For The Love of Blogging

I admit it. I've been M.I.A. lately. Okay, a lot lately. You may not have noticed it, but I've felt it. I thought it was just a case of blogger burnout (oh yes, it's real), and that I would snap out of it. That, just like writers block, it would eventually be washed away with new inspiration. Nope. I was wrong. It wasn't blogger burnout that was holding me back. I wasn't lacking in inspiration; I could think of 10 new blog post ideas just on my walk to the train. So what was it? What was killing my drive?

For The Love of Blogging

A little background here: I work in Digital Marketing during the day, meaning that I spend a LOT of time online. Like, A LOT. I started this blog a few years back as an outlet for sharing items from the Internet that were inspiring to me, developing my personal style, sharing craft tutorials, and also promoting my Etsy store. Yea, that's a lot. And it doesn't really have a direction, does it? So, in my infinite digital marketing wisdom, I decided that I needed to turn myself into a brand (like we all do, right?), find a direction, and gain those branding characteristics that I was lacking such as a color scheme, unified design aesthetic, etc. Yea, boring.

So I tried that whole thing for a long time. Turning Stranger Than Vintage into a brand was the goal and I set forth to accomplish it! But what ended up happening is that I lost the me part of it all somewhere along the way. I started focusing on posts that got a lot of clicks and dropped the ones that weren't doing so well, but I liked writing anyway. And I got bored. I GOT SO BORED.

I bet you're thinking "what? why?" That's the same thing I would think every time I sat down to write a post. I was bored and I hated doing it, so why did I keep doing it? Here's a lesson about Maggie: Maggie does not like to be bored. Maggie will stop doing things immediately if they bore her. (Maggie also likes referring to herself in the 3rd person, apparently.) So I stopped. It became harder and harder to want to write for this blog, so I stopped.

Yet, I missed it. I missed having a blog, having somewhere to share cool things, and getting reactions from other people online who agreed that "yep, that thing is cool." Why did I miss this thing that I had grown to hate so much? It took me a long time, but I finally figured out the problem. Blogging had become a chore and I wasn't myself on here anymore, I was a freelancer (literally, free) working for a brand whose message I was trying to make uniform and that is boring. I am not uniform! I'm crazy and eclectic and fucking weird, just like I'm sure we all are and so is Stranger Than Vintage. I was holding back and not writing what I wanted to write on my own blog! That's what trying to meet ideals you don't even understand will get you - bored and unhappy.

This is me starting over. I am not a brand, I'm just a girl who likes to sell gorgeous, goofy, weird vintage treasures, loves interior design, and loves to craft. If that doesn't make a lick of sense to anyone, that's okay, because I want to sit here and put all my energy into something that I think is awesome, not into something that I think the world might think is kinda okay.

So, since going forward this might not be exactly the same blog you were used to reading, here are a few cliff notes about me so it's not a crash landing:

• I'm a writer. I can be verbose. Sometimes, stuff doesn't make any sense to anyone but me. Sorry in advance. You can just skip over the writing part and look at the pretty pictures anyway. :)
• I can get really into things. Like REALLY. There might be multiple posts on leopard print or kitchen backsplashes in one week. This will pass.
• I like to swear. Especially to emphasize a point. I know it's not lady-like or the classiest way to write, but hey, it's the Internet. You can't hear how excited I am. 
• I like vintage, interior design, art, photography, fashion, and crafts. Some mixture of all of these should be expected. 
• I am trying to support my unruly yarn buying habit (this is not a joke, people), so there will be some posts with affiliate links, there will be ads, and I will be trying to sell you things on occasion. Mind you, this will not be all the time and I promise that it will only be things that I myself would also buy (unless it's a Google Ad, then we're both kinda outta luck there). 

This is my blogging manifesto. No more faking. No more posting for the sake of posting. No more holding back what I think. I am not a brand, I'm just me.