. I must admit that while I did try to talk about different subjects on my posts, I definitely got comfortable posting about makeup — especially reviews of products. It became a default subject to talk about because it took a lot less effort for me and I was constantly buying new makeup products that it made sense that I talked about them; besides, I didn’t have to put myself so visibly on my blog when I was doing reviews. It was all about the product and their performance, and I can safely hide behind my written thoughts. Eventually, writing review after review of products started feeling frivolous and the overwhelm I felt with the excessive makeup product launches from all the makeup brands plus the saturation of the beauty community in social media left me feeling overloaded and less interested in pursuing beauty blogging.
Wait what?!? HOLD UP!
Yes, I just did write that, but let me finish…
I’ve always wanted to blog, ever since I’ve watched my first beauty tutorial on YouTube back in 2007 and discovered the beauty and fashion community then (oh, how different it was). Even when I took breaks away from blogging, something inside me keeps wanting to go back this path, no matter how busy life has gotten for me. While I still enjoyed trying out makeup products and still wanted to share it, I felt like I needed a space away from it all to reconfigure and go back to the main purpose of WHY I created this website in the first place. Taking that time made me realize that while I did try to blog consistently and create new content as much a I can before, I neglected turning my website and blogging into what I envisioned it to become in the beginning. I succumbed to this self-imposed pressure to post consistently and make everything look perfect (in my eyes), which honestly, became overwhelming to me and I was just turned off from doing anything altogether. Also, I kept giving my self excuses and more time to “attempt” taking my blog to the next level (hello makeup tutorials and videos). I was plagued with a lot of self doubt and felt that people wouldn’t be interested in hearing what I have to talk about. I also was very afraid of putting myself out there and make myself more visible on my blog, simply because I was not sure if I’d want to be so openly judged by strangers who don’t really know me.
The good thing about taking a break is that it gave me time to consider what I enjoyed about blogging and gave me a lot of perspective into why I really wanted to pursue it , what it meant to myself outside of what others might think, and what it was that I knew deep down that I could offer. For a while, I was drowning in all of the doubt and noise in my head that I’ve forgotten why I’ve decided to start my website — it was to have a fun creative outlet that showed who I was and my love for all the beautiful things life can offer. I just needed a little reminder of that young girl years ago who lit up with excitement to share her thoughts on all things beauty!
“After all big accomplishments are usually done from incremental actions that add up and make a progress. ”
A few things I learned is that I need to get over waiting for every little thing to be perfect and fall into place. I just need to start getting things done and work on improving along the way. Maybe my photography quality isn’t as great as I want it to be for my website yet or maybe my backgrounds and lighting needs to be better, but it doesn’t matter — I know that in time I’ll get there. I just need to keep going and trust in the process. After all big accomplishments are usually done from incremental actions that add up and make a progress. I also need to get over myself and the fear of judgment from anyone else. While the thought of putting myself out there without anything holding me back scares me, letting it stop me from pursuing what I want deep down would be a disservice to myself. As cliche as this will sound, at the end of the day, I would be more happy doing me than being afraid of the potential judgement from others. Lastly, something I’m definitely learning is that while blogging seems pretty and frivolous - even vain at times - to the casual onlooker, it takes a lot of courage and bravery to put yourself out there for everyone to see.
So here we go…to following and sharing my passions that uniquely shows me with all the zest life offers!
With all that being said, I will leave you with this quote:
“Just don’t give up trying to do what you really want to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don’t think you can go wrong.”
