Thoroughly modern millennial

Author: Ria

  • Welcome to Thoroughly Modern Millennial

    New year. New name. New era.

    Hello old friends (and new!) I’d like to introduce you to Thoroughly Modern Millennial.

    I started this re-brand journey just before Wishing For Chanel turned five last year. At such a momentous anniversary, as well as reflecting on the past five years I was also trying to look ahead to what the next five could hold for my little corner of the Internet.

    Some of you guys may have noticed I had a bit of a blogging crisis at the beginning of November last year (and lets face it all the way through 2015 in varying degrees of ridiculousness). The result of said crisis was basically this post where I basically stopped trying to ‘keep up’ anymore. I inevitably lost momentum. Life took over essentially – as it has a habit of doing. One week turned into two. Then two months.

    It was my longest break away from blogging and Internet ‘life’ since I started on this crazy train five years ago. Suddenly without the crutch of ‘my blog’, my mind was forced to concentrate solely on ‘me’ and who I was outside of ‘blog me’. And in all honesty? It felt nice to skirt away from the responsibility of running a blog, but I missed the community aspect of the blogging and actively writing something everyday, so I formulated a plan to comeback.

    After a few ‘rebrand’ talks with close friends (bloggers and non-bloggers alike) I ended up with the following conclusion. I had outgrown Wishing For Chanel. This blog needed to change.

    As much as I was proud to be known as ‘Ria from Wishing For Chanel’, the blog name and the content I was producing felt restrictive. When your blog name is closely tied to a lifestyle brand, whether I like it or not people have an expectation of the type of content you’ll be pumping out and I set up an expectation of myself to follow and stick to. Even though I adore fashion and will continue to write about it with passion, it’s starting to play a smaller role in my life and my blog needs to be a reflection of that.

    Every so often I had a go at sharing more serious posts on different topics on Wishing For Chanel, but the juxtaposition of the blog name and the niche I tried hard to keep within felt disjointed and didn’t sit well with me. In my head I hated how messy the blog felt to the point I hit a wall every time I sat down and went ‘RIGHT get your head in the game and write’.

    As soon as I came up with the new name, new content and new ‘focus’, I felt excited again. TMM (as I’m lovingly abbreviating it) is me turning over a new leaf yet acknowledges the fact that life has changed so much since I’ve started formally blogging. I’m hoping the blog will still be ‘me’ but more ‘me’ than before – if that makes any sense?

    So what should you expect from now on?

    More. (Hopefully anyway) As I said the new blog name is freeing and feels much more like ‘me’. TMM’s mantra will be sharing varied content I feel really passionate about and as well as a peak into the other parts of ‘me’ – the geek, the journalist, the cynic, the fashion fan, the writer, the feminist, the cf-convert, and the bookworm. You will also see content from Feminist in Training and The Unabridged Writer migrating over to this space, so there’ll be more posts on gender equality and writing in general over here too. I want to share more of that content with you guys and – as it has been commented by many people – I need to stop spreading myself out too thinly online. Too many fingers in too many pies!

    I hope this switch will have you understanding a bit more about what makes the girl behind the blog tick and hopefully the new title will help me be a bit braver with my content. But for anyone worried and sad about missing any of my usual features – ha! – a few may be making appearances here and there, and all my old posts are still knocking about if you fancy delving back (please don’t do that, they’re awful).

    And on that note I bid a final farewell to Wishing For Chanel. The name, the persona and the five years it gave me have honestly shaped the blogger I am today.

    But in the words of Sheryl Crow ‘a change will do you good‘ (God I love that song)

    *raises a glass to the next chapter*

    Ria

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  • Insta-round up | October

    10 October InstaLife

    Soundtrack: Airplanes by 5 Seconds of Summer

    *oh the irony of writing this post a f t e r posting about beating blogger’s block ~hides~

    I always feel like I’m apologising on this blog (and in emails to blogging friends) for falling back behind on Internet life. I know I shouldn’t. It’s a blog. It’s shouldn’t matter to me this much, but I do. I feel guilty for not keeping up or in touch with this corner of the Internet. I feel guilty when I’m get home from work and I still have five unfinished posts sat in drafts and I go straight to bed. I feel guilty when I’m out and forget about online life for a day – weeks – I feel guilty for ignoring emails or hide away from the world for a bit.

