You’ve probably read the heading of this post and thought “What an unfriendly *@$!*” or something along those lines. Hang on a sec….! Before you unfollow me on all social media platforms and get the wrong idea please let me explain myself…..
I’ve been wanting to write this post for some time and I’ve run it past a few bloggers before I did to see what their initial reaction was. Their reactions were all good. There has also been a few discussions in the blogging world that overlaps a bit of what I’m going to talk about in this post so I thought now was the right time.
You may or may not have noticed that I’m quite a private person. My blog focuses on beauty and fashion with a few lifestyle/ marketing posts thrown in for good measure. None of my posts mention any positives or negatives around my family, my mental health, my body image, my physical health, my eating habits or anything else, and I rarely discuss my love life. This doesn’t mean that everything is great and rosy or that I’m trying to portray that I have a life full of sunshine and rainbows. I am just a very private person and even my closest friends sometimes don’t always know what’s going on in the world of Leah.
I get that anything I write on my blog is put out there into the world wide web. Anyone can read it. Employers, ex boyfriends, potential new boyfriends, stalkers… anyone. So I choose for my blog to be a positive place where I write about beauty and fashion. That’s all I want it to be about. I don’t want it to be about me. I don’t want another 3 billion people knowing that I broke up with my boyfriend. No thanks. My blog is here to let you know my thoughts on the new matte lipstick I just bought and if it was too drying and what’s wrong with that…? If there is no more “substance” to it than that, and that’s what I want it to be about, then that should be OK.
Like most, I’ve encountered tough times and I’ve overcome some pretty big hurdles in my life which I don’t talk about. A friend told me a few months ago that I should write about one of these struggles as it would really inspire others who are also going through it. Maybe if I wrote about my personal battles people would relate to me more and I would get more followers….? In fact there is no maybe about it, it’s probably true. But I’m not about to sell my soul for more followers. I’m not in it for that. On the flip side, if you do write those types of posts that’s cool too. Whatever you feel comfortable with is OK because its your blog and no one else’s.
There has been comments thrown about on social media that if you just write about your latest MAC palette and you don’t write about more intimate issues you aren’t seen as “real”. Quite frankly I think that is absurd! I love reading personal posts by bloggers. In fact they are probably my favourite ones to read but It doesn’t mean that those bloggers who don’t are fake or trying to give off an image of something they aren’t. Please remember that everyone is an individual and just because you feel comfortable telling the world about your life it doesn’t mean I do.
Anyway, I am getting to my point…… Recently I’ve had quite a few bloggers add me on Facebook which has spurred me on to write this post. I haven’t accepted these requests and they are probably wondering why…. It’s not because I don’t like like these bloggers. I do. I really do. I interact with them regularly on social media and we read each others blogs. I think they are lovely gals but I still won’t accept them and here’s why……
I try to keep my personal life separate to my blogging life. I have separate Instagram accounts, Twitter accounts and I use my personal Facebook very differently to my blog Facebook page. Don’t get me wrong there is no big secret I’m trying to hide on Facebook. I’m not a completely different person to what you see in my blogging life and generally all I put on Facebook myself is photos of nights out and holidays, because like I say I’m quite discreet. But there are photos of my family, my best friends and ex boyfriends on there, all of which I want to keep private. I respect their privacy as much as I do my own.
There are a handful, a very small handful, of bloggers I have accepted on Facebook. These bloggers however are people I now classify as a friend. We’ve met on multiple occasions, some I text almost daily and one I even went on holiday with, so I no longer see these people just as bloggers anymore but as my friend. Although, I have to admit I was even anxious to accept these requests. Yes, I have issues with letting people into my life.
If you have sent me a Facebook friend request and I haven’t accepted I hope you now sympathize as to why. I may love you/ your blog dearly and we are blogging pals but I like to keep a little bit of me back from the blogging world and I hope you understand that.
This has probably been quite a rambly incoherent post (another reason I just stick to beauty and fashion posts!) but I hope its come across in the way I intended it to, with good intentions and honesty.
Much love as always.
