i'm no jane aldridge: a personal confession.

Let me be honest with you, I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to blogging (Shocker, eleven of you are thinking.) I started this blog because I greatly admire lifestyle blogs like the Rockstar Diaries, the Daybook, Cupcakes and Cashmere, and Atlantic-Pacific.

I thought, I can do that.

I thought, People will read this.

I thought, This is a great way to get my foot in the young professional's proverbial door! 

Wrong, wrong, really wrong.

The harsh reality is this: I have no vision for this blog, or really, my life. Can I claim an early quarter-life-identity crisis? Since starting this blog, I’ve begun to follow many other beautiful blogs by girls with visions of grandeur, much like myself. These girls post outfit photos, write movie reviews, and post recipes. They love Wes Anderson films, Celine bags, and Audrey Hepburn’s skinny jeans. What I’m doing here isn’t rocket science, or, frankly, very different from the other 587, 706 registered fashion-and-lifestyle blogs on Bloglovin. The umbrella problem here is that I don’t really know where I’m going in life. That’s not really history making either, but when fashion industry girls like Nicole Loher are sprouting up everywhere, holding down, like, twenty-two jobs (PLUS school) at the ripe old age of nineteen, I can’t help but feel like I’m underachieving. Which is a weird and disconcerting feeling because all throughout grade school, I was the overachieving girl. (Well. Maybe not by tiger mom standards.) I knew where I was going, what I was working for: college.

But now, I’m even questioning that decision. I’m willing to work and put in the time and effort, but what’s my dream? What am I willing to give up everything for? I don’t know. Moreover, I don’t know what to do with a passion for collecting. Input, as the Gallup Strength Survey would have it. I love learning about other people’s passions, “collecting them” so to speak. I enjoy being friends with people who are the best at what they do. I like being surrounded by ambitious people. They inspire me to be a better, more interesting individual. Cultivate new hobbies, challenge myself. But this past year I feel like my collecting has taken a back seat, for any number of reasons.

The scariest thing is, I do have a vague idea of what I really and truly want, but I’m not in the right place to get it.

I’m sorry if this is so terribly incomprehensible.

For you eleven readers, (probably less, because I have a deep-seated fear that at least two of you only followed me with the explicit guarantee that I’d follow you back) I don’t really know what this means. Fewer outfit photos, perhaps. (I actually feel really ridiculous and self-involved posting “glamour shots” of myself online despite my unshakeable admiration for all things fashion.) I fear irrelevance. I fear that my posts are contrived and redundant. On second thought, I am pleading the not-so-near-quarter-life crisis defense. Or mental instability.

Maybe this blog should become more of a photo diary? Kind of showing my evolution as a young adult? That’s more or less what it is now, but maybe I just need to use that as a focus for myself.

I guess for now I can only ask you to bear with me as I try to figure out this whole blog thing… and more importantly, my life. Becoming myself is harder than I expected, but I promise you I’m trying. 

(At this point in time, I have a desperate urge to quote Herman Melville aloud to my boyfriend, take to the sea and steal a yacht. Maybe tomorrow.)

x     x     x

Sarah