can bloggers be different online than irl?

I planned this post a couple weeks ago when I was still at home, aka still had my life in check, and every time I've sat down to write it I've hated it. The sentiment remains - bloggers are going to be at least a little bit different in their real lives than they are online and this is just something we should, and somewhat do, accept and acknowledge. However, my approach to this post has changed because I've been AWOL for nearly two weeks. I've missed my last two posting days because life has gotten in the way and, on a scale of 1 to 10, I am 852 stressed right now. The blogs gotta take a back seat while I prioritise my irl life ahead of my online one.

We already know that this blogging thing is all about relatable vs aspirational right now, whether you're perfecting the balance of the two or appealing to either end of the spectrum you know that there is a general ~vibe~ that bloggers have to be truly themselves online and not fake. All true, I can't discredit the importance of being genuine online - especially when it's to an audience who trust you, but can we acknowledge that we are at least a lil bit different online on our blogs and 'gram captions than we are irl?

jacket - topshop // top - topshop // skirt - topshop // necklace - brandy melville // shoes -adidas

It's not a bad thing at all, but if you think I walk around saying happy sunday! to my friends the way I do in Instagram captions, babe you are wrong. I feel like there's a certain patter you adopt as a blogger, a bit like when you're working in retail and you've got your typical hi, how's ur day been, dya need a 5p bag? chat for the customers and the ugh I cba for this, why is Gemma being such a bitch today? ffs this dress we are selling is ugly af chat with your work pals. Oh, and if you worked at the same store as me then part of your patter was also to try and sell a credit card. Lol. I digress, there's a sorta typical routine bloggers stick to in terms of language used to interact with followers and other bloggers and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this. It's not fake just because it might not be said in real life, spoken conversation.

There is pressure on bloggers and ~influencers~ now more than ever to be real and not mislead your followers and this is something I completely understand - if you're promoting a product just for the sake of it and not because you remotely like it then that's when you're misleading your audience, but if you're being this peppy gal online when you might not be the same 24/7 outside of your blog and your social media accounts, this can't be called fake or misleading. We all go onto Twitter and Insta and see some drama every so often where a blogger is called out for being fake, and a good half of the time the blogger is so not being fake and it's a reach. If someone seems bubbly af online and you bump into them in Topshop when they're alone and stressed and carrying 15 things then they might not be as bubbly and that doesn't mean they're fake or creating a false persona online.

But now onto the realisation I've had recently whilst neglecting this blog because I've had a dozen other things to do for uni that obviously must come first. I struggle to be online me when I'm not doing well as irl me, which is actually proof that online you (or at least me) is based off of irl you. It's too draining for me to sit here and type up a post, edit pics and come up with an Instagram caption when I'm struggling to do the work in my life that is a necessity. This blog is not a necessity, and arguably nor is my degree, but I'm making my degree my necessity because at the heart of it my blog is, and always will be, my fun lil hobby. I can't give time to my fun lil hobby knowing that I am neglecting things I need to do. I couldn't even if I wanted to. The reason I'd sit here and try to write this post over and over and end up hating it every time is because I couldn't be online me if I hadn't sorted our irl me. I had too much guilt (and still do tbh lol) about spending time I could be writing and revising on this blog and everything that goes with it. So I unintentionally took a break. Barely scheduled tweets, barely posted to Instagram. I haven't put up a blog post since I got back to uni - when my prev one went up I was still in the car back here. It's been nice to know that I don't have to worry about this on top of other stuff I have to worry about, but I have had guilt over neglecting this blog too.

The difference between neglecting the blog and neglecting everything I've got to do for uni (other than the obvious that uni is uni and my blog is just the fun side hobby) is that I literally cannot be the blogger me right now. I can continue to write and revise for uni no matter how I'm feeling, but I can't do all the blog stuff if I'm not feeling it, because online me is different to irl me. Online me hugely relies on irl me but I can't think up funny / cheerful / bubbly / sassy / all of the above Instagram captions when my mind is locked into doing work, and I can't be bothered to use my free time to write a post or schedule a bunch of tweets when I either feel guilty about having spare time and feel a need to fill it with work or want to enjoy my spare time whilst I can.

