SophaaRambles Turns 5!

Sometimes I find it hard to fathom that today is the 5th Birthday of my blog! I've never been this committed to anything. I rarely give myself the credit I deserve for working on a passion project for so long so forgive me for being a tad self-indulgent today but is there a better time for indulgence other than a Birthday or Anniversary? I think not. As I have reached a rather big milestone on my blog, I thought I would let you in on some of the inner workings of SophaaRambles. Today I wanted to share some of the reasons I started my blog, how it has evolved and why I continue to work on it even though I make no money, receive no PR and I do it on top of working a full time job.

Why I Started My Blog

I did write a full blog post about this not too long ago but I thought I would give a little summary of Why I Started My Blog within this post. I started my blog a couple of days after I finished my degree. When I finished my degree I had no idea what to do with myself: I didn't have a job, I had no idea what I wanted to do and I had skipped every single life coaching session the Uni had provided. For 3 years I had been working towards a goal and it had been completed. At the time I was really into Youtube and blogs so I decided to create my own. I had no idea how long it would last but at least I would have something to do whilst I was looking for a job. At the time I didn't really know what my blog was going to be about, I just said it was going to be a generic lifestyle blog about anything and everything. You can still read my first blog post which explains all of this: The Beginning. My blog started with beauty, film reviews and my general interests. However, eventually I realised I just loved talking about beauty and very quickly it became about reviewing makeup.

I have always had an interest in beauty but I never thought I was into it enough to write a whole blog on it, turns out I am. Even though this is the fifth Birthday of my blog, I definitely have not been working on it that long. There have been long periods of time where I have lost my drive and passion for my blog which lead me to stop working on it. However, I have always gone back to it and since the start of 2017, I have been posting consistency.

During my break between 2014 and 2016 I started to work as a sales assistant within beauty and that was when my love for beauty really consumed me and I wanted to know everything about it. When I left that job, that was when I really went all in with the beauty blogging. When you work within beauty you get to talk to like minded people and it is something you talk about often, When I started my office job I really missed talking to people who had a keen interest in beauty and that was when I really kicked off the blog. I wanted an outlet for my beauty knowledge and a way to communicate with like minded people.

How has my Blog Changed

As I have mentioned I started out writing about everything but over time I narrowed it down to beauty and this year I have begun to include more fashion pieces but it was very much a natural progression. Beauty just turned out to be the subject that I most enjoyed writing about so I continued with what I enjoyed but the change in content has not been the only change to my blog over the past five years.

Other than layout changes and the obvious format changes there has been a huge change to the level of detail I will go into when I write a review. Looking back at some of my early posts they were literally a paragraph long whereas now they resemble an essay. Whenever someone catches me writing a blog post they always question if it is a dissertation, that is how long my posts are now. Not only that but I feel like I've gotten better at knowing what I am looking for and what I will write about when I come to work on a post. Creating/writing a post will always be my favourite part, the editing not so much. On the occasions when I do take a break from my blog, it is usually because I cannot face reading my own writing anymore. It gets to a point where I just think everything I've written is crap. When this happens I know I need to step away and usually it does the trick.

Another change comes within the pictures. Obviously over the years, I have gotten better at placing products and knowing good angles to take a picture at. I'm not saying I'm incredible now but I am certainly a lot better than when I first started. If you look at some of my early posts, I didn't even bother with pictures which seems ridiculous now but I was really self conscious about my photography. If I did include an image, it would only be one; now there are a minimum of 5 pictures in each post. Not only have the images changed in terms of the amount I post/take but I now also include selfies. For a long time I didn't want anyone to know that I wrote a blog, I felt really self-conscious and I didn't want people to judge me based on the fact that I wrote a blog so I never included pictures of myself. In my mind it was easier to deny it was me if there was no photo evidence. However I came to realise that I could talk about products all day but I never had any evidence to back up the points I was making so I slowly began to include pictures of myself to the point where I now think nothing of including one. I would say oddly enough that Instagram has helped me with this a lot because for some reason I don't feel as silly posting a selfie on there. Being able to include more pictures on my blog has made it more complete and to be honest makes me feel more like a proper blogger.

My blog has definitely made me more confident within the way I look and also my own opinion. I am no longer afraid to say something someone might not agree with. I didn't feel like I had a greater knowledge on a product than anyone else and really I still don't but I now don't mind if someone has a different opinion to me because at the end of the day that's all they are, opinions. Not only that but I now don't mind if those closest to me know about my blog and this is one of the biggest evolutions in my mindset about the blog. I always thought people would think it was quite juvenile of me to work on such a project. The first person I told was my brother because if he didn't take the piss out of me then no one else would. My brother didn't take the piss, nor did he think I was stupid. After this I felt safe telling my best friends and since then I've told a few more people. I still don't go around telling absolutely everyone but I also do not feel the same sense of fear when someone does find out about it.

Why Do I Continue to Work on my Blog?

Considering I started this at a time when I didn't really know what I was doing, I am still sort of stuck in that place. I have been in the same job for over 2 and a half years but it is not my endgame. I definitely would not want to do my job for the rest of my life; realistically I want to be a beauty editor but that seems like a pretty unachievable goal so to live out my fancy job I continue to work on my blog. It gives me the creative outlet I crave in work and it allows me to create a portfolio for any potential writing I could do.

I don't just write my blog based on the job goals I have but also simply because I enjoy it. If I did not enjoy it, there would be no chance I would continue it. Anyone who writes a blog will know the amount of work that goes into it. Just to create 1 post I: write the post in my notebook, type it, edit it, take pictures for my blog and Instagram and finally schedule the post and all relevant social media content. It is a lot of work and I have no moiety gain from doing it is. Plus it saves my friends from having to listen to me talking about beauty all the time. Through blogging I've spoken to a lot of people who have very similar interests to me and who also write incredible blogs themselves, there is a sense of community which I really appreciate.

Even though I might not have been completely dedicated to my blog for the past 5 years, it has been in existence for 5 years which is something that should be celebrated. Especially over the past two years, I have really worked hard on my blog and I am incredibly proud of everything I have done to forward it. It took me ages to start a Twitter and Instagram for my blog but now my Instagram has over 500 followers and I only created the account a year ago which might not seem like a lot but it is a lot to me.

For the foreseeable future I will continue to work on my blog and hope to progress it. If you do have any blog ideas you would like to see me do, feel free to comment and if you have any blog recommendations, leave me a comment I am always looking for new blogs to read. If you have ever considered starting a blog, I highly recommend doing so, don't worry about what people think, I can guarantee you will be surprised by the amount of people who take an interest in it.