Her Looks: Am I still a blogger?

I’m wondering if I should even call myself a “blogger” anymore, considering that I’m hardly doing any blogging. Ever since the entire world shifted from blogging to instagramming, there are zero people left who prefer to read long blog posts. I still love reading, but no one seems to agree with me. All the bloggers who I follow, the Indian blogger bunch who started ‘fashion blogging’ back in 2009-10 probably update their blogs once in a month or two. I loved (and still love) and enjoyed reading their rantings & writings. But whether it is a general lack of interest in blogging, or a newfound love for instagramming only, everybody’s focus is on instagram numbers, and obsessing over whether the new picture they are about to upload, matches the colour theme of their instagram feed or not.

Honestly, I’m sick of seeing that grainy, orange, too-warm-to-be-your-real-skin-tone filter adorning every single blogger instagrammer’s feed. What is with this craze?

I loved instagram initially. Everybody did. Before all the algorithm changes happened, and before every brand/PR started going ga-ga over accounts with 100k-500k followers. Now everybody, and I mean everybody is an influencer on instagram. While I’m guilty of the fact that I’ve used the term ‘social media influencer’ to describe myself at some point of time or the other, I’ve begun to strongly dislike that word. Probably because of the way it has been misused and overused by every tom, dick and harry over the past couple of years.

I’m no one to judge or comment on what people choose to call themselves, but even my most neutral non-judgy self acknowledges that some of them really don’t deserve that title. Myself included. I can’t influence sh*t even if I wanted to. I’m not an influencer nor do I wish to be one. I don’t want to ‘influence’ anyone to follow a certain trend, buy a particular thing, live life a certain way… you get the gist! I love creating content and I love storytelling through simple words. I like giving information, trying new things and putting up my opinion about them. I like that my readers like that. If they like what they see, and decide to try it because it works for them – then great!

Over the years my work has been recognised for elegant simplistic styling and storytelling through simple words. But somewhere in the midst of trying to improve my instagram game, being on top of social media content creation, scoring brand collaborations that don’t always start with the line ‘We are looking for barter’, and having a life outside of all this…. I lost my way. I still say, and still stress that I love creating content, I love writing, but, that has not been motivation enough to do it consistently. Even though instagram is such a great platform, such a great tool, it has managed to suck my enthusiasm away and turn into a never-ending game of struggling to keep producing content with absolutely no good results.

I think I’m finally learning to let go. Not worry about posting everyday. Or about what others are doing. I’ve taken sabbaticals and I’ve re-evaluated my content and decided to keep it organic and slow. I’ve taken numerous breaks from blogging & social media, but I always come back.

Which only tells me that I’m not done here. Yet.