We've pretty much come to accept that social media is a highlights reel - the best photo from the 200 you took is the one that gets posted, you're not going to tweet about the mental breakdown you had over your nail breaking, so we need to accept that someone might not be the exact same irl as they are online. Balancing your life with your online presence is hard, I touched on it in a post thinking I'd just about managed it and of course this last week or two I've barely touched Instagram, gone days without scheduling tweets, not had time to sit and reply to blog comments, and missed my posts. If I'm having a busy and/or stressful time I'm not going to broadcast it to the world, I'm not going to write a blog post about how much of a struggle everything is at the moment, I'm going to take a step back and sort my life out before coming back to my blog. The online persona bloggers have is real, it just might not be 100% of them. I can easily hold my hands up and say that some of my blog patter makes me cringe when I'm just chilling in my own time and reading back on a post or an Instagram caption, but I wouldn't have been able to write it if that wasn't part of me. I feel like I can justify investing time into this right now so that's what I'm doing and I can happily and easily sit here doing the whole writing a post, editing the pics and planning the 'gram and twitter posts to go with it. Online me is curated around the highs and has to be slotted around things that are a bigger priority for me in life. A blogger's online self is just part of their irl self. It's not not their true selves, but it's only a portion of it so don't go calling people out for being different in other contexts.

I love when I hear and see bloggers speak candidly about trying to maintain their blog life with their life offline, when they can admit that they are different irl. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it and I am v happy to hold my hands up and say that I'm not exactly the same person. If I ever walked around saying Happy Sunday!!! I'd want someone to slap me, but Imma keep saying it on the 'gram because that is low key a part of me.


♡
Yasmin

how important is it to have a blog post schedule?

There are dozen of posts in the blogging world that give tips to on how to grow, keep people interested and coming back to your blog, be 'successful' in the industry - whatever successful may be to you. Consistency is a point that comes up often in these, as is posting as much as possible. Having a blog post schedule ticks these boxes, it keeps your posting days and times consistent and allows you to plan to post often. A schedule is something you may feel is a given, something that you need to have, this is why when I first started this blog I planned to post Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, though this often saw me posting stuff that was sub-par and half-hearted in order to maintain a schedule.

I have a posting schedule now, though I'm not completely rigid about it, but I have seen both the benefits and the disadvantages first hand of using one so I thought I'd use this to judge the importance of actually having one - surely it can't be a necessity?

top - topshop // skirt - topshop // sunglasses - topshop // necklace - brandy melville // shoes -adidas

the good

How many times have you seen a strongbow darkfruit boy who thinks he's Drake post a pic with the caption 'consistency is key 🔑' ? The saying is a popular one because there's an element of truth to it. And consistency in blogging doesn't just mean in the times you put up a blog post, it also comes into your aesthetics and branding, and making sure your blog and its social platforms can all be linked together and are cohesive. To me, when I think of consistency, I think of someone who has their shit together. I feel as though you can't maintain something at the same standard all the time unless you know what you're doing and you have everything sorted and in line. Looking like you have your shit together is arguably pretty beneficial in the blogosphere - it helps with the whole relatable vs aspirational thing that we keep talking about at the moment, if you're just a ~regular gal~ but you appear to have your life together then it will make people think they can do the same without having millions in the bank or being famuz. It probably also makes your readers want to listen to you and take your advice more, because they're going to think they have something to learn from you if your life is in check. 

A blog post schedule really helps with people coming back to your blog, if they know exactly when a blog post will go live they'll want to come and read it with no fuss. If you don't have an easy way of letting people know you've posted, like a newsletter say, and your readers are following hundreds of people on social media and can easily miss your tweet or 'gram update saying you've just published a post then just telling them your schedule means that if they want to keep up with your content they will be able to come and see it when it goes live, because nobody wants to type in the same URL every day waiting for a post that doesn't come for nine days. They'll give up by day four. 

