The Thing About Blogging Is..
It used to be fun.Do you remember that? People used to blog.. FOR FUN! Perhaps there were a few business minded, savvy bloggers who knew it could lead to something more but for the most part everyone started out because it was something they genuinely enjoyed. There was no pressure, nobody cared about stats beyond the page counter in your sidebar and NOBODY was getting paid. Money complicates EVERYTHING. Whether it be from the bloggers side (temptation to lie for pay) or the readers side (resentment and suspicion) money is what changed blogging, there's no question.I don't really like to blog about blogging because I don't feel like it's an interesting subject for the average reader but whether you write a blog or not you know something is different. It's a much talked about subject on social media, the changing landscape and whether blogging is a dying media and honestly? I don't know. Once upon a time I said I thought YouTube had a shelf life for me but that I'd blog forever, these days I feel quite the opposite. Blogs are losing their personality, whether it's because the blogger is bored or the content is too frequently sponsored there are only a handful of blogs I still visit for anything beyond product swatches.Those I do enjoy tend to fall in to the family/lifestyle category rather than beauty and so in turn that's the direction my own site has taken. I still love beauty but I can't pretend to be interested enough in one single lipstick to write 3 paragraphs about it anymore. It feels forced and as I get older I'm really not into faking ANYTHING. I'd rather write about experiences and my life than what I'm wearing on my face and that's what I'd rather read about too. Some things are just easier to chat about than they are to type up and my latest beauty favourites are a perfect example.I don't think about money when I blog anymore, I share what I like and if ad revenue comes in then great but I don't feel that pressure to post daily or to post what will be popular, it's not a factor. I totally lost interest in the whole thing last year (as I've spoken about at length before) but after really thinking about why I realised it wasn't fun anymore. It's hard to get that back once your hobby has become your job but it's only a great job if you still love doing it!Hopefully you still have blogs you enjoy reading, if you have any lifestyle favourites/parenting blogs you want to recommend I'd love to hear from you.. and if you write a blog, don't forget why you started!