Six Years of Blogging + Why I Won't Give It Up

But Francesca, didn't you just have a post back in March about how it was the four year anniversary of Life According to Francesca? Why yes, yes I did. This blog as I'm sure most people besides my mom know it is only four years old. However, the blog itself dates all the way back to July of 2012 (tragically) which means that I've somehow–even if it's only been mega consistent for the past four years–kept this thinking running for a solid six years. Who knows how or why I haven't lost interest yet, but let it be known that the only things I've loved for this long are my family (duh) and the Jonas Brothers. My blog is clearly in very good company.

I advise that you not somehow sort through my archive and find anything that dates back as old as this blog, as I was a very untalented 16-year-old who was bored before her senior year of high school and wanted to do what all of the girls I watched on YouTube were doing. Except they had, you know, the lighting and camera equipment and I had a kind of shitty Canon SLR camera that I didn't really know how to use nor quite understood how to frame a shot. Really, I didn't know what I was doing, but for once in my life outside of sports I seemed to have a hobby that seemed right for me. I taught myself guitar and took piano lessons for a short while, but there wasn't really anything besides reading and sports (I don't even know if I would count sports as my hobbies, I just played them because I liked being active) that I was into. 

While this blog has no particular theme that I follow, I really wanted to be a beauty blogger. I wanted to be one so fucking bad. I was obsessed with makeup, mostly because I spent all of my free time watching Meghan Rienks, Laurent Elizabeth, Sarah Belle, Arden Rose, you guys know the OG "beauty guru" crew who were basically just a bunch of teenage girls showing other teenage girls how to kind of put their makeup on. I wanted to be that, except I wasn't really all that cute and my personality hadn't blossomed yet. So, I started a blog instead and it didn't really go anywhere because (1) I had no idea how it worked and (2) it was just pure and absolute garbage. I mean, as you would expect from a 16-year-olds blog back in 2012. I see teenager's with blogs and social media accounts that are great now but it's also 2018 and even my mom could have a curated feed if she really wanted to.

The thing about my blog is that it is purely and will probably always purely be a hobby to me. I'm not all that interested in doing anything else with it because if I was, I would be doing a lot more with it than I am right now. I make my time for it every week because it makes me happy and it's nice to have my face and name on something on the interwebs that it totally and completely mine. Other than having my mom or some pals take outfit shots for me, the rest is me, me, me and for someone as self-centered as I am, this is a dream come true. (Just kidding, obvs). 

When I talk to other bloggers, or really, other "influencers" (content creators?) about their pages, I can't help but stress the importance of a blog or website. Don't get me wrong, having social media is super important for getting your message out there and spreading your content out to a larger audience. But social media could also disappear tomorrow. What if Instagram disappeared entirely? Where would your audience find you?

The thing with social media as well is that those mediums are so much more different. You can only share 280 characters at a time on Twitter. Even Instagram has to cut you off at some point and even if they didn't, how many people are going to read your novella of a caption instead of just continuing to scroll down their feed while cursing the algorithm until Instagram tells them that they're all caught up? Am I going to be writing my deepest, innermost thoughts in a Facebook post? No shade, but I'm just not that kind of person. 

I am, however, the kind of person who likes to overshare about anything and everything on this little nugget of a blog. Do you know how much easier it is to write posts like this over anything else? I live for the first person narrative of my life. How else am I supposed to digest my feelings and talk things out without having a full on conversation with myself out loud? That's what these posts are, right? Me talking through things with myself about myself. It all seems a little selfish and bizarre, but truly, when you get down to the root of it that's what's happening here.

I went to school for journalism but ended up disliking a lot of the aspects of it. Really, pretty much everything that wasn't involved with the act of writing. But the formula and nuances of a news article? Ugh. I could write a 500 word piece on absolutely nothing in a matter of 20 minutes if I really needed to, but it would be the dullest piece of work in the world. I was the type of person who had to get their opinions and exclamation points edited out of their articles because I just couldn't control myself half of the time. I had a hard time expressing myself in these articles and it made me resent journalism a bit. Also because I hated interviewing people and listening to myself during interviews to transcribe them even if the actual act of transcribing didn't bother me all that much.

Despite all of that, I actually do like writing, which is why I chose journalism. I didn't want to be an English or Creative Writing major, so I wasn't sure what else to do. It was the only thing I liked doing at the time I was applying to schools so I declared myself as a journalism major only a couple of months into college and went through with it because...what else was I going to do? What else did I possibly like?

This blog has always been that source of creativity for me. When I still wanted to write but wasn't in control about what I had to write about in school, I could be my own editor and writer and photographer and graphic designer and social media manager. I had the control this time, which apparently is much more important to me than I thought. I always thought I was a follower and not a leader until I realized how strong my aesthetic opinions were. So I guess only in some sense do I want people to take my direction. But with my blog? The only person I need to take direction from is myself.

I wish I had a cake or something to commemorate my longest lasting commitment with something other than blood-related humans or the Jonases, the family I wish I could marry into. I do have bagels and sponge candy however, so that'll do for now, that'll do...

Shirt: A gift from a friend

Skirt: Zara

Jacket: Nicked from my parents

Shoes: Steve Madden

Bag: Zara

Sunglasses: Quay