In terms of growth, yes I have seen growth since starting up my schedule but this is also because starting my schedule was when I also started to put time and effort into my blog. I started properly promoting posts with scheduled tweets a month or so before I started my schedule and that saw my traffic go up by a hell of a lot, so this sorta proves that you don't need a schedule, but when I started the schedule and would add these posts into my Buffered tweets to promote, it helped my growth a bit more because before I was just promoting the same blog posts so once someone had read it they didn't need to again, now I have people coming back at least twice a week because there's always something new they've not yet read. Lots of bloggers tell the story of how they would post daily when they first started out and only began to post less once they had acquired a decent sized audience through daily posting, not something I've tried myself but something I seem to read on a lot of other blogger's posts about their own growth and journey.

the bad

Something I've already touched on, which is probably the worst part about having a blog post schedule in my opinion, is the feeling that you have to stick to a schedule so posting anything just to fulfil it. The worst part of having a blog post schedule is when you enter the waters of forcing average content out purely because you don't want to miss a day of your schedule. How beneficial can regular posting be if the stuff you're posting is of little value and something you haven't put enough effort into? Back in late 2015 when I started out and used a Mon/Weds/Fri schedule, if I knew a post was due up that day and I hadn't gotten round to writing and photographing one at all, I would just take a pic of a piece of makeup and chat shit about it. It still qualified as a review, and I still gave my honest opinions, but this sorta thing to me was filler content. Just there to tick off a day in the calendar that I was supposed to have posted on. I know I mentioned the 'consistency is key' manta, but in blogging I think it's 'content is key'. There's a certain standard in blogging now, like it or not, so the quality of your content is going to matter a lot more than how regularly you post. Nobody will click on those regular posts if they don't look good and are written poorly.

Another thing, something I've worried about since starting my schedule in January, is your posts getting lost because there's always a new one coming out. If I've written a post I'm particularly proud of, I get a lil annoyed when, a few blog posts later, it gets pushed off the front page of my blog and the only way people can find it is by looking back themselves or me really pushing it on my social channels - which not everyone is guaranteed to see anyway. A good way to combat this is trying to link back to it in as many blog posts as possible, and promoting it lots on your socials, but if someone just visits your blog's home page and a certain post isn't on there straight away it can lose traction. Not sure if this is just a Blogger platform worry though, because you can get featured posts widgets on Wordpress (is this on Blogger too? someone correct me if I'm wrong pls).

the verdict

I don't see blog post schedules as something you absolutely must have, but there are undeniable benefits to having one, especially when you're just starting out. I found it tricky to think of more to go in 'the bad' because there's not much that's actually bad with having a blog post schedule, it's more about whether or not it is a necessity - which it is not. If you can do a schedule and you've accumulated enough blog post ideas to keep you going for the first few weeks of it, I'd say go for it. 100%. But I will also say that if you have to miss a day of it because you're out of ideas or don't have the right pics or are busy with other stuff then skip it and don't beat yourself up about it. The problem comes when you beat yourself up about it, you're too busy worrying about not having kept to your schedule for one day that you waste time you could be creating new content and end up missing the next few days until you end up giving up altogether. When I miss a day of schedule, which has happened twice since starting and both in the last month (I think), I just allow it to happen, don't think anything of it, and prepare for the next coming day of my schedule so I'm ready with a proper post. Another thing to keep in mind is your stage in your blogging journey, when you have a loyal base of readers, no matter how big or small, you know you can post slightly more sporadically but people will still be there to read it. If you're just starting out it's a good idea to not start posting until you've gathered ideas to last you a lil while so you can put them up regularly enough to acquire readers. And even then, if you don't care then don't do it. The best thing about blogging, of all online and social media ~influencing~, is that it's all yours with no rules. You've got control so you do you babe. It's important, but only if you give it importance.