    Is that guilt healthy? Probably not to be honest, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.

    Now before you all get concerned I’ve been suckered into becoming obsessed with social media or blogging and can’t even go a day without it, or have been seriously affected by the Essena O’Neil story and am gonna go ‘I QUIT ALL THE THINGS BECAUSE SOCIAL MEDIA IS EVIL’ on you, stop right there.

    I don’t care much for chasing numbers (I gave up ever thinking I’d hit the thousands of followers long, long ago) and I’m very much opertate under the ‘I post what I want on here, so suck it up’ kinda mantra. I’ve been very lucky that I feel I can be honest on here. But I guess what this is is blogger burnout. I can’t keep up anymore, or at least I can’t give Wishing For Chanel the love and tenderness it really truly deserves right now. So I guess I’m taking a step back for a while. I don’t know for how long, but I want to siphon my effort into the other neglected parts of my online life (*cough* Feminist In Training *cough*)

    So as not to end on a bummer of a note with this, I want to point you on over to Blogger’s Bookshelf. Which has recently turned THREE years old (we have a giveaway and everything, go check it out!). I’m incredibly proud of BB and all the wonderful people who keep it afloat. Seriously I have so much love for all of them, they’re all wonderful, wonderful people who – again – I feel like apologise to more and more recently.

    So adieu for now? Who knows I may change my mind on this tomorrow (or maybe you can try talk me outta this/motivate me on Twitter?)

    R.xoxo

  • Beating Blogger’s Block With NaNoWriMo

    NaNoWriMo-logo
    *image via YWP’s website

    Happy NaNoWriMo!

    Now I know many of you won’t be participating in National Novel Writing Month’s (NaNoWriMo) 50k novel challenge, but have you ever considered trying to break blogger’s block using the same writing methods? As bloggers I like to think we too face a lot of the same challenges that novelists do. We write a lot of content on a regular basis and sometimes we hit a wall. Which is why I propose a solution. Take on the NaNoWriMo philosophy and apply it to your blogging world.

    The NaNoWriMo methodology to writing is simple. The challenge of writing a 50,000 word novel is tough. As writers we tend to self-edit or excessively plan before getting down to the nitty-gritty or end up watching a chain of Buzzfeed videos instead of writing, but NaNoWriMo requires you release those inhibitions and to ‘write with abandon’. This means writing whatever you want with no edits, no rules and with the goal of just putting pen to paper (or finger to keyboard) to get kick start your creative juices.

    Here’s my NaNoWriMo Blog Sprint Challenge for you:

    1. Open up your writing programme/tool of choice – notebook, word doc, blog editor etc.
    2. Starting writing out any and all ideas that come to mind. These can be post ideas you’ve had simmering in your head for a while or just start brainstorming. You can write whole sentences or phrases or just single words, doesn’t matter at this stage.
    3. Keep writing…and writing…and writing…
    4. Do this for an hour and see where you get to.
    5. Marvel at the fact you’ve probably drafted 5 blog posts without realising it!

    Top tips

    • Do not under any circumstances start self-editing whilst you’re in ‘writing mode’.
    • Forget grammar/punctuation/spelling rules – you can edit what you’ve regurgitated later.
    • Write even if the flow of words doesn’t make sense.
    • White out paragraphs of text you’ve already written if you get tempted to start editing.
    • When you run out of steam for one post idea, start writing about another one.
    • Don’t self-edit.
    • Turn off your wifi/unplug from social media. This is writing time not time to scroll through Instagram.
    • Don’t worry if ideas seem stupid at the moment, just get that word count down and deal with the consequences later!
    • If you can’t think of what to say add ellipses or leave a gap to fill in the blanks later (this is my favourite tip!).
    • Don’t self-edit.
    • Resist the temptation to Google or look up words/ideas/spellings on your phone – you’ll only spiral into distraction.
    • If it helps time yourself to write alongside @NaNoWordSprints. The account runs all the way through the month and helpfully alerts you of how long you have left to write – make sure you set it up so you receive notifications when they Tweet!
    • Ignore repetitions, focus on that stream of consciousness, you can delete those phrases later.
    • Did I mention don’t self edit?

    So are you ready to take on the challenge?

    Let me know how you get on!

    R.xoxo

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