Happy Birthday When I’m Older
I have joked a couple times on my blog that When I’m Older is the only constant in my life and it’s always there for me. That sounds incredibly pathetic, but I do not mean it that way at all. I started this blog exactly six years ago and within a month, I had more followers than friends. Again, I don’t mean it in a pathetic way. But as this blog started to grow, I felt I had a voice in this world. As everyone was starting to find their passions and figure out what they wanted to do as they grew older, I found my own sort of niche. Suddenly, I wasn’t just the girl who really liked makeup or the nerd in full IB. I was the one who awkwardly posted pictures of her daily outfits and the one who instagrammed way too many “on ze blog” photos. I felt like for once in my life, I finally stood out from my peers. Maybe I wasn’t the smartest or the most athletic (definitely not), or the prettiest, but I did have a blog that was undeniably unique.
I didn’t start to love my blog until I started to experience my first hardships. I did horrible in my first year of university. I got dumped. I lost my best friend. As everything started to change around me, my blog remained that one constant in my life. It continued to be my voice in the world. I was able to focus all of my attention into something that was able to give something back to me. A blog isn’t like a boyfriend. The more clingy I got with When I’m Older, the more it loved me back. The more benefits it showed me. The more hard work I pushed into it, the more favours it returned to me. If I had a bad day, I wrote about it. If I had a good day, I wrote about it. My blog never didn’t want to listen to what I had to say as my fingers flew over the keyboard. It waited patiently as I searched for the perfect word. It summed up my feelings perfectly. And when I was feeling absolutely shitty about something, When I’m Older was the only thing that could ever truly take my mind off of it. Funny how writing a makeup review about cream eyeshadows has the power to do that.
So, this is my advice to you. Start a blog. Start a blog to talk about your passions. Start a blog to find yourself. It has been six years since I started this blog and although I was a very different person six years ago, my blog has been with me through each and every one of those changes. I can scroll back to the beginning and find sixteen year old me standing in front of her dad’s iMac awkwardly showing her outfit on the webcam, later to be made into a poorly edited video. I can find eighteen year old me writing about how horrible her skin is and feeling like it’s the end of the world. I can find twenty year old me feeling so lost in university and not having a clue what faculty she is meant to be in. So this is a thank you to my blog for being by my side every step of the way and documenting all the wrongs (and rights) in my life. It’s been quite the journey.