♡
Yasmin

how i juggle blogging and uni (just about)

So I've been planning for months to start a uni series on this blog in Summer, around August when people get their places and have to start sorting accommodation etc buuutttt, I thought I'd do this one now because it's more of a personal experience thing and isn't specific to everyone who will start university. Sub in school / college / a job / whatever applies to you.

If you didn't know, I started this blog back in 2015 during the Summer between school and sixth form, but only spent the first few months blogging regularly to a schedule and then spent the following two years blogging sporadically, so I can't really say I ever juggled blogging with sixth form or my part time job back then - as much as I used to use those as my excuse. Starting my degree was when I started to get serious about blogging again, so for the last few months I've had to balance the upkeep of this blog and all my social media accounts that go with it with, ykno, doing my degree.

Blogging on the side of a full time job or education, or even part time, is a struggle. You have to manage your time efficiently, work blogging around your main priority, and try to put money into your blog and content whilst still paying bills, buying food and generally trying to survive. Hopefully my experience and tips will help you better manage blogging with your education or job.

ask for help

Whether it's a member of your family, a friend, another blogger - you can't do it all alone. This doesn't even just apply to those who juggle blogging with another thing, it's important to make sure you aren't giving yourself a huge workload and to remember that asking for help is not a weakness whatsoever. Sure, you can take photos with a tripod and remote, but isn't it better to have an actual human being behind the lens the very moment the shot is being taken to make sure it looks good. I literally could not keep up with the visual side of things without asking for help. Whether it's my parents or my friends I've always gotta be that little leech and beg them to take outfit photos of me. Reward them with a coffee or something after for taking time out of their day to help you though.

jumper - topshop // headband - amazon

work it into your budget but don't prioritise it

I'm sure I've mentioned this recent, either in a post or tweet, but my maintenance loan at uni is £1000 under the cost of my accommodation, so my parents have to add to my rent and then give me a weekly allowance on top of that which I hate. Being in first year I've found it hard to get a job - I go home kind of often and I can't live there during Summer which seems to be the question employers always ask me - so when it got late into the academic year I gave up, no point in me taking a job for two months when I've got to go home over Easter and than have exams not long after and then move out for the Summer. If I had a part time job I'd probably put this money back into my blog and content, because I'm lucky enough to have parents who would continue to give me money for a food shop which is my only other necessity. When I say put money into the blog, a big part of this is buying new clothes to showcase. I wrote about the pressure of needing to always buy clothes in order to keep up with blogging, it's not one I want to succumb to but I've found that my style is changing and evolving a lot whilst at uni, perhaps part of me feeling like I'm really ~growing up~ and ~maturing~ so it's something I've ended up doing, but I always buy stuff I know I'll keep wearing and it's just an added bonus that I can shoot these for the blog.

 On average I get about £50 a week, though on the odd occasion it's been up to £80 when I need to do a bigger food shop because lots of things run out at once or because I'm doing a lot that week. I usually spend £20-£25 a week on shopping because the only things I need to repurchase weekly are fresh foods like meat and vegetables. Sometimes I spend a bit more when my eggs or milk or yoghurt or certain dry goods have run out and I need to top them up, but usually it's £20 a week. This gives me at least half of my weekly allowance for anything else and I pretty much never ever spend it all, so every few weeks at the end of the week when all my leftover money has accumulated I pop into Topshop and see if anything catches my eye, thus giving me new stuff to shoot for the blog. In terms of blog design, I bought my current theme a year or two ago when I still had a part time job so I don't need to maintain those but I'm planning a Wordpress migration for when I come home for the Summer and just saving with my leftover weekly allowance. In terms of apps, I pay the yearly cost for VSCO Cam because it's not that much for a whole year, and my payment is taken in January aka straight after Christmas and my birthday so I'll always have some dolla. I have the student discount on Adobe programmes but my dad pays for it because he needs them too and just lets me use them because he would have to pay waaaaay more were it not for my discount. Back when I had a part time job I used to save 10% of my monthly pay and transfer it straight to my savings account, then I upped this to saving £50 a month, so if this is something you can do it's worth shoving any excess money into your savings and then coming back to it when you need to invest in something for your blog.

