One year ago today, I posted a blurry mirror photo of my outfit with a 3 lined introduction to this blog (you can read it here). I can't believe that my blog is one years old today! Time has flown by.

Although I wasn't exactly the most frequent blogger at first, I like to think that I've changed all of that over the last few months. I also hope that the content I'm creating nowadays is a significant improvement to what I was posting this time one year ago in terms of the photo and writing quality. 

I was going to talk about why I started blogging in the first place to celebrate my blog's birthday, however, if I'm being honest, I started blogging back when I was aged 14. I would set my little camera up on a crooked shelf, put the self timer on, stand in front of my bedroom door and take photos of my cringey outfits as well as write weekly summaries. I would end up deleting blogs and then starting up new ones again, only to delete that one as well. Safe to say, I didn't tell anyone about these blogs at the time. 

Things changed when I was about 16 as I shared a blog with my friend (you can read the blog here, eek!) I found it much easier to post when the blog belonged to two people instead of one and we could bounce ideas off of one another. We gathered a decent amount of followers which we were pretty delighted about! At the end of summer 2014 though, we stopped writing on the blog - we began to study for our A Levels and I don't think we were really that bothered about continuing writing it alongside our studies. 

But at the start of 2015, my friend, Hannah created a blog which immediately inspired me and I began to reminisce about blogging and sharing my mundane thoughts with the world. I decided to give blogging another go again but this time I eased into it and didn't put too much pressure on myself (hence the brief, 3 lined introduction) as I wanted to enjoy it. At first, I tended to post sporadically and simply post what I was wearing that day. Summer 2015 gave me a lot of time to focus on blogging and I really enjoyed it. Lush Basingstoke were asking for bloggers to come to their blogger event where they would give some demonstrations to us etc on Facebook and Hannah & I put our blogs down. I felt this sense of determination to blog more often once they invited me as I wanted to prove myself and since this was the first blogger event I would be attending, I wanted to feel and look the part (read that post here). Perhaps not the best reason to start blogging, but it worked for me since I realised at the Lush event that I wanted to remain a part of the blogging community and so all summer long I had the determination to blog. 

Eventually things died down a little bit in Autumn when I began university but oddly enough, I picked it all up again right at the end of October. I rediscovered my love of blogging and found it a great way of distracting myself from the rubbish time I was having at university. Once I dropped out of uni at the very beginning of December, I was allowed time to actually think about what I wanted to do next and also allowed me so much time to blog since I had no other commitments. This free time has made me enjoy blogging so much and engaging with fellow bloggers.

One of the main reasons why I started blogging though was because I actually enjoyed writing and hearing feedback from you lovely lot. I've always loved writing and capturing moments through a camera lens so honestly I'm just embracing this wonderful experience. And although blogging hasn't exactly been an easy journey for me (knowing that people IRL who I went to school with etc are reading this freaks me the fuck out - I always worry what other people think of me #irrationalfear) I'm slowly learning to make myself proud by doing whatever the hell I want to do.

I can't believe I've managed to keep this blog running for a year now - it feels like such a huge achievement for me. Blogging has helped me grow as a person, has helped me realise what career direction I want to go down and has taught me to embrace myself for who I am. I hope that in a years time I'll be looking back on my blog's second birthday and be proud of what I've accomplished in this space of time. I'd just like to say a massive thank you for reading my blog and dare I say it, following (hint, hint), but most of all for supporting me on this incredible adventure. I can't wait to share more moments with you in the future.