Hello there,
*One of my India pics, taken in Pushkar, the holiest city in the country*
I returned from India unscathed! Sadly, I wasn’t able to go
to Thailand, for personal reasons totally out of my own control. However, I
will go one day, so I have to turn my frown upside down and just save some more
pennies.
So I’ve been thinking a lot recently… And I’ve made the
decision to call an end to HauteFuture. I know this is probably quite
surprising, as my blog is the thing I have been most passionate about since I
started it a couple of years ago. However, I’ve found that I’ve basically
outgrown it and that I’ve totally lost sight of why exactly I started
HauteFuture in the first place!
*Photograph taken before a posh dinner out with all of my uni friends when we handed in out dissertations*
Two years ago, I set up HauteFuture because I wanted
fiercely to become a women’s lifestyle journalist for some kind of top magazine
like Marie Claire or Vogue. I am still really passionate about writing and have
never been someone to turn away a good magazine. However, I’m not quite sure
that having a blog like HauteFuture is what’s going to get me there, or help me
further develop the skills I’ve learned in the process of blogging.
Blogging quickly became about celebritizing myself. I would
panic if I hadn’t blogged in a week because how
would my readers get by if they didn’t know about my terrible lipstick
malfunction?! What if they went and bought that same lipstick and experienced
the same disaster?! It was my responsibility, nay, my duty to TELL THEM THE TRUTH. The honest fact of it is, that there
are about a hundred other girls in the UK who have written exactly the same
review as I would have done, and guess what? No-one really cared! No-one got
handed a top London magazine internship for publishing the same uninteresting
twaddle that I was angsting about and yet I carried on doing it. For what?
*Just about to head out last year to scout bands for my dad's local music festival*
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE writing, more than the next person. I would love to be a novelist and
between you and me, I have started writing up somewhat of an autobiographical
novel just for the fun of it. Plus, I’ve written freelance pieces for my local
newspaper in the past year or so which have felt like brilliant, albeit minor,
achievements. But what made me think that reviewing moisturizer improved my
writing skills in any way? How was I ever going to do what I ultimately want to
do, and make money from my space of internet? I wasn’t. And before you ask, no,
it isn’t all about the money. But realistically, I, like many bloggers out
there, started my page because it was the easier alternative to breaking into
the impenetrable career of magazine journalism. But what pays the bills?
Having had time to think, I cringe at how much I made
blogging all about getting followers and building up my lists of ‘fans’. I have
been known to spend HOURS at a time, desperately tweeting and
facebook-statusing my link to people who quite frankly, couldn’t care less
about what I thought of the latest mascara. If someone unfollowed my blog, I
would automatically hate them, even though I didn’t know who they were! A
friend of mine even showed me how to monitor my readers by locating them in the
world, working out how they had found me and even how long they had spent on my
page before getting bored. Now, I know that running a successful website and a
blog in particular is all about maintaining a healthy amount of reader traffic,
but when you are spending more time trying to hunt for new readers and
constantly feeling like the things you write are worthless because you only got
three comments per day, I think you’ve slightly lost sight of why you started
the page to begin with.
*At my graduation*
For the past few months I haven’t liked the way the women's lifestyle blogging
world is going and that’s the honest truth. Anyone who is anyone has a blog,
and the majority of those in the UK are in the sectors of beauty and fashion. The lack of creativity with blog posts
that have popped up on my blogger dash has made me think, ‘Why do I even bother
writing original posts when there are bloggers out there doing nothing more
than the generic Instagram, Glossybox and 20 Questions posts who are ranking more
followers than me???’ And even after spending so long musing over it, I still
don’t have an answer to that question.
Since realizing that I didn’t want to be ‘just another beauty
blogger’ I started trying to veer away from beauty and branch out into other
areas, like travel, food and film and I really enjoyed it! In fact, I enjoyed
it more than I think I ever enjoyed beauty blogging and vlogging. I just assumed
initially, that because I love beauty products I would love writing about them.
But when you realize you’re not really fulfilling any kind of niche, and are
just providing more noise in an already noisy environment, it makes you feel
kind of redundant. There are girls out there who are great at beauty blogging
or fashion blogging and I salute them. I am just not one of them.
*On the way to my first 'grown up' job since graduating*
HauteFuture has served me well. I practiced my writing in a
safe place, set up a successful page with HTML that I never even knew existed
and I made lots of friends in the process. This reminds me to say, that I have
respect for every beauty blogger out there, even those who like posting
Instagram, Glossybox and 20 Questions posts. I actually really enjoy reading posts like
this, I just didn’t like being a part of the culture which made me feel like
these kinds of posts are the only things that would define me as being a true part of the community.
At the end of the day, without meaning to sound arrogant, I
feel like I’ve gotten everything that I can from HauteFuture and to carry on
would be denial.
*In San Francisco last summer*
So, what’s next? Am I going to stop blogging entirely? Of
course I won’t, I’m not sure if I will ever stop blogging! After all, in spite
of feeling like it is time to move on, having HauteFuture as a record of my
past couple of years is a great memento! So if not here, where will I be
blogging, I hear you ask, and why am I moving, what will be different?
Well, my latest venture is going to be called The NW
Midlander and will be another Blogger-hosted page. The NW Midlander will be all
about what the North West and the Midlands have to offer, as I have noticed
that there are so many blogs out there about how great living in London is but
none about how great the North West and Midlands are! And they are, trust me. Sure, there will be foreign
travel updates, book and movie reviews
and social networking tutorials (and maybe even the odd women's lifestyle posts...), but mostly you will be able to find beautiful
photography, food posts which will make you drool and stay-cation reviews which
will make you consider the North West and Midlands for your summer holiday
needs.
*The sun setting on Tordi Sagar's sand dunes in India*
And as for my beauty habit, don’t think I’m going cold
turkey! Actually, quite the opposite! I’m even considering going on a makeup
application course, amongst other ideas rushing around my
messy-unemployed-graduate head.
Once The NW Midlander is available to view I will pop the
link on here, but until then this is goodbye! Thank you to everyone who has
stood by me and supported me in my blogging. I really appreciate your loyalty, but now, onto new horizons!
Lots of love
GabriellaSofia