do things in bulk when you have the time

Whenever I've got less work to do for uni or I've completed it all, this is when I want to do as much as possible for my blog before more work inevitably piles up for uni again. Whenever I have free time that I know I don't need to do uni work in, I will do blog work. Sometimes I mix the two together, using blog work as my break from uni work because it puts my mind on something that I actually enjoy but because I'm still doing some form of work my brain won't lose momentum and I can easily go back to revising or writing an essay after.

I like to shoot my outfits back home in Brighton, so when I'm home I will drive somewhere with my parents and spend a good chunk of time shooting several outfits in bulk to last me until the next time I come home. It's not a glamorous life - think frantically changing in the boot then getting back out to take pics and repeat - but it works well because we usually do it on a Sunday when we all have the time and can fit in a food shop before or after. When I'm back home, especially if it's only for the weekend, I don't do as much uni work as I do when I'm actually at uni so I know I have more of my free time to dedicate to blogging, so this is when I like to cram as much in as I can. Don't compromise your priority, whether it be education or a job, for blogging but whenever you know you can take a break from your priority and dedicate some time to blogging, get a lot done in that time to last you for those times when you won't have time at all because your priority is consuming everything.



These are the three main points I have for how I've been able to juggle blogging with uni, anything else would just be stemming from these anyway, so here's hoping you can use them to juggle blogging with whatever your full-time occupation is.


♡
Yasmin

at what point do you start calling blogging your work?

It's 2018, people around the world are able to create an online empire from the comfort of their own bed and make a ton of dolla from it. Young women are pioneering the idea that you can create a brand out of yourself and turn it into a fully fledged career - running your own business, working for yourself, earning a good income all by creating content around what you're doing, thinking and wearing. Now that this whole blogging thing has become a viable career option for many, there are countless blog posts written about how to become a full time blogger, what made someone decide to quit their ~proper~ job and take the leap into blogging as their sole source of income. Of course this is when you can class blogging as your 'job', but in terms of shooting and editing pics, writing posts, creating content, curating your feed, scheduling tweets to promote your blog posts - all of these things are 'work', it's work you have to put into your blog. You need to set aside time in your day for the upkeep of your blog and social media profiles and for creating imagery and words to go onto these platforms. If blogging isn't your job, can you still call this work? If so, when do you start calling it work?

I feel like blogging is one of those things where, unless you yourself blog, you won't truly understand it. My friends are often shocked at how much time I have to invest in my blog, even when it's not my career. Whilst I'm always going to prioritise uni over my blog for as long as I'm there trying to get my degree, I need to set aside a good chunk of my time during the week to ensure I can get enough content to fulfil my two posts a week schedule and manage to upload to the gram as much as possible throughout the week, then every night I do not allow myself to sleep until I've scheduled my blog post tweets for the following day. 

It's a lot more work than I anticipated, I've only really been taking this blog seriously since December and been doing my 2x a week schedule since mid January, the sporadic blogging I did for the couple of years before this wasn't that time consuming because I didn't go out to shoot street style content and I barely posted so didn't need to think of ideas and then write those out multiple times a week, let alone multiple times a month. This is why I believe that you'll never really get blogging unless you're doing it. So, when I take time out of my day to do all these things, can I say I'm doing work?

