THE STORY OF HOW BLOGGING FOUND ME
The summation of this would be “Pure serendipity” - the longer explanation is what follows.
The initial title for the post was to be “How I Got Into Blogging” as even now, some fifteen years down the line, it’s a question I get asked a lot. Closely followed by “Well how do you make money from that then?” In truth, blogging found me - I didn't go looking for it… at least not consciously. Throughout adult life I’d always had an imperceptible urge to write and a fantasy that, one day, I would put those urges to good use. An easy pass of O Level English language, a habit of underlining words that I’d looked up in the dictionary and a deep-rooted love of reading no doubt fed those urges. Why then this led me to leave school, become a trainee hairdresser for a year and then drift into an almost lifelong career in Finance when I’d had “Ungraded” slapped across my final Maths exam paper is beyond me. Go figure. Or not in my case.
Fast forward to my late thirties as a mother of a pre-schooler and I’d just taken voluntary redundancy from my finance role at Aviva Health after a fifteen-year stint. If I'm honest I was heartbroken at this turn of events - the thought of not being able to work every day with the women who had come to be my best friends and seen me through some major life events felt incomprehensible. The first of many rounds of cost cutting and outsourcing had left a role for me that would involve regular business travel. With H so young and about to start school, that held no appeal and wasn't what I’d envisaged when returning to work part time.
So, I did that thing that lots of people rapidly approaching forty do - made a decision, shut my eyes and took a leap of faith into the unknown. There were tears, moments of trepidation and the best last-day-in-the-office send off a girl could wish for. One that didn't just involve embarrassing stories and old photos – they’d even managed to get their hands on a few of my memorable (for all the wrong reasons) outfits and dressed up as different versions of me. Even then it would seem a style theme was creeping in under the radar… albeit a questionable one at times.
Fast forward to the following January and I started a part time admin role for my brother-in-law at the estate agent office he managed. The transition from a corporate giant to an office of five, one of whom was related by marriage, was somewhat challenging but I adapted. A few months in as the admin work began to dry up (2008 property market crash incoming), having gotten through the tasks of the day and invented a few more, I would man the phone and twiddle my thumbs. Surfing the internet one lunchtime I happened across a thing called a blog - I don't even remember what it was about – possibly due to the excitement of finding out that you could set up one of your own on the Blogger platform. For free. Assuming the moniker of ThatGirl39 I began writing anonymously at 39 & Counting … and I was hooked.
As the financial crash of summer 2008 hit full force, I was the first to depart from the estate agent’s office – quickly followed by everyone else. I dabbled in a bit of part time work here and there and kept returning to my Mac to feed this newfound obsession. I cottoned on to the fact that a handful of people were reading it and sometimes leaving comments. The more you wrote, the more they would come back to read your words. It was in this manner that I discovered a whole host of amazing blogs - written by a community of people who existed in each other’s Blog Rolls in the sidebar (remember those?) - none of us having any clue as to what it meant to self-promote on social media. Or what social media was.
A year later I turned forty, with a final flourish I closed 39 & Counting and began a new blog called Forty Not Out. With the content primarily based in style blogging, a few advertisers paying for space in the sidebar, the discovery of product affiliate linking, invites to press events and a few gifts to review; I decided this was A Thing With Potential. In August 2010 I added a new section to the blog in the form of an online style advice service - The Online Stylist - it did what it said on the tin. Having eventually realised that the blog name of Forty Not Out had more to do with cricket scores than it did with style, I bought a new domain and switched the entire site name over to The Online Stylist in January 2011.
Gifting eventually turned into sponsored content creation opportunities and if memory serves, by this time I was also a fully-fledged Twitter and Instagram user. Along came invites to London Fashion Week, brand events and even a couple of awards – all off the back of those self-taught, often clunky efforts at editing and maintaining a website and building an internet presence. I’d learned so much about things that hadn’t even existed just a handful of years before and it was exciting and hugely addictive. I pushed myself out of my comfort zone on many occasions and had experiences that I could never have dreamt of – attend a star-studded party at Net-A-Porter to celebrate Dolce & Gabbana you say? Oh, go on then.
With the arrival of our Labrador, Biscuit, into the family in March 2013 came my first round of slowing things down a little. I made the (good) decision to close the style advice service and fully focus on my first love - writing and producing content for the blog. There were occasional deviations into co-hosting blogging workshops, panel appearances, creating content for small brands and a press trip abroad that even lead to a couple of travel magazine features. On reflection, I realised that I don’t ever remember patting myself on the back at the time and saying “Well done… you’re actually doing it - you’re writing!”
If you’ve been a long-term reader, you’ll know that I began reigning things in a little more as I reached my late forties, actively retreating from the echelons around which I’d skirted. I didn’t know it, but change was on the horizon and a few events synonymous with midlife were heading my way. The purposeful retreat turned out to be well-timed.
With no set agenda from the get-go and no specific goal of building a business, I feel incredibly lucky to have adapted the blog into all the incarnations it’s had. The same applies now - tuning into what life demanded and how it continued to shape and mould me, led to the eventual closing of The Online Stylist chapter and beginning again here at Simply Start Living. Now it’s more of a part time thing - I have a job creating content for a local business I believe in and the combination of doing both leaves me in the right place. This fits with who I am in midlife - it feels comfortable, authentic (that word again) and just the right level of challenge that I need.
If you've ever wanted to start writing and think that a blog might be a good place to start but haven’t done anything about it yet - don't delay. Just start. It might be one of the best decisions (that leads on to other decisions) that you’ll ever make.
