I have 15 half-written blog posts sitting on my desktop. Every time I open my MacBook Air, they stare at me, half finished, poking their little tongues and nagging me to complete them. ‘I’m in Berlin’, I say, as I swiftly open Safari and log on to iheartberlin.com or stilinberlin.com to distract myself. There’s a lot of very interesting things to be distracted by in Berlin and work is not one of them.
Blogging is something I’ve only just started doing and it’s actually really hard. A lot of people tend to think of bloggers as ‘lazy journalists’ and think that blogging just isn’t a real thing. Susie Bubble makes millions of dollars from it, ten times more than most writers make after they’ve been struggling to complete the one title for the last 3 years. Tavi Gevinson started blogging when she was only 12 years old and now, she’s known as the ‘Godmother of Fashion Blogging’ among many other things. There are literally millions and millions of bloggers worldwide, unleashing their daily dairies online, spilling their thoughts, opening up and sharing their insights with their faceless followers – every single day.
It’s an interesting thing, blogging. It’s really just a mini story on another story, a personal opinion that you share with people you don’t even know on the World Wide Web. But, it’s actually a very powerful thing. Bloggers have the power to shape their readers' opinions and change the thoughts of thousands of people on a daily basis. They can use their following power for good or for evil, advocating for social justice or commentating on world events, not just on the latest collection from Chanel or what Anna Dello Russo wore to latest runway event. There will probably be a university degree in blogging in a few years, I’m sure of it. So as the saying goes, ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
I’ve got lots to write about. I have a story on my desk top (sitting half finished of course) about the history of Singapore and the last 20 years of its fashion, the introduction of Singapore Fashion Week and about its fashion and textile trading market within the Asian industry. It’s interesting to me, but I got so bogged down with reading and finding new facts, writing more and more and never putting my pen down, that all of a sudden I’d added another 3 pages. That’s not a blog, that’s an assignment.
I think that’s where I have been struggling. At uni, one of my assignments was to actually write a blog, which is seemingly a great assignment but I was marked and judged. Studying fashion is great, although I do find it contradictory that in a creative subject, you’re marked on your personal opinion and style. I’ll save that for another blog.
I’ve been struggling with breaking away from the factual side of writing and sticking to the art of creatively expressing my opinion when I write fashion blogs, and it has been tough. I prefer to back-up my stories with facts, referencing history or correlations to actual things, and when you’re trying to cover a story almost every day, it takes almost every day to research your facts behind it.
So, I’ve been stuck, I have bloggers-block. All of a sudden the one topic that I am most passionate about, the one thing that I live, love and breathe, turned into a chore and a task that I didn’t want to complete for the fear of being marked and judged or writing something incorrectly.
But now, in Berlin, I am inspired by the insane amount of creativity that one city can hold, full of graffiti and art work, amazing and wondrous fashion, friendly pierced faces and extremely quirky clubs. I’ve travelled through 13 countries in only 6 weeks and now that I’ve finally reached Berlin, I’ve realized that being creative, being outspoken, having an opinion, being different and sharing it with the world through my blog, is not something that can be marked and circled on my report card.
So thanks to Berlin, my bloggers-block has been lifted and I feel free again to write and blog without fear of judgement. Watch this space, I have 15 blogs on my desktop that are about to be unleashed.
The Fashion Advocate x
