Recently I did a post on my rebranding and how I was changing what I wanted to represent in this space. If you missed it, you can find that post HERE. Within that post, I discuss how hard I found blogging to be and touched a little on why I realized that fashion blogging wasn’t necessarily my realm. I explained that I would probably do a post on that topic and as a result, here you go folks! Haha.
All right, let’s begin.
Initially when I began The Chic Delight. I wanted to be a fashion blogger. See some of my older posts HERE and HERE. To be 100% honest, I wanted to get free stuff sent to me and I thought it would be a good way to make money. I figured I would start with my focus on fashion and introduce a few other topics. Well, that didn’t go to well. I realized very quickly that fashion blogging wasn’t going to be my specialty. One, it was hard finding cloths I liked and I didn’t want to buy stuff that I didn’t 100% love, and two it was SUPER expensive. I am on a pretty good shopping budget and I do shop fairly often, but it was taking the fun out of it all. I didn’t want to shop just because I had to and I didn’t want to buy just because I needed clothes for a photoshoot coming up. Plus, when I shared a photo on Instagram, I felt like there was so much more that I wanted to say besides how cute is this top, or I love this for summer.
Now, let me be clear. I LOVE fashion bloggers. I shop from them and love all of their clothes and support them 100%. Fashion blogging just wasn’t going to work for me, and that was ultimately where things needed to shift. If I was going to promote clothes, I wanted them to be things that I loved, would look good on a variety of body types, and not cost an arm and a leg because if I was on a budget, then most girls my age would be too and they (you) are exactly who I was talking to. I wanted to represent more realness in it. Not to mention that I felt like I would buy something, where it once, and then get rid of it when the season was over which drove me crazy! I am okay with a few trendy items here and there, but I was purging BAGS worth of clothes. Not good.
So. I needed to change. I figured, well, I love fashion, but there is so much more to me than just that, so enter lifestyle blog. Here, I could talk about so much more than fashion and introduce all areas of my life. Much more my style.
Well, this was fine for a while, but I felt like it was all too broad. I mean what was I sharing exactly? I realized that ultimately I enjoyed sharing, but more than that I wanted to make a difference for people. I needed to get more specific. I needed to figure out HOW I wanted to make a difference and what that would look like. I also realized that I don’t just want this to be something I do for fun anymore. I want to create a brand, a message, and ultimately a lifestyle that could play on repeat for as many years as I wanted it to. I didn’t just want something for now, I wanted something more, way more, I just needed to figure out what exactly.
After realizing this, I spent some time trying to figure it out. I played with ideas of transitioning my blog to a different facet to become more specific, but everything that came to mind felt so unauthentic to me. It felt too mainstream and I didn’t want to be mainstream. I wanted to be specific and I knew I wanted to represent something different anyways.
Well, after sitting down with a friend, in which we spent two hours talking it out, she was basically able to tell me in different words, exactly what I couldn’t articulate. Enter, new website, new brand, new vision, and ultimately new platform all together.
I wanted to represent what was real. I wanted to be honest with my audience and as a result I feel that I have really found my home. Balanced living, real women, real struggles, real life – that is what you will find here and I couldn’t feel more thankful and relieved.
We all just want to be better, yet life can make us feel like we are never adding up to much. Women face so many pressures in life and as a result it can lead to stress, overwhelm, and feelings of inadequacy. I have experienced that and continue to experience it on occasion, and I don’t think anyone should have to feel less than. We are the ones that put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect and we don’t need perfection. We just need to try our hardest, show up, and be our beautiful selves.
xoxo,
Melissa
