Life This Week 28/5/2018: How Did Your Blog Start?


It all began way back in January 2010. 

Facebook was in its infancy and I was one of its most consistent contributors.  While everyone else playing Farmville on FB, I was faithfully pumping out the status updates.  On everything and nothing. 

I discovered that while I quite liked writing little quips about my life on the regular, my friends may not really want to know all the details about a dish I’d whipped up from Donna Hay’s magazine (those were the days when I’d spend weeknights making dinners from scratch) or that they’d want to appreciate every possible angle of the airport and my plane seat as I flew off to somewhere exciting (for me).

Little did I know that after Facebook and Blogger would come Instagram and this would be the perfect platform for all of the above…

But I digress.

My original idea for my blog was that I’d use it to as an outlet for my thoughts.  That I’d kind of analyse myself through my writing.  The better out than in philosophy.  The stuff that’s not made for the ‘look at me living the life’ vibe that Facebook seemed to be working in those early years.

I’ve just looked back at my early posts and I cringe but I also realise that I had to write how I did to help me find my blogging voice.  Ironically for a blog entitled Sydney Shop Girl (where I live, what I like doing and a reference to my gender that kind of went with ‘Sydney’ and ‘Shop’ but in no way reflects my chronological age) many posts navel gazed such issues as not being understood, trying to conceive and a few issues that were existential at the time but aren’t really now that I look at them again.

As I look back on my posts, I realise that its content as unconsciously evolved.  How positively Gwyneth ‘Conscious Uncoupling’ Paltrow of me of describe it as such.  Those awkward first posts gave way to obsessive recounts of my daily life. Then sponsored posts and bloggers as ‘influencers’ became a thing and I awkwardly gave both a go. 

I found writing for sponsors and about free stuff quite difficult. To find an angle that was congruent with that of my blog in general, to be positive about a product under pressure (is a week of testing skincare really enough to give a verdict for someone who is going out to buy it and use it for at least a few months?) and all the while not sounding like an infomercial.  It was fun and I was able to participate in my previous life pre motherhood but it’s not a direction that’s a natural fit for me right now.

The routine and mental focus of blogging has been a lifeline for getting me through some tough times.  There were times (during my miscarriages and the whole infertility / IVF experience) where it felt appropriate for me to use Sydney Shop Girl as a platform to talk about what I was feeling, what was happening and how I was distracting myself through the excruciating process of waiting out the uncertainties.

At other times, Sydney Shop Girl proved to be a happy place.  Where I could focus on the humour, goodness and beauty of life and not pollute this space with interpersonal dramas.  I find that this kind of thing tends to escalate and spiral into out of control venom when you write about it in a public space whereas somehow it felt cathartic for me to write about my personal health issues.

This is my ninth year of blogging as Sydney Shop Girl and blogging is still a large and meaningful part of my life.  I’ve settled into a possibly boring and predictable voice that represents who I think I am.  There’s lots of chat about my daily life, my (limited) interests, being a mum and the joys of forcing Sydney to adopt me as one of her own. 

I also regularly participate in several blog link ups – this one (Denyse Whelan’s Life This Week), Leanne’s Lovin’ Life and Continental Drift which is a new venture Anna and Bo are cohosting with me.  The set themes of each have gently forced me to write outside of my comfort zone and I’ve also found myself a wider circle of amazing and inspiring bloggers to catch up with each week.

If you blog, how did yours begin?  How has it changed?


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