My New Year’s dress, oooh sparkly! – £52 Elise Ryan via Asos
Hello bloggy friends! I wanted to apologise for my relative absence over the past month or two. I will do this in a moment, but for those of you who really don’t care, or just read blogs for the pretty shiny things (which is fine and I totally do that too) I have included a sneak preview of my makeup storage, which I will be doing a video on shortly, and a picture of my New Year’s dress, which I am completely in love with, and can’t wait to wear. It’s my ‘princess dress’. Here is a link to it if you would like to buy it for yourself.
When I first started my blog, I promised myself that I would never blog if my heart wasn’t in it, and my blog would be for me and what I loved. This is something that I have stuck with through out, and intend to do so until the end of time.
There are a few reasons for this absence, the most notable being I really didn’t have anything much to blog about. I like to blog about stuff I really love, and unless I go out and buy things, honestly my beauty routine stays pretty much the same. I’ll get into that more in a bit. The one thing I have been feeling like I want to do more is outfit posts. This is essentially the thing that first drew me to blogging, but funnily enough the thing I’ve actually done the least. My reasons for this have been that firstly I found it awkward taking pictures in my bedroom, and only recently found a good spot to take them outside, but also because I don’t buy clothes very often, and feel bad showing you things that aren’t currently available in shops. I am considering just going for it anyway, as I guess it could serve as inspiration. We shall see.
The other major factor has been my finances. Remember No Spend October? If you don’t, you can read all about it here but basically in October I decided that I wanted to see whether I was spending extravagantly, or whether I just wasn’t earning enough, and challenge myself to spend as little as possible. This basically lead to a bit of a ‘lightbulb moment’ for me – at the age of 23, I have ridiculous levels of debt, which in my defence were partially racked up due to a period of unemployment, but still, I could have a degree for this level of expenditure, yet all I have to show for it is the clothes on my back and the food in my body. I actually don’t spend extravagantly, was the gist of my No Spend Challenge. I actually barely buy anything.
Regardless of how I got into this mess, (which is a bit of a boring story which I will tell another time if anybody actually wants to hear it, or feels like knowing might help them) my focus now is on shifting it once and for all so that my income is actually my own. Contrary to popular belief, blogging is not some kind of cash cow, you don’t make megabucks just because you have a blog, and yes, occasionally you get sent free products, which you would otherwise have had to buy, and this is nice, but this is not nearly as often as is perceived, and in my entire time blogging I really haven’t made much money at all. Which isn’t my reason for blogging, so it’s fine. I blog because I enjoy it and will continue to do so. But it does mean that I needed to start concentrating purely on my 9-5 job, and any other little projects I could work on that would bring in a bit of extra cash to throw at loans and credit cards. So that is what I have been doing. I’m sorry that I didn’t bring you all along for the ride, but it hasn’t really been a very exciting ride. Mostly just spreadsheets and budgeting and lots of surveys.
Obviously this has lead to me not really buying anything, not having anything new to talk about, and feeling okay about that. Despite being approached about a couple of sponsored posts in this time, I haven’t put anything up. Even if I would be being paid for it, which obviously would help me reach my goal of debt payments, if it doesn’t feel right for my blog, it won’t get posted. I’d rather you guys put up with radio silence than filler content that interests nobody. So sorry, but also not sorry?
I’ve also not really been reading as many blogs as usual because I felt like I was seeing too many things I wanted to spend money on. So sorry if you are used to receiving comments from me daily and this has stopped, it’s nothing personal, I’ve just been trying not to enable myself! The love is still there!
I am really looking forward to Christmas, so I am planning a few things for during/after the whole festive period, and I also have a few videos coming up soon again too. I’m finding it a lot easier to feel inspired when it comes to YouTube than blogging these days, but haven’t had the time to actually film or edit!
What are you all doing for Christmas? What have you been upto?
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