welcome.
5 minute read.
Hi there! So what is this about? Starting a blog is something that I have tried to do since blogs became a thing. Or when they became a thing in the sphere of my world. Blogs have technically been around since 1995. I was ten then. My experience with computers at ten were: Dad worked with them, & when it was your turn to use one at school it was the best damn day of your young life. So, I wouldn’t have started a blog since blogs were born.
I don’t think I want to, or need to explain the explosion of the internet, social media, & how it has impacted our lives; I may save that for some future content. I was probably in my mid-twenties when I first began to really notice blogs. Fashion blogs mainly. I loved the accompanying cool photos posted by these effortlessly cool young things. I wanted to be them. Much of these first blogs were mainly online public photo diaries, & when I think about it now I liken them to a very early instagram. Cory Kennedy’s Nylon era, MySpace & Tumblr. Disney Roller Girl, Liv Purvis, I Covet Thee to name a few were my go-to blogs. There are a few degrees of variation between these ‘creators’ as we have now penned them, but I think what initially drew me to each of these blogs was that each of these girls had seemingly defined their style, thus that meant to me, they had defined themselves. They knew who they were. & I envied that. I thought an online documentation of my own styling journey would help me find that identity. Like a lot of Millennial women, fashion was a statement, as well as a status. I spent much of my social media time, or blog time, reading fashion blogs, staring at lifestyle photos, reading weight loss blogs. I’ve aways had a vested interest in fashion (& I still do), & back then, being a slave to the fast fashion machine, I wanted to have a very fashion focused blog. But how do you stand out in a sea of fashion blogs?
I have spent 37 years (I am 36 at the time of writing) trying to discover & know myself. I am a self proclaimed sheep, trying to fit in, trying to find my place. A self proclaimed sheep & the monster machine that is social media can be a dangerous combination. There are so many pros & cons with the growth of social media & I’ve just about experienced about every single one of them. Now this topic will make content someday in my little corner of the internet, as we all know what we present/see online is absolutely only a snap shot of our/their lives; again varying degrees of ‘snap’ by person. Anyway, back to the birthing process of the blog.
In 2014, which was undoubtedly the most life changing year I’ve thus far experienced, I finally penned a name for the blog I wanted to create. ‘its another blog’ was born. My first attempt at trying to create a blog that was ‘different’, was by acknowledging that really, it wasn’t. I imagined that I would be able to showcase outfits, show case recipes, maybe chuck in a little bit of lifestyle? One of my first excursions was ordering some clothes from the internet, dressing my sister up, borrowing my step dads SLR camera & trapsing around Dorset taking my first content pictures. This was a month or so after I lost my Dad very suddenly to cancer. A lot happens in your head, heart & soul when you lose a loved one. One instinct is to keep busy, & another to live your life & find your true purpose. I wrote one post, it was short, & mainly in very Cory Kennedy style, I focused on the photos. I then did nothing more.
Let’s skip forward to 2016. I take a vested interest in mental health & nutrition, for research & interest in my own mental & physical health. I start listening to Laura Thomas’ podcast ‘Don’t Salt my Game’ in which Laura (a phd certified registered nutritionist), very passionately shares information via her podcast (& also on her blog) on nutrition. I also watch Natacha Oceane on YouTube, mainly for workout inspiration, but also become invested in her scientific approach to training. These girls LOVE science. They researched EVERYTHING. Anything they said did not come without a reference. I wanted to do that, so I start a masters in Psychology in 2017.
Psychology was something my young mind took an interest in, but for most of my life I thought I was more of an arts &/or humanities student. Science was dull, & too informed & specific. MY GOODNESS I WAS WRONG. I even enjoy maths nowadays. My undergrad degree is in English Literature (I like reading) & Drama (I wanted to be an actor, don’t ya know). The masters (which actually ended up finishing as a postgrad after deciding not to fulfil the dissertation part of the course for various reasons), was the toughest thing I’ve ever done in my life, but one of the most fulfilling. I’m not an academic, & thus from here thought, hey, how about my dead blog space being used as my own further exploration of all things psychology & mental health, & my own journey of trying to figure out this goddamn life.
& there is sat dormant, pretty much until now, 2022. Since 2020, I have been the owner of a domain name www.itsanotherblog.co.uk. & from now on, I hope to not have a dead blog space. Over the past two (covid) years, beyond the postgrad research, I have had the realisation that within this online world, we create our own echo chambers. Our algorithms repeatedly show us the same thing, in different forms. & that almost anyone can write something, & put it on the internet. This topic again, I want to dedicate content time to, to help not just myself understand, but for anyone else (lol) who wishes to read this less dead-spaced blog.
I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two years on my personal instagram shouting opinions & sharing posts at the tip of my fingertips. I want to become more informed on the things that matter to me. I want to research, read, think & write about these things. & hopefully, share here. Its a cathartic exercise for me, & hopefully gives me a chance to channel the one million thoughts I have in my head into one post (with accompanying cool pictures like those cool kids), & learn about the one million things going on.
Expect a lot of mental health, psychology, navigating the thirties +, food, sustainability, & whatever else may pique my interest at the time. Most of all, I want this space to be somewhere for me & anyone else who is involved to grow, learn, discuss & form a thought on. We are ever evolving, much like this blog.
[…] I will use my experience as an example; as I mentioned in my welcome post(which you can read here, in 2014 my Dad was diagnosed with bowel cancer About a month later it was confirmed as stage four […]