Sunday 15 November 2015

Why I'm Giving Up Olivia Ellen

I feel like this post is long overdue but it's taken me a long time to find my reasons for writing this. It is with regret that I am giving up this blog. I've been thinking about for quite a while and since I moved to university I just haven't felt the desire or inspiration to write anything here, never mind the fact that it is such a time-consuming hobby. I guess multiple factors have led me to feel like this. I've had this blog for over 3 years and through that time it's really come a long way, not only in terms of design but also content. I'd be lying if I said it was easy: I put a lot of time and thought into my posts. Despite this I just haven't found it to be particularly rewarding. No matter how hard I felt I was working, I got very little feedback from within the blogging community. In reality I'm a tiny fish in an ever growing pond and I just feel that fashion and beauty blogging is not the way forward for me.

When I started this blog, fashion and beauty were my biggest passions. I was adamant that I wanted to make a career out of fashion writing and I thought that a blog would be a good place to start. Although I still really enjoy aspects of fashion and beauty (of course I still shop way too much and spend too long getting ready, that will probably never change!) I'm actually a lot more interested in theatre now and that's the direction I'd like my career to take. Back in April I started writing a theatre blog called Olivia Loves Theatre where I review shows that I've seen as well as share my general thoughts on theatre-related news and stories. Even though it's only been live for about 6 months it's already brought me some great opportunities- I was sent to London by Box Office UK to see a show and review it for their website, as well as being invited to the press night of Shrek at my local theatre. Both of these things have brought me such joy and I hope that continues into the future. I feel like I can already count my theatre blog as fairly successful whereas I never really felt that with Olivia Ellen.

I'm also just finding the whole fashion/beauty/lifestyle community kind of overwhelming at the moment. There are so many people out there trying to get involved but rather than seeing great things happening for small bloggers, I feel like the big bloggers and only getting bigger, making it harder for newcomers to be seen. I'm sensing a lot of tension of Twitter in particular and it's just not something I want to be a part of anymore. I'm definitely not going to delete this blog- there's a lot of content on here that I've worked hard at and it would be a shame if that were lost forever- but I won't be updating it. For those (few!) people who do check this blog regularly I'm sorry but if you still want to keep up with me of course you can give my theatre blog a read, follow me on Twitter or on Instagram where I still often post beauty/fashion related things. I guess that's all I have to say for now!

Olivia Ellen XXX

No comments:

Post a Comment

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...