Growing up, I never thought that I would be able to make a living doing something that I absolutely adore. Especially not something so risky as writing. I have always loved to read books, escaping into other worlds and live vicariously through the characters and the worlds that had been created around them.
It wasn’t until I started at university that I found my passion for writing. Part of one of my units was to create a CV, and my lecturer suggested that some of us start blogs to bulk up our CVs creatively and I thought why not? This one assignment opened up the doors to my love of writing. I suddenly had so much that I wanted to talk about, things that I wanted to share.
So I did.
However, I started blogging around the same time that bloggers and YouTubers started to rise in popularity, they were becoming careers and the term influencer came into being. I didn’t feel as though I could fulfil myself if I wasn’t getting a decent following or readership. That my blog and writing wasn’t worth anything unless I was gaining thousands of followers and having brands contact me to do deals and sponsorships. And I started to write completely insincere posts that I thought would get me the followers that I needed.
It didn’t quite pan out that way. I wasn’t gaining anymore readership. I wasn’t gaining followers and brand definitely weren’t contacting me. For a very long time, I felt like an absolute failure.
Tragedy struck. During my third year of university, I lost my two and a half-year-old nephew to a brain tumour. I have never felt pain like that before and since. When I used to hear the term heartwrenching, I had never understood it to its full extent. But I was completely obliterated when I lost him. I lost all feeling, becoming numb and I lost my passion for everything. I questioned what was the point of it all? I had lost myself.
I had been in a dark place for years. I wouldn’t talk to anyone about what was happening to me, I wouldn’t write and I had no idea how to climb out of the pit of despair that I had grown so comfortable in.
After I graduated, I started counselling, working two new jobs and meeting people again. Slowly I started to open up more, I began smiling again and I even wanted to start writing again. I tried going back to my original blog, but everything that I wrote just felt stale now. I wanted to write with absolutely no judgement, just pure thoughts and feelings. My blog no longer felt like a safe place.
I created a whole new blog, an anonymous blog. I felt no pressure, the writing was for me and no one else. And it worked, I no longer was scared or ashamed to write. But life got in the way, as it does. I was working full time at a bar, I started dating my fiancée, Tom and working towards going travelling that I neglected my writing.
Whilst travelling New Zealand with Tom at the start of 2019, on a wobbly table at a campsite in the middle of nowhere I realised just how much I have grown since my very first blog. Now a new person from that moment. I wanted to write about my whole journey, the highs and lows, the milestones, just absolutely all of it.
And so that is how this website started. I will write about my life milestones, travel, mental health and more. I feel more inspired than I have in most recent years, and so I feel as though it is time I get started…