I blog because I enjoy it, I'm not out here with some ulterior motives for free shit and earning dolla but if that comes off the back of my hard work (and it fits my brand) I'm not going to say no. I do take my blog seriously, I actually didn't enjoy blogging anywhere near as much until I started taking it seriously. I enjoy having a creative outlet, I enjoy planning outfits and how I want my photos to look, I enjoy playing with VSCO filters to curate my insta even if I'm indecisive af and like a different filter every week, I enjoy writing about things I'm loving, things I've experienced, questions I want to ask, thoughts I'm having, I don't enjoy scheduling my tweets at night when all I want to do is shut my eyes and sleep but it doesn't take that long and there is no point me putting all the effort into creating content if I won't get it out there so it's a tiny sacrifice worth making. But, these things are time consuming and, even though I have fun doing most of these things, I take them seriously and I care about how it all turns out - so is this work? Am I working?

I don't have a job at the moment because being first year at uni it's been harder than I expected to find a job considering I'm never there outside of term time and I don't have anywhere to live during the Summer because, ykno, student accom runs out in June/July and student house lease doesn't start until September. I've made a little bit of money from this blog but it's not exactly my job - far from. But the only source of income I've had since quitting my retail job last September (aside from my loan which is ach way under my accommodation cost and my weekly allowance) has come from this blog. Even if it hadn't, do we need to be earning from our blogs to call it work? If we want to put the time and effort into our blogs regardless of whether it's a hobby, a part time job or a fully fledged career shouldn't we be able to tell people we're 'working' or 'doing work' when it comes to writing posts, shooting pics etc?

coat - i am gia // jumper - topshop // jeans - topshop // headband - amazon // shoes - adidas

I'm pretty lucky that I'm on a journalism course at uni, because people get it to an extent. My friends get it because they're around me to hear or see what I'm doing for my blog and sometimes help me out with getting photos and know that sometimes I need to ~do it for the 'gram~. Other people on my course appreciate that it's a form of journalism, I've barely mentioned my blog before but people are generally impressed when they find out that I get a decent, albeit small, monthly readership and have earned some money, and they get that writing posts is basically journalism but writing for yourself rather than a publication. However, people who don't blog or who perhaps come into blogging with what you could call the wrong intentions, they focus on the wrong things and can try to exploit you for it. They try to challenge you on the validity of your blog by asking for specific numbers in terms of followers, blog views, money made or they ask who the ~biggest blogger~ you know is and if they can get in touch. For me, none of these things are why I blog. I don't want to look like I'm only in blogging to leech off of other bloggers I know, and I don't need to justify myself to anyone by stating my views or income or people I know through blogging. 

I guess this is part of the reason why I'm so hesitant to say 'I'm doing work for my blog' or 'I'm working' when I'm creating content, because people who don't blog can't wrap their heads around the fact that just because you don't have 100k followers and make £500 per Instagram post your blog can't qualify as work or something you put that much into. If I was to start calling blogging 'working' I'd be met by 'oh? how many followers do you have?' and when I say 2k on twitter and 700-800 on insta I'll then be met with a look. Like, umm that's nothing so you can't possibly be working. Of course I don't need to tell these people, I don't care what they think, but I understand that people who aren't in this industry are curious about it and won't comprehend just how much goes into blogging whether or not you're full time with thousands of followers and thousands of £££ in the bank. If I'm spending the afternoon shooting outfits or writing posts and call these things 'working' you can argue that I'm inviting people to challenge me on it by using the term work.

There are also bloggers who put way more time and effort into their content than me, perhaps because it is their only source of income and their career so they really need and want to work hard on it, and calling what I do 'work' can devalue what they're doing when they're doing The Most and I'm doing as much as I can alongside uni and I'm happy to put up a bog standard mirror selfie when I've run out of street style outfit photos and cba to go shoot more. Can I really call shooting outfits 'working' when I'm dedicating one afternoon to it every couple weeks when I'm back home and can go shoot in central Hove meanwhile others are going out multiple times a week, changing on the street and seeking out locations that are effort to get to?

