For the sake of my family, I have decided to resign from office. Politicians, with a squad of speechwriters and PR experts, attempt to make their failings look slightly more presentable. I, on the other hand, scuttled away from BEDM without any attempt at an explanation. Now I'm here again I could try a bit of politician inspired damage control . After heavy consultation (with myself) and heated debate (all internal) I give you this sentence: I gracefully bowed out, only to make this magnificent unexpected return (yes, it was Beyonce that inspired me.)
Honestly, I had run out of steam. I didn't know what to write about and I didn't want my BEDM to be a string of recommendations. As for why I'm returning four solid weeks later, I've already written about that. Much of what I could say in this post was covered in the link as well. To recap: I don't want anything I write to blend into a fill-in-the-blank bland style. This is reasonable, but it turns into the demand that everything I write must be outstanding. If it's not, then it's merely perfunctory.
That is ridiculous. But fear, when controlled and in proportion, can be useful. One of my favourite internet creators, shessomickey (aka Amanda, who makes YouTube vlogs under the former name), recently answered a question on her tumblr about blogging. The penultimate sentence is what I needed to figure out. Typical blog topics, such as fashion or lifestyle, aren't my area of expertise. My daily life isn't that interesting and I'm not about to gush my feelings on the internet. Most of the blogs I read are 'mommy' blogs and 19 year old, uni student isn't exactly the right setting for popping out a few sprogs. I'm fortunate enough to be doing study abroad from August, but the "little different" part there is hard. There so many study abroad blogs that their collective ad revenue could fund a round the world aeroplane ticket.
I put scrapbooks in the title, because I wanted to use this blog as a collection place. Each post would be another scrap, another piece of my thoughts and occasionally my life, that created a record. Also, take a brief half second to guess what I'm going to say next, I didn't know what topic(s) I would focus on. Which is why, after yet another late night session with my team, I've decided to reverse engineer and make this blog about arts and crafts. The next post will be a breakdown of me taking one pretty thing, gluing it to another pretty thing and ending up with a messy, sticky monstrosity.
Or I could trust myself and just run with my original 'scrapbooking' idea. I started writing this post a week ago and compared to then I feel more confident about this space. I actually have faith in a few ideas. There are just not enough of them to sustain blogging everyday. Ultimately, I can write what I want and I'm still in blogging infancy. (This is actually a blogging mommy blog. Every post not about crafting will be about blogging.) Hopefully, in a few months' time I'll have a clearer idea of who I'm writing for and be able to summarise what I'm writing about in a few words. Until then this scrapbook won't be as neat as my perfectionist self wants to be.
