How I Started Blogging

I’ve always kept diaries. Well, I say “always“: I obviously didn’t come out of the womb shouting, “Quick, someone, get me a laptop: I’m SO blogging this!“, although I expect one day that will totally happen to some poor blogger, and it will serve her right. But back to me…

I was given my first diary when I was ten years old. It was a green velvet number, and it was so incredibly awesome that I would only write in it with a fountain pen. I was kind of pretentious as a ten year old, to be honest. I kept that diary diligently, though, and I’ve basically been documenting my life ever since, in one way or another. (I actually published that diary in its entirety here. Before you click on that link, though, you should probably be aware that my 10-year-old self placed a powerful curse on anyone who read her diary. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…)

The paper journals eventually gave way to computer documents, but however I’ve done it, I’ve always had this compulsion to write everything down. When I was a child, I told myself I was doing this for the benefit of future generations, so that they could understand the uniqueness that was ME, spechul me. (Because yes, I expect one day many years from now, some future person will totally say, “Gosh, I wish we knew what it was like to be a moody teenager living a completely unremarkable life in the late 20th century. If only someone had written it all down!”) Then I told myself I was doing it so I wouldn’t ever forget all of these incredibly important, and yet not even remotely interesting, experiences I was having. Teenage angst is a terrible thing, isn’t it?

Ultimately, though, I think it was just something that became ingrained in me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve always felt like things haven’t really happened to me until I’ve written about them in some way. And so I wrote: first in a succession of ever-more-elaborate paper journals, and then in a series of password-protected Word documents which I have long-since forgotten the passwords to. (I don’t want to remember…) And because journaling was something I had always done, I was always fascinated to find out about other people who did it, too. I felt I had something in common with these other journalers: we all knew what it was like to pour our hearts out to a blank page that couldn’t talk back, and we were all probably just filled to the BRIM with angst, and imagination, and lots of profound thoughts that were just dying to be let out.

(I wasn’t, obviously. I was mostly just filled to the brim with emo song lyrics. Still am.)

Anyway, because I had this interest in diaries and diarists, one day I was aimlessly surfing the internet, and I decided to type “diary” or “journal” or something like that into the search engine. I don’t really know what I was looking for. I think I maybe expected to find sites about famous diarists, or something like that. Instead, I found an ACTUAL diary: or an “online journal” as they were called in those days. My mind was blown. I was so used to thinking of journaling as something secret, something to be hidden from prying eyes at all costs (This was why all of my childhood diaries had things like “KEEP OUT!” and, “If you read this, I will know, and I will totally track you down and kill you, I MEAN IT,” scrawled over their covers and title pages.) that I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that here was someone actually publishing their diary on the internet. I mean, CAN YOU EVEN?!

This alone would probably have been enough to suck me in, but as it happened, that first online journal I found had much more than that to make me want to read it. Its author, you see, was just like me. Yes, she lived in America and I lived in the UK, but we were the same age, and seemed to be into all of the same kinds of things: this girl read the same books as me and listened to the same music. Her journal was dotted with those same emo song lyrics mine was, and she seemed every bit as shy and awkward as I felt myself to be. Like me, she had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, other than that it would have to involve writing, because that was the only thing she’d ever really wanted to do. Hell, she even had red hair.

(Because I know people are probably going to ask me this: no, I can’t remember her name, or what her journal was called. She actually closed her site down a few months after I discovered it – er, I’m sure that had nothing to do with me – and seemed to disappear from the Internet after that, so I’ve no idea what happened to her. I like to think she’s living in a massive house with a dressing room and a walk-in pantry, though.)

As I read through page after page of this girl’s diary, it occurred to me that she was basically living my life, on another continent. She was the person I would be if circumstances had been different, and this was totally fascinating to me. Through her links page, I found other online diarists. Most of those weren’t even remotely like me, but this was just as fascinating, because now I was getting an amazing insight into lives which I wouldn’t even have been able to imagine before. That’s what “blogs” were like in those days. Most of them weren’t focused on any particular subject: they were literally just diaries of people’s lives, and I was completely sucked in by them.

I can’t remember how long it took me to decide to start writing online myself. I do know I did it because I was hoping that, in the same way I’d managed to stumble across someone I had more in common with than anyone I’d ever met in my “real” life, that other people might find me. Just as my teenage self had hoped someone would one day understaaaaand her (Look, I told you I was emo, OK?), I think I hoped that someone out there would relate to what I’d written, and that I’d make friendships, form connections with people, even although I’d probably never meet them.

