Picture the scene.

It’s 2013 and you’ve just come home from work. After having your dinner and chilling out (or in my case, during my lunch break at work), you pop on the kettle, break open the web browser and proceed to open a plethora of blog site tabs ranging from beauty and skincare to fashion and lifestyle.

I remember the pre-Instagram blogging world so fondly. It was a time when blogging and sharing your interests were considered wholesome, passionate and fun. It was a time when we all blogged and created content because we genuinely enjoyed writing and engaging with followers. It was a time when we would all have sections on our Blogger (or if you were fancy, WordPress.org) sites detailing the links of our favourite blogger peers.

I would spend HOURS reading my favourite blogs, gaining inspiration from the plus-size fashion/self-love communities, picking up tips, tricks and comparing wrist swatches from the beauty girls and trying to emulate the latest recipes from amateur cooking bloggers of the day. Remember Follow Friday? Lookbook.com? Handpicked Media?

Ahhh the good old days of yore, when we were all young and somewhat wholesome. At that time, we had absolutely no idea how platforms like Instagram would change the entire trajectory of our lives and careers. Instagram created the opportunity for people to consume our content instantly, without having to read whole blocks of text and click on various links. For us, it definitely saved us time on uploading content and for those who weren’t the biggest fan of writing, it definitely became the easier option when creating.

As influencer marketing slowly crept into our lives, it became a race to see who would go completely freelance as a creator first, with a lot of us seeing that as the ultimate goal eventually. And why not? Influencer marketing is a very lucrative industry where people get paid based on sharing their thoughts/hobbies/crafts/talents and general interests. As the later years gave rise to the ‘mega influencer’, I started seeing a huge decline in written blog content. A lot of my peers over the next few years would stop posting, or delete their blogs altogether due to their popularity on Instagram.

I started my blog when I was in University back in 2008, and it’s so wild to look back over the last 14 years to see how blogging/content creating has evolved. What once started as a collective of individuals sharing their interests with the masses as a hobby has now turned into a worldwide billion-dollar industry where words like ‘talent agents’, ‘fair usage’, ‘engagement rate’ and ‘#AD’ are standard.

Don’t get me wrong, I am 100% a part of this new shift in content creating too! I too believe that I have evolved with different platforms. I have been fully self-employed as a content creator for three years now, and in that time, have tried to add a multitude of different strings to my bow. Not only am I a content creator, but I’m also:

• An Author
• A freelance journalist
• An advocate for self-love, body image and confidence
• A public speaker
• I consult from time to time

So I’ve definitely been working hard over the last few years.

This industry has granted me so many incredible opportunities and the chance to meet some amazing people but at the end of the day, I still do miss the days of sitting down with a hot cup of tea and reading 67 blog posts before going to bed. One of the reasons I decided to keep my blog active is due to my love of writing and my need to constantly get better at it. I haven’t been the best at updating it due to life being in the way, but this is something I definitely want to change in future.

Moving forward, my little space here will be home to a lot more travel posts and reviews, a few fashion bits here and there and of course, my thoughts and think pieces on things I may be feeling at any given time.

There’s still life in this ole’ blog yet!