Hi there everyone! It’s been a few weeks since I published a post on my blogs. (This one and Essie of Who) Since it has been so long since I published posts on here or posted much online, I wanted to sit down and talk about why I’m taking a break from blogging.
Continue reading “An Early Happy 4th of July and A Late June 2026 Life Update”
Have you ever followed someone online, but over the time their posts (or content depending on what you want to call it) change and you start to no longer enjoy following them? In all the years I’ve been blogging and using social media I probably did this to my followers, but as a fan of people I find online, I felt this way many times before.
For many years, I’ve found people I liked, followed, and then ended up unfollowing them after what they post changed in a direction I didn’t agree with. Even though this has happened many times over the years, I began to have a harder time with certain people online I stopped following in the past few years. The reason why I decided to stop following them is because they began to use inspiration that I don’t agree with.
Earlier this year I decided to start updating all my social media sites more frequently. Before this, I mostly used Twitter to post updates that I have published new posts on my blogs. This time, I decided to try to update all of them more frequently.
The problem is I’ve been struggling with a lot of feeling about my social medias. One of the major feelings is guilt about abandoning them. For some, I’ve had them for over ten years and created them to promote my art, which, at that time, is what I was trying to turn into a full time career. Since then I’ve drifted into other topics similar to my blogs. Yet, in the extremely late 2010’s, I stopped posting as much as I used to be.
Continue reading “Updating My Social Media Sites and the Guilt About Abandoning Them”
When I created this blog in 2017, I had experienced many ups and downs of blogging. I’ve had writer’s block, trouble keeping pace with my weekly blogging schedule, and even had problems with people I knew offline and their opinions about what I should and shouldn’t blog. All the time this was happening I was working, took care of a relative that eventually passed away, and dealt with my own health problems. Still, I wanted blog where I could write posts about anything that fell into a lifestyle category. Thus why this blog exists today.
After all the years of blogging, it wasn’t until recently I realized I have readers not because I talk about whatever is trendy, I talk about whatever I want to talk about. Since realizing this, I remembered my unofficial “rules” for writing a blog. I’ve been dwelling on them quite a bit in the last few weeks, so I decided to write six things I learned about creating and writing blog posts. These are not all my unofficial “rules”, but they are the ones I feel would be the most helpful to anyone struggling to write posts for blogs.
Continue reading “6 Things I Learned About Creating and Writing Blog Posts”
It’s mid July and I’m officially calling it the summer when all I do is work and stay at home. Again. I had a feeling this summer wouldn’t be like other summers, and it hasn’t. Yet, when it comes to taking time off work and leaving my house for a vacation, that hasn’t changed.
Since the 4th of July, I decided to try to watch more enjoyable entertainment. There really isn’t much I want to watch on TV anymore, so I’m usually going though my stash of DVDs and watching things on YouTube while I work. I was thinking about watching some streaming shows instead, but I sometimes get too distracted to sit in front of the TV or computer to watch an episode all the way through. I feel more comfortable pausing and stopping DVDs and YouTube videos instead. One of the YouTube videos I began to watch are livestreams from Disneyland.
I really don’t like watching livestreams because anything can happen on them… and some of it isn’t good! I watched livestreams from Disneyland a few years ago because I missed the parks and wanted to see how everything has changed. Even though I was afraid to watch livestreams, I found one person I really liked and began watching his videos until I felt contented with Disneyland content.
On the 4th of July, I decided to watch the fireworks on the livestreams. I couldn’t go outside and watch fireworks from my house this year, so I thought this would be a great way to celebrate the 4th of July without needing to go outside. This ended up working out really well.
It’s been almost two weeks since I began to watch livestreams from Disneyland again and I’m really enjoying it! I miss Disneyland a lot and wish I could travel there this year. Although I’m not sure which livestreamer is my favorite, I have found two that run clean livestreams. (No cursing. No lewd comments. Ect.)
Even though I miss visiting Disneyland (And California Adventure) and exploring the parks myself, and wish I could go on a vacation, seeing the parks live from wherever I am has made me feel better. It has also given me ideas for where to go and what rides to ride!
That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!
Featured Image is from Pexels.com
For the past few years, I began to enjoy watching ambiance videos. Well, I actually don’t watch them. I usually keep them playing the background while I do my work. Especially when I’m under a lot of stress. Having ambiance videos playing makes me calm down and feel better.
Since it is the holiday season, I’m usually listening to Christmas themed videos. After listening to quite a few videos, I decided to write a post about my favorite ambiance YouTube channels with Christmas themed videos. I hope you enjoy the channels I list and their videos! Continue reading “Favorite Ambiance YouTube Channels for Christmas”
Well, this holiday season hasn’t turned out the way I wanted to. In addition to a lot of things happening in my real life (Including a health scare of one of my relatives (It has nothing to do with the pandemic)), I also missed a few days of Blogmas! To be honest, I suspected I may miss a few posts this year because this year has been so weird, but I still hoped it wouldn’t happen. Despite this, I still plan to make 25 or more posts this month… even if some of those posts are on the same day.
During this odd and stressful holiday time, I discovered several ballet companies are posting videos of their 2019 performances of The Nutcracker. This made me extremely happy to see because the videos are not clips of the performances, but of the whole entire show. Although I don’t have the time to search each ballet company’s YouTube channels (Or try to search and see if they actually have a YouTube channel) I wanted to share some of my favorite ballet YouTube channels that did post videos of their Nutcracker performances in full.
Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!
During my blogging break, I began to think about my social media sites including this blog. I enjoy blogging and writing is something I enjoy doing, but after looking at other lifestyle blogs that focused on topics I wanted to talk about on this blog I became worried. The bloggers of the lifestyle blogs I looked at showed their faces. They had great photographs of themselves featured in many of their posts. And their other social media profiles also had beautiful photographs of them on them. Although everything about their blogs fit the style of the blogs and the subject matter they talked about, I felt self continuous about being a blogger because I never post photographs of myself.
Although I have photographs of myself, I don’t like posting them because they were taken while I was sick and didn’t feel very well. I didn’t mind photographs taken of me, but I didn’t want to post them until my health improved beyond a certain point. I still have not passed that certain point so I don’t post photographs of myself online. Despite this, I wanted to have a blog, an Instagram, and YouTube channel. So, I needed to get creative with how I approached my social media presence. I didn’t post selfies of myself on Instagram. Instead I posted photographs I took that I’m proud of. I can’t post photographs of my outfit of the day, so I share pictures of clothing I enjoy owning. But as for YouTube, things are a little bit harder.
I know certain YouTube videos I want to make will make it impossible to be hidden behind the camera and doing a voice over, but others can. Sadly, I can’t make as many YouTube videos as I want to because of this. So, I focused on making videos that allowed me to be hidden and keep a list of future videos I want to make that will need me in front of the camera.
Even though I decided to refrain from posting photographs of myself, I still wondered if there are bloggers or YouTubers that are like me and don’t show themselves on camera. Like I said before, after searching for bloggers that chose to stay offline that blogged about topics I wanted to blog about was hard. I know there are bloggers who don’t show themselves online or if they do it’s sparse, but during my search I couldn’t find anyone. I found this strange because I have followers on this blog that don’t show themselves much if at all online. So what’s going on?
The problem with my searches is that I turned to Google to help me find new bloggers. Google likes to put certain blogs at the top of the search results because the blog’s follower count is high. In fact, after looking at the blogs and bloggers’ social media pages, I realized they are influencers, not passionate blogging hobbyists like me. Although I hope to one day earn some extra money from my blogs, I’m not interested in turning it into a career. I always had other jobs that helped pay my bills and, after seeing what lengths some influencers go to in order to keep money steadily flowing into their bank accounts, it’s not something I would like to do for a profession.
Since I’m not willing to become a full-time influencer, I have the freedom to choose what I want to post, when, and why. I don’t need to focus on showing myself online when I’m not physically, mentally, or emotionally ready to do so. Instead, I can have blogs, YouTube, and other social media profiles and not feel pressured to enhance my persona online by posting photographs of myself or needing to show myself online in order to have the potential for a sponsored post or video.
Yet, is it possible to take sponsored posts without showing yourself on social media? It depends on a variety of things. After following Japanese and South Koren YouTube channels for a while, I know they do receive requests for sponsored videos. One YouTuber, Rhea Y., mentioned it in her video called “It’s Payday! Do You Need Money to be Happy? My Payslip & Monthly Budget” that she does receive sponsorships for products in her videos. So, can this style of product placement and sponsorship on social media work in the United States?
In my opinion, it could, if the company wants to work with the influencer. The problem is companies that normally work with social media influences in the United States and Western countries generally expect the person to be more of a model and/or a spokesperson instead of showing off their product. Sophie Shohet, an influencer who works a nine to five day job as a marketer, made a video talking about how and why luxury brand gift bags to influencers. Although this video focuses on luxury brands, she does talk about other brands in general and how it fits into the marketing budget of companies and touches briefly on some criteria for influencers brands want to work with.
So, back to my original topic of this post: Can you have a social media presence without showing yourself online? Absolutely. I’m doing it. Others are doing it. And many more will do it in the future. The key to doing it successfully is focusing on a broad topic you can talk about without needing to show yourself. But can you become an influencer or internet famous because of it? Probably not. Unless the topic you pick for your social media is something that is generally accepted as a topic that doesn’t need a human presence to be viewed, it will be harder to be seen as someone who has the potential to become famous or make a career out of social media. And that’s not counting how hard it is to become Insta-famous or a professional influener even if you do post photographs and video of yourself online.
As for me, I don’t mind. I keep my blogs as a way to share my interests and hobbies with others. Also, after years of being sick, having a blog serves as a therapy for me. Many years ago, my doctors recommended I start a blog for sewing, art, and photography because I felt as though my passion for my hobbies in any way shape or form was gone. Talking about them online and forcing myself to interact with others brought me out of my comfort zone and made me more confident in who I am, what I like, and what I don’t like. Although others may come to social media and blogging for other reasons, this is mine. And I’m happy I can do it without the pressure of showing myself online while I’m sick and not ready to because it’s my job.
That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!
Since I’m stuck at home, I had plenty of time to watch YouTube. One of the genres of YouTube videos I loved to watch was cooking videos. After watching a lot of baking videos, I decided I would like to make some of them in the future. Here are six of the videos (And recipes) I found YouTube I would like to try first. Continue reading “6 Desert Recipes from YouTube I Would Like to Try”