My first website was hosted on free webspace, with ugly Angelfire banners across the top, and it basically broke all of the rules of web usability, having coloured text on a black background, and probably some scrolling marquees. We didn’t have things like Blogger or WordPress in those days (or telephone speaking devices or horseless carriages or FIRE. I hope you’re all listening to this, young ‘uns. You don’t know how easy you have it! Uphill, both ways!), so it had to be totally coded by hand (I taught myself HTML for this very purpose), with each new post a whole new page which was created and then added into the structure. It was a total pain.

(NO, it no longer exists. And if it did, I would burn it with fire, because seriously, people. Seriously.)

As much as I enjoyed writing that site, after a few months I got bored: not just with how fiddly it was to have to keep creating new pages all the time, but by the fact that there wasn’t really any possibility of interaction with anyone. There was a guestbook, but no comments, and while I did get the occasional email from someone who had somehow stumbled across it and read it, there wasn’t really any easy way for people TO find it, so I was essentially talking to myself. And “myself” isn’t really the greatest conversationalist in the world, to tell you the truth.

Enter Livejournal.

I’d been aware of Livejournal for a while, and it seemed like the answer to all of my online-diarist problems. Rather than creating all of the pages yourself, you could just type each new post into a box, hit enter and it would be published. There was a comments box on every post. Best of all, because of the way Livejournal was set up, with “friends lists” which allowed you to follow people, and be followed back, there was the possibility of people actually reading it. Which was the whole point, surely?

I loved it. I stayed on Livejournal for years, and made friends there who I’m still in touch with to this day. I gave it up just after Terry and I started planning our wedding. See, my journal was “friends only”, which meant it could only be read by people I gave access to. This was great in some ways, because I knew everyone who read it, and they’d all become trusted friends: this was a HUGE benefit to me when Terry was ill, for instance, because I knew I could be totally honest with those people about how I was feeling, and not feel like they were judging me for it, or nitpicking over ever single little thing I said. (I mean, they probably were. But they were all polite enough to keep those thoughts to themselves, if so.) I could admit to them that I was worried sick, without someone popping up and telling me I was, “SO! NEGATIVE!” and that we should consider ourselves lucky that Terry even HAD kidneys to fail, because some people don’t even HAVE no kidneys, nuh-uh. So BE POSITIVE, OK?

At the same time, though, I think sometimes knowing exactly who your audience is can be a bit stifling, especially when it’s a very small audience, as mine was. You start thinking, “Oh, I better not write about THAT, because I know so-and-so isn’t interested in that. And I better not write about THIS, because I know such-and-such DOES like that thing, and he might be offended by me saying I DON’T like it.” And honestly? I wanted to write about my wedding. I knew most of the people who followed my journal wouldn’t be interested in hearing about wedding planning every day of the week, so I decided I would start one of those newfangled “blog” things everyone was talking about, and which seemed to be a bit like the old days of stand-alone, self-coded journals, except with all of the benefits of something like Livejournal: comments, instant publishing, and all that jazz. I would use this new “blog” of mine (That word was never used without the inverted commas, by the way. I remember we online journal writers all laughing about it and talking about how it would NEVER catch on. I mean, “blog” – hee!) for all of the wedding stuff I would surely become obsessive about any day now, and keep my livejournal for everything else.

So Forever Amber actually started life as a wedding blog. Or that was the plan, anyway. I launched the site on on March 31st, 2006 – exactly a year before my wedding – and I used Typepad purely because that´s what everyone else seemed to be using, so I figured I would, too. I it almost no thought at all: the name came from one of my favourite books (And is also my OWN name, obviously…), the theme was one of the default ones which came with Typead, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I was so used to Livejournal, with its built-in audience, that it didn´t even occur to me that I´d need to promote my posts in any way, so I just… didn´t. Luckily, it DID occur to me to tell my Livejournal friends that I´d started one of those newfangled “blog” things, though, and it turned out that some of them WERE actually interested in reading what I thought would be strictly wedding-related rambles, so they became my very first readers. Unfortunately, I very quickly discovered that, actually, I wasn´t all that interested in writing about wedding planning, so my new blog morphed into another record of my life, another variation on the green velvet diary, and after a few months, replaced the Livejournal completely.

