May thirteenth marks the three year anniversary of pressing publish on my first blog post. Subsequently, I called it My First Post and if you scroll all the way back in the contents section, you can still read it. Although, there isn't much to read, it's a compilation of my favorite photos I found on my laptop at the time.
It's a pretty mundane post, the photos aren't even that good. But they wrap up everything I was at thirteen. An amateur photographer with a point and shoot, hardcore sweatshirt wearer, lover of flowers and my dog. So for that, I love My First Post because it's not trying to be anything it's not- it just is.
Every post after My First Post was trying to be something. Sundays are Sunny was a food blog and a fashion blog and a makeup blog. I completed tags and copied posts from other popular websites. I started 12 Days of Christmas and did that for two years, which was it's own battle. But after awhile, it all became so repetitive and expected. Still, I felt like tags and reviews were the only things people were going to click on and like. I wanted a following like other blogs I read.
My First Post is the most viewed post on this website. Which might have something to do with the fact that my mom put it on Facebook and half my family read it. But it could also have something to do with it's originality and bluntness.
Believe it or not, posting content has deemed itself as a hard task as the years have on. Around mid-end 2016 when I started high school, I realized how boring popular content was and I was stuck in what I was supposed to be posting. I found a new realm of what I liked and what inspired me. I began to shape this blog into that. I started calling Sundays are Sunny my website.
I gave up on a posting scheduled because it restricted my creativity and gave a small widow of time for what I wanted to create. I also gave up on talking to an audience in posts. Technically, I have an audience because of what my analytics tell me, but now, post 2016, I try to post for myself- sorry to my audience, I know it's selfish.
But, if I'm just posting to post and go along with the blog algorithm to ultimately have readers and a following, then I'm not posting for myself to grow and become better at my craft, which was always the intent of Sundays are Sunny. Creating posts was fun at first, then it became a chore and something with pressure. I stopped for awhile and came back early in February which felt good. But when I stopped again, I didn't feel like I owed anything to anyone or was jipping them out of something.
Throughout managing Sundays are Sunny, I've learned a lot. How to design a website and code at a very small level, how to make internet friends, how to turn down brands because I don't completely support what they're selling, how to keep a private life from the internet but manage a website at the same time, and write to be read.
Going back to My First Post, I'm glad that was my start and what I can look back on as the first thing I put online under my name- even if I'm not one hundred percent proud of everything else in between. It gave me a good launch into my blogging career and ultimately, where I wanted to end up again after experimenting for a few years.
With that, I've recreated My First Post at sixteen, a lover of Lady Bird, Joe Keery and writing:
As always, thank you for reading and continuing to follow my work. Here's to three more years and all the years after.
- M
