Blog Turns Two! - Year In Review

I really can't believe this blog has survived 2 years... happy birthday to A Splash Of Tan! Although the blog suffered a bit of a hiatus during this year, it made it to this day. Last year, I talked a bit of my how I felt about blogging. That part hasn't changed much, and if you'd like to read about it, click here. This year, I'm going to reflect more on the recent year that passed, my vision for it, and why I don't spend as much time blogging now.

From mid-December 2014 to the end of April 2015, I took an approximate 4 month break from my blog. Ever since my "Blog Turns One" post, I haven't been updating much; a scarce 1 or 2 posts per month. Part of the excuse, and a common excuse, was that I couldn't balance school/volunteering with blogging. My field of study is nothing related to what I blog about so the extra load was hard to manage. There are also many moments when I just prefer not to share everything on the public domain. Another excuse is that I just didn't have any motivation to continue.

Let's take a step back and rewind to the start of my blog, or actually, before the start of this blog. Before ASOT began, I mentioned once that I had another blog. The sole purpose of that one was to share my personal thoughts on subjects, spiritual topics, and bits of my life. I wanted to switch gears and post more about my personal style while still continuing sharing snapshots of my life, so the old one was stopped and this blog was born. I was excited to share my style with everyone even though I didn't consider it to be extremely fashionable, but it was a step up from my high school days.

The initial idea was sort of just to have an archive to document my outfits and adventures, and see any progression/changes as time passed. Eventually, I think the desire to become a popular blog caught up to me. I started seeing that people from around the world were visiting my blog and people were commenting. Companies wanted to work with me, too! For the first year I worked hard to take/edit pictures (with the help of friends), post as much as I could, comment on other people's blogs, share posts on my Facebook account, and join many blog link-ups to get my name out there.

And that's where the story ends mid 2014, when the fame got to my head. At the end of my review post last year, I mentioned that I needed to find my passion again for my blog and it took me awhile. I started switching gears again and posted more DIY and life-related posts instead because that's what I enjoyed. Fashion posts were still fun but I normally don't plan outfits or buy new clothes often, so it was difficult to continually post new ones. Good and creative DIY posts are DIFFICULT to post all the time. Once I could no longer commit enough time, I saw view counts decreasing and comments hitting the 0 mark. Of course it hurt, especially for anyone who invested time in something for people to see and getting little to no feedback. I guess that pushed me to stop and then I took the several months break.

I'm reiterating some of what I said last year, about wanting the feedback from people and making it stressful needing to please the audience. I think the break I took from the blog gave me a good time to reflect and I feel like I found my niche again. Part of me is okay that I don't have as many page views and comments as I used to. I mean, I can tell that people may not be as interested in reading when my effort is less than what it used to be. You usually get what you put in. But I am happy doing what I do.

The idea of wanting this blog to be an archive is still there. Although I may not be documenting my style continually over the years, the blog also documents how my preferences and thoughts are changing. You can call it a diary and scrapbook mashed into one. So please bare with me if my blog changes a lot. I've read articles on how to have a successful blog and most say that you need to have a specific angle for your blog. Jumping all over the place will not secure a solid reader-base. I do agree with that because you want to target a certain audience, but I'm probably, and somewhat already am deviating from that. I just want to post about what I feel like and not trying to change my blog to suit other people. Please don't misunderstand me though because I appreciate each and everyone of you who read my blog, whether it be one, five, or every post. Comment or not, just reading it makes me happy.

Year 1 was all about the fashion. Year 2 was all about the life and sewing DIY/projects. I wonder what Year 3 will bring me (if this blog continues)?