By that stage, I´d started freelancing for some of the Shiny Media blogs, including the now-defunct Shoewawa and Catwalk Queen. We were allowed to occasionally promote our own blogs when we were writing for those sites, so gradually I started to pick up some more readers from there: some of those readers had blogs of their own, and were kind enough to link to me, so I think my readership just grew from there. People often ask me what I did to grow my readership when I first started blogging, but the answer is that I didn´t really do ANYTHING – or not intentionally, at least. I know I did absolutely nothing to promote my blog – partly because I didn´t know how, but also because, at that stage, I still viewed it purely as a hobby, and didn´t take it particularly seriously. I would go for days without posting at all, then post three times in one afternoon- I´m lucky I had any readers AT ALL, now I come to think of it, so if I had to come up with an explanation of how my blog grew in those early days, I think I´d put it down to sheer, dumb luck, plus the fact that I already had access to a much larger audience, through my freelance writing gigs.

Whatever the reason, however, it was those early readers who motivated me to keep at it. These were the days before social media took hold, when people used to comment much more on blogs, and it was possible to really build a community around them. (I mean, I´m sure it´s probably STILL possible to do that, it´s just a whole lot harder these days…) I made some lasting friendships through the comments section of my blog (and by commenting on other people´s sites, too), and the knowledge that there were people out there who were interested in what I had to say, encouraged me to keep on writing. Now that comments are so much harder to come by, I think it must be much harder for new bloggers to motivate themselves, so I think I was lucky to have gotten into it at a time when the blogosphere was both smaller and friendlier: over time, blogging became a habit which was impossible to break, and I think it was probably my consistency, more than anything else. I just kept at it, and didn´t give up, and although my blog has changed over the years, the fact that it´s still updated frequently is, I think, one of the reasons people continue to keep coming back to it.

The secret of my success, then? I didn´t quit. And I have no intentions of doing so, either. I’ve no idea what this site will become in the future, but I do know it will be forever Amber. So, if nothing else, at least I know I picked the right name…

P.S. I write a weekly diary which goes out every Friday to my subscribers. Sign up below to get on the list...

I also write books
COMMENTS
  • Awww Amber. This has made me a bit tearful, for some reason. That’s the power of the written word for you right there! I wasn’t a diarist when I was a teenager – although I had many false starts – but I was a letter writer. I had penpals all over the place, some of whom I knew from real life and some of whom I ‘met’ through teletext penpals and a channel 4 teletext nonsense page called The Zine so I suppose, like you, I’ve always recorded what’s going on in my life in some way. I still write letters to friends, but what I love about blogging is that it fulfils that desire too – the content of my own blog is not at all different to the sorts of letters I used to write to friends. Well, without the doodles and the angst. And it was through discovering blogs like this one that I realised that I could do this. So I should tell you that you influenced me, too 🙂

    August 30, 2012
  • LiveJournal was my first proper blog, if you don’t count the solitary post I made on blogger-before-it-was-blogger. Blogspot, or whatever. LJ was great because of the potential to find people and add them to your friends list and to hope you’d been added to theirs, too. That seemed to be the whole point of blogging: to be part of a community.

    I’m happy to have my own self-hosted blog now, though. Blogging is so much fun!

    August 30, 2012
  • Alison

    REPLY

    Oh how I loved reading this! It’s fun to read the blog stories of “old school” bloggers & how they got to where they are today. I’m glad you started a new-fangled “blog” so we can all enjoy your thoughts, style, and great writing!

    August 30, 2012
  • I find it interesting how many bloggers started off with emo lyrics in diaries. I was exactly the same, before moving on to OpenDiary then eventually having a blog. I think I still have some of my scrap books in my parent’s house gathering dust and (hopefully) never opened. I loved reading how you got into blogging, so interesting! xo

    August 30, 2012
  • Love this post! My story (and sense of adolescent self-importance) is very similar. Maybe I’ll get my butt in gear and write up my own blogging story soon…

    August 30, 2012
  • Sandy

    REPLY

    *ahem* I’m still on LJ…that’s where I go to be all whiney, fortunately most of my friends on it have dropped it so they don’t have to read my rubbish!

    I’ve thought of starting a blog before, but once I’d worked through shoes and what I’d bought, there wouldn’t be much else to post! LOL!

    I did have a webpage once…(I posted stories, art, old degree stuff…..it got archived so I can’t ever remove it now….which is vaguely embarrassing!!) and I learnt HTML too……can’t remember it now tho.

