I feel like it's just a cold but I have to go to the doctor to check it out.
That's not why I'm here... I'm here because for the 4th year in a row, I've forgotten the blog's anniversary.
It's not that the date is not important to me, because it is; it's not that I'm not good with dates, because I am. I don't have a reason... it just sneaks up on me every year.
5 years ago today I decided to start this little thing called Royally Pink.
I was home for the summer from my sophomore year of college and missing my sorority sisters and Iona desperately. I was working at a frozen yogurt shop, living at my aunt's house, and was kind of bored. I knew I had to start thinking of my future, of internships and jobs. It was the last summer that I truly had to myself knowing I still had some time.
Somehow, I stumbled onto Carly's blog, "The College Prepster" and was entralled with it. What was a blog? She posted every day? She got free stuff and took these gorgeous photographs? What was this world I had just stepped into?
I became addicted and read almost every post on her blog. She had just graduated college and was moving to New York to work at Levo League (a website I loved almost as much as I loved her blog).
I was a writer by nature and after obsessively reading TCP, I figured I'd be able to do this too. I had a lot to say on a lot of different topics and I knew people around me didn't care to hear, so why not tell people on the Internet?
Here is my first post, 5 years ago *yesterday* Even back then, I was blogging about beauty and was a shopping addict.
I've learned a lot since that post went live:
- Numbers and statistics aren't everything
- Be authentic; write as if you were speaking to your readers
- If you need to speak a day or two to gather yourself, take that time. You're not being graded.
- Have a good, clean layout that you enjoy looking at; if you want to change it, change it.
- Write about things that are important to you, even if you think no one wants to read it.
I've written 1,114 posts on this blog over the past 5 years. I used to write 7 days a week, then brought it down to 5, but senior year of college I fell off the wagon a bit. I used to get really hard on myself about missing a day of blogs but I realized it's quality, not quanity, when it comes to posts. I'd rather produce one great post a week than stress and rush about throwing together posts that aren't great.
The blogging arena has changed quite a bit too. There are more fulltime bloggers now more than ever and when I started this 5 years ago, I didn't think blogging was a job. I would love to blog full time and I think that would be my goal, but not right now.
I love having this outlet, I love sharing everything with all of you, and it's because of everyone who has ever clicked on my blog that I can blog for 5 years. I didn't think I could make it to a milestone like this but I'm really proud.
Happy birthday, Royally Pink!
xoxo
B
Add your comment