One Year of Life According To Francesca

Who would have thought that 365 days and over 370 posts later that I would still be at this? I've had this blog (under several different names) since the summer of 2012, but it wasn't until the middle of March last spring that I looked at my blog and thought, "I could do better than this." So I bought a domain name, tweaked my template, and dove right into daily posts.

When I say I blog daily, people gasp and get confused and either ask what a blog is or how I could possibly blog every day. I think my friends (and any regular readers) (by the way, do I have regular readers? I would literally cry if I did. I want to hug every one of you if you put up with me on a daily basis) understand that not every day is a massive advice post. Some days I just post pictures of clothes that I want, other days I step onto a soap box and preach the opinions I can no longer suppress (*cough cough* my Fifty Shades of Grey post *cough cough*). But I genuinely like every post I put up, no matter how much text goes along with it because I just genuinely love blogging.

I don't expect everybody to get it. I try to explain it the best I can, but sometimes I can't even explain it. Blogging has always been natural to me. I've had a Blogger account since middle school and have been using most social media sites since then as well, with the exception of Instagram which came during my senior year. It was one of those things where I assumed everybody did it in their own way, whether it was micro-blogging with Tumblr or keeping secret blogs on Blogger like I did. Then, as I got older and more into fashion, beauty, and lifestyle, I saw that there was a little online niche for writing about those things. I'd always loved magazines, at first for the pictures, and then for the content. Then I fell in love with beauty videos on YouTube. A lot of the "gurus" I watched had blogs as well, which is how I ended up stumbling upon some of my favorite blogs today.

Blogging once every few weeks (or months) was more of a hobby that I kept on the back burner behind school and extracurriculars) because I couldn't dedicate the time and energy I wanted into it. But as I started reading more and more blogs my freshman year of college (I read a lot of The College Prepster and ManRepeller), I started to want to do it. Not as competition, not as a means to really do anything with it besides write and maybe help a few people with me (let's be real here) unqualified advice. I wanted to keep myself writing every day, keep the creative juices flowing, without having to delve into a whole alternate universe like I would have to in my creative writing projects. I just wanted to write about, well, me—my life, my friends, my likes, my dislikes, the world around me—and I knew blogs were the place to do that.

When I do things, I go all in. So when I decided I wanted to "be a blogger" (whatever that means!), I went big. I bought domain name, I switched to daily posts, and I haven't looked back. Sometimes it's daunting to look at a completely empty week in my blogging agenda, but then I realize that I have a clean slate of topics to write about and I get excited. That's seven days of things I get to write about, two of them being about things I've been loving and things I've been reading on the internet. I'm getting giddy just thinking about what's going to be on my blog next week!

I know I talk a lot, so I'm going to wrap up this little gushing session with a few thank you's: thanks to my mom, who I'm pretty sure was the only person reading this for a while; to my friends who text me things I've said on my blog or even give it the time of day...and also for not caring that I name drop you all of the time in order to make it seem like I actually have friends; to Harry Styles for merely existing and for showing up in at least half of my posts, one way or another; to Her Campus because life without a supportive blogging community would be so dull; and to you, the beautiful person reading this post right now, and to anybody who has read even a single post. My heart is swelling like the Grinch's right now.

To wrap up my one year anniversary post, here are my personal favorite posts that I've written in the past year.

Top Ten Personal Favorite Posts:

1. Finding Time For Yourself In College, in which I talk about ways to make time for all of your hobbies and friends.

2. Things I Hope Are Acceptable In 2015, in which I rant about selfies, prejudice, and quote Taylor Swift.

3. 10 Things I've Learned About Myself In 2014, in which I talk about my self-discoveries (and barely mention Harry Styles)

4. Don't Be Such A Tulle, in which I wear my dream tulle skirt for my first brand collaboration.

5. The Anatomy of a Good College Paper, in which I have no idea why this post gets so many views, but I'm glad people seem to enjoy my paper writing technique.

6. How To Motivate the Unmotivated, in which I take my lack of motivation to do schoolwork and write a blog post about it instead of actually doing my work.

7. Francesca's Focus: Harry Styles' Headscarves (And A Wearable Version), in which a joke post went way, way too far (and remains in my top ten most popular posts...talk about embarrassing).

8. How To Cook When You're Not Sure How, in which I try to be funny, but I really am a terrible cook and don't know what I'm doing half of the time.

9. "We Turn Skeletons Into Goddesses", in which I get serious and talk about body images and eating disorders (trigger warnings).

10. Tips For Writers, Via Dan O'Shannon, in which I skipped math class to listen to Dan O'Shannon talk and fill me with more insight about the real world of writing than any class ever could.

Here's to another year of Life According to Francesca! Cheers!