    August 30, 2012
  • I’m happy to hear that you are wiling to let your diary/LJ/blog evolve into whatever you eventually become. When we’re not evolving we’ve stopped growing (emotionally I mean, I don’t need to keep getting bigger…well a few inches taller wouldn’t hurt!)

    There is a quote I love that says, “Allow yourself to let go of whoever you were to become who you are.”

    I started blogging as a way to promote my business and now it has turned into something entirely different.

    You’re right on the money for your choice of blog name. I wasn’t quite as forward thinking with my choice of name and have already had to change it once.

    Bisous
    Suzanne
    http://bisous.typepad.com/bisous/

    August 30, 2012
  • I also started keeping a journal – for everything- and still do! I have a tub in the attic with every single one of them just collecting dust. I sometimes come across them and sit for hours reading about my life thus far. It has given me a very good memory, somehow writing everything down makes me remember lots of the little things which is great! I always wanted to blog, but wasn’t sure about the whole public eye, I gave it a try with Myspace years back, but got my first comment- from a friend- which was a big fat, one word line, “Boring!” So after that it was only a travel blog I kept for friends, until recently and I am trying again. So far so good, I am really liking ‘blogging’! And since your blog was the first one that I became a regular reader of, I am very inspired by it as well. 🙂 Thanks for sharing your blog story!

    August 30, 2012
  • I wish I had that compulsion to write things down. I want to but I never quote manage it. I did do quite well, on and off with my livejournal. It’s truly bizarre to be able to go back and read about how I did not like that tall boy, nosiree. And then skip ahead and read about marrying the tall boy.

    I’ve been toying with trying to start a proper blog that’s a reflection of who I am now. I’m much less emo than I was when I updated my LJ regularly. You’re post inspired me and I’m giving it a go. We’ll see how long it lasts.

    August 30, 2012
  • Pooja

    REPLY

    I’ve lost that desire to write everything down, which saddens me because I’ve met some of my closest friends through blogging. The pain of some experiences runs too deep to be translated properly into words, so sometimes you’d just rather not talk about it.

    It’s better if you DO talk about your experiences in the long run. You’re able to sort through your feelings and what happened to make sense of it all so you can go on with your life. Maybe you learned something profound from that experience and need to record it. My reasoning to write about everything was to have a means to see how I’d grown over the years. When I look back at my old blog, I realize certain things still weigh me down, so I make an effort to work harder to become who I want to be.

    There was this blog on Xanga that inspired me to start writing. The writer was an English teacher in Japan who was working through the JET program. Of course I got sucked in because I love Japan and wanted to know what it was like living there…….but what made me stay was her honesty. She didn’t sugar coat her experiences. People usually have a glamorous perception of what it’s like to live abroad, especially Japan. It’s not necessarily their fault for thinking that way, but it’s not healthy or realistic. Her entries emphasized the good and the bad, so there was this “wholeness” to her experience vs just talking about how pretty Japanese girls are and the wonders of Asian technology. Does that make sense?

    When I moved to India years later, I would read her entries to help me adjust. Even now, when I’m down, sometimes I go back to her blog. I’d like to add that she stopped writing in 2006. I have no idea what happened to her after she went back to the U.S. But that’s the beauty of blogging – you’re able to connect with people despite the years and the distance. Your experiences can be a hand reaching out across space to hold someone else’s.

    I owe her so much. She will never know the depth of my gratitude or the significance of how much her blog meant – and still means – to me.

    August 30, 2012
  • Wendy

    REPLY

    That was a great trip down memory lane. And as someone who first connected with you through LJ I’m touched you considered us trusted friends. My LJ has also fallen by the wayside & I tend to live my life on FB these days because it’s quick & easy. But I do miss have a connected circle of people with whom you could share the tough stuff as well as the soundbites. And, I should add, I loved reading your pre wedding posts there too:-)

    August 30, 2012
  • Loved reading your post, Amber! I still have all my late mum’s handwritten journals which she kept religiously until the week before she died. I also have my daughter’s journals for safekeeping while she gallivants around London (my mum had got her into journalling as a child). They are beautifully illustrated and chart about 6 years of her adolescence before she went off to university (after a trip to Glasgow at the age of 9 or 10, she wrote: “I’m definitely going to Glasgow School of Art when I grow up”.). Both sets of memories from two very different generations are precious to me and bring both laughter and tears when I revisit them. 🙂

    August 30, 2012
  • Stacey

    REPLY

    I loved reading this! I’ve never done journalling or blogging (honestly my life isn’t interesting enough for more than one post a year!) but I love reading other blogs. I was given a journal when I was 10 and started out with good intentions, writing in it faithfully everyday for about 2 weeks. Then I got bored. After that, I would only write in it when I got in a fight with my brother, so the rest of the pages were filled with “I hate (brother’s name)! He’s stoopid!” We fought a lot while we were growing up, so it didn’t take long to fill up the rest of the journal 🙂

    I still have that journal, mostly because I don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want it floating around with the possibility of other randoms reading it, so I have packed it up and moved it with me from house to house.

    August 30, 2012
  • I used to religiously write diaries too, full of angst and poetry, and yet I have none of them now, I got into blogging through a totally different route though, maybe I’ll share it sometime. I do love your blog though.

    August 30, 2012
  • Oh my gosh :’) Thank you so much for the mention; it really means a lot to me.

    I loved reading your story, and I do wish that your first-ever blog still existed – though I can’t believe that you, the veritable Queen of Good Taste, could ever have had coloured text on a black background 😉 It’s interesting, I find, that your diary-writing outside of your blogs has reduced, though I can understand completely the “I DON’T WANT TO WRITE ANY MORE” mentality: I have that pretty frequently but, at the same time, I don’t think I could get by as a functioning human being if I didn’t write down the things which I don’t want to share on my blog elsewhere!

    I really think your story has highlighted the friendships that can occur from blogging – it’s good to know that the nice comments people write aren’t always just for pretty jewellery or clothes, but that they can be real support in difficult times, like they were for you and Terry.

    As well as this, there’s the teenage-angst and emo-song-lyrics thing you mentioned, which quite a few people commenting above have concurred with; it’s strange knowing that I’ll look back on the stuff I’m writing now and think, “Why, Sarah? Why?”, in a similar vein to that which you all have. Still, I guess I’ll write whatever I want now, and make my judgements later – who knows what I’ll be thinking in a few years’ time? :’)

    I’m sorry for the gushing comment, but I’m just feeling so starstruck! Thank you so much for the lovely mention, and for sharing your own story – I wonder how many more people you’ll inspire? ;D ♥

    Sarah ^.^

    August 30, 2012
  • I have had a blog for some years now, but these days I use it to record my shoe saves and not much else. Occasionally I post a recipe and pictures. I have always enjoyed reading Forever Amber, and when I discovered you I read all the archives too. Haven’t laughed so much for a long time 🙂

    August 31, 2012
  • Don’t worry about how red your hair is, or how red you’ve made it! The redder the better!

    August 31, 2012
  • Steffi

    REPLY

    I have a Livejournal that I love and use almost daily, but I absolutely get what you’re saying about worrying about posting about certain things there, because some people might be annoyed/not interested. My interests shift a lot so whenever I get a new obsession I feel sorry for the poor people on my friends list who didn’t sign up for reading about comics, or tv shows, or sewing back then. These days you can use filters on LJ but still, posting there feels a lot like politics for me these days. /ramble

    That said, I love your blog. It’s the only personal (“style”) blog I actually read on a regular basis. I love your photos and I do love your writing style and your sense of humour.

    August 31, 2012
  • I loved reading this. You are such a candid writer – and your posts never fail to make my smile. I loved hearing this, and it has inspired me to
    1. Actually take writing a blog seriously – I too used LiveJournal and have stopped. Guess it’s time to dust off that wordpress account and begin to post!
    2. Write a similar post to this
    3. Begin to tell some people I blog. I’d like to have at least one person read what I scribble.
    I completely forgot what else I was going to say next.
    But yes, thank you for the smiles!

    August 31, 2012
  • I could totally relate to your love of the written word…I also grew up writing journals! Even in this digital world, I always love having adorable notebooks, stationery, etc. BTW, you look lovely in that green outfit top & twirly skirt!!

    REBECCA
    http://www.redtagchiclosangeles.com

    September 1, 2012
  • Panthera

    REPLY

    Thank you for sharing. It was a really interesting and fun thing to read!

    I think one of my fav. things with personal blogs is learning about other people, finding things I have in common with them, and seeing how they deal with life’s unexpectedness.

    September 1, 2012
  • Such a lovely post, Amber! I have to say Shoeperwoman was one of the first blogs I knew, I found it while searching for a certain pair of shoes, haha. I remember scrolling through your archives, thinking ‘wow, this woman is amazing! She has 75 pairs of shoes! She’s a redhead too! She’s my hero!’ 😀 Then I discovered Forever Amber and your other blogs, and scrolled through those archives too 🙂 but it was only when you started the Shoe Challenge last year and asked everyone to join in that I decided to start my own blog – I had been reading blogs for a while then and the Shoe Challenge seemed the perfect opportunity to finally start writing my own blog and documenting my shoe challenges. So you could say you were quite important for my blog too! x

    September 2, 2012
  • I just had one of those, “This girl is JUST LIKE ME!” moments reading this; I suddenly feel so emo.

    September 3, 2012
  • First off, what a fun story about loving journalling in general and the eventual making of this blog (and finding this blog’s purpose/voice too).

    Also, I do love those photos. That skirt is just the right length!

    http://withoutastyle.com

    September 3, 2012
  • Francesca

    REPLY

    Ahhh, and that’s when I found you, when I was a nearly engaged member of the handbag community and OMFG a girl from the UK was wearing a VERA WANG!

    September 3, 2012
  • Hi!

    I’ve left a comment earlier but I can’t see it so I’m writing a new one. Anyways, how do the Casadei blade pumps fit? Are the tts, and do they strech as you wear them?

    Further more, how do the pumps fit in comparison to Christian Louboutin Pigalle or Decollete for example? and if you and to say, what size would be equivalent to EU size 38/ UK 5 (I consider myself to be a tts 38, though, sometime I wear 37,5 i.e. in Dior and Prada)

    I hope you can reply asap. :DD

    Thanks in advance!!! ^_^

    April 4, 2013
      • I tried to find answers by googling but I’m still confused. According to some sources US 7,5 is EU 38/ UK 5 and some state that it’s US 8 that is equivalent to EU 38/ UK 5…

        What size did you take? It helps a lot to know what size you took in Casadei shoes and what EU/UK size you are actually.

        Thanks again 🙂

        April 6, 2013
  • …oh crap…I clicked through before reading about the curse.

    Your post has got me noodling over what may have led me into the bloggy sphere. It’s one of the things I like about reading blogs that actually have written content. These little ah-ha, or uh-huh?, moments. For this moment, I’ve been transported back to those early diary writing years. And the GOLD KEYS on the little satin ribbons. Pages upon pages, I would write…Anyways, thanks for this post. It makes sense to me that in reviewing my own blogstory, I will gain clarity and hopefully become a better blogger!

    August 31, 2014
  • Don’t know what I’d do without my regular fix…

    January 10, 2017
  • Lucky is what I would call myself. I was so lucky to have found your blog. As I read the above post, I couldn’t help but reminisce about my blogging journey and the black pages with highlighted fonts and crazy flashing images all over the place, talk about squinting for hours lol.

    Ever since I found your blog I knew that I wanted to contact you and I am glad that I did because it probably would have taken me much longer to find this post. I have started to read your blog from the earliest post within the topics that speak to me. As a new reader I feel like a crazy fan almost lol, going through all of your old posts and what not. But see, for people like me, it is refreshing to have people like you still around. When i started blogging it was my journal and like you I had no readers and no way for anyone to even find it, shoot I was excited when I searched my own name and found it on google, but who else (other than myself) was going to type in my name randomly, no one. I knew I was talking to myself but at that point I was still hopeful.

    When I stopped blogging it lasted for years and when I started again the fire to my surprise was still lit within me and I wrote daily, and sometimes more than once, sometimes even just short posts just to express myself. Coming from a small island, I was really nervous to put myself out there and I started blogging anonymously because of the fact I was being so open and brutally honest. At some point, I became confident and owned up to my blog. My blog has taken on many identities and designs and today, I feel so afraid to go back to blogging like you, an open journal. As afraid as I am, I know that me continuing to conform to the niche and specific writing is not who I am as a person or writer. I am an emotionalist, a storyteller, a diarist. I am so grateful for you Amber. Thank you

    Hymesha

    March 17, 2018
  • I have started blogging since few years ago, but I was not consistent. On and off, I have changed my blog for three times. I was like you at first, always think what would people think if I post about this or that topic. Thank God I’ve found your blog, so inspiring and motivate me to never quit blogging. Now I will keep my blog as simple as possible, sharing with readers my thoughts and life experience. Thank you Amber, keep blogging forever!

    July 12, 2018
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