Even if blogging is now your fully-fledged career, you will have started out writing posts and taking pics because you enjoy doing it and want to share what you're wearing with the internet and you probably wouldn't be able to take it on as a career if you didn't still have the same sense of enjoyment about it all. You just continue to do something you've always had fun doing except now it's grown into a career. But just because you enjoy doing something, it doesn't mean it can't qualify as work. If you're going the extra mile to create content for your blog as opposed to your friends who just take selfies in their bedrooms and upload them to Instagram where their colleagues and peers will like their photos.

It's easy to stand in your room and take a pouty selfie in front of the window to get good light, it's harder to go and find an aesthetically pleasing street or coffee shop or shop front, stand in front of it whilst strangers walk past and stare, and prance around in front of the camera whilst your mum / friend / instagram husband / photographer contorts their body so they can hold the lens at a certain angle to get the shot you want. Then you need to take the photo through your editing app(s) of choice and edit it so it fits in with the rest of your photos to create a cohesive feed. If this is the amount of work you are putting in, surely it is work that you're doing? Or is it just your choice to put in more effort than non-bloggers so you need to put up and shut up and not call it working?

I'm really interested to hear what everyone thinks about this - bloggers and non-bloggers. Do you think it has to be your breadwinning career to be able to call it work? Do you think putting the time and effort in allows you to say you're 'doing work' for your blog? Did you even realise this much effort went into blogging? Do you put in 10x this effort and find it offensive that someone who puts in 10x less also calls it work?

♡

Yasmin

monthly roundup + recommendations: march

Happy Easter! Ok, so how is it already April? I can't believe we all moaned about January feeling decades long and the three months since then have felt like three weeks.

Not really sure what to include in the roundup for the month, just been out here going through the motions of uni, nothing exciting. I came home for Easter a week ago but it's not been super exciting yet because most people's Easter holidays have only started now, and I have all the deadlines and revision pls kill me x so I can't even have fun every single day. Most of the exciting things have been my recommendations tbh. I drew Wimbledon tickets in the ballot which is v exciting, but that is all I can think of right now. Lol soz. It's the Lindt bunnies getting to my head. So let's get onto the recommendations because that's all I've rly got this month.

george ezra's staying at tamara's

Oh my god I cry. This album is the best thing in the world, I am so head over heels in love with it. Leading up to the release Geoff was dropping lots of songs, and release day happened to fall on the day I was coming home for uni so I saved it as my listening material. It exceeded expectations, I knew it would be good but I was actually surprised at just how good it is. George's music isn't the sort of thing I listen to all the time and isn't a sound I seek out from tons of artists, I just like his stuff, but wow is this album the most amazing thing ever. I haven't been a day without listening to it since it came out and I don't think I ever will. It's such a feelgood album and I can only see it getting better as we approach Summer. My personal fave song is Get Away. OBSESSED. So excited to see him on Tuesday.

the weeknd's my dear melancholy,

This was such a surprise, the best kind of surprise. He only teased on the gram a few days ago that he was going to drop something on Friday, most people assumed an album, and that was a surprise in itself. My fave Abel is Trilogy Abel, but whenever I listen to his older stuff I've always had to tell myself that, being realistic, he probably won't go back to that sound ever again so I need to not kid myself. Y'all, he went back to that sound. I can't get over it. I can't get over this EP, it's everything I've ever wanted and more from him. Wasted Times is my fave, 11/10.

it's not me it's them

I meant to put this in my Feb recommendations but totally forgot. I don't read much, my excuse is that I don't have time but some people won't buy that and will say I need to ~educate myself~ more but soz too busy reading a media law textbook atm. Anyway, I bloody loved reading this and was so sad when I finished it. It was one of those books where I wanted to read it slowly to make it last but I couldn't stop reading it so finished pretty quick. The ~concept~ behind it is so clever, I don't want to give anything away but it's written very cleverly, the way the chapters are structured and why exactly we are being told these stories. What I love is that it's not your standard autobiography with someone going on about their life story, you pick up pieces of Joel's ~life story~ through anecdotes about his romantic exploits. It's v funny, 10/10 recommend.

the real difference between new york and london

This was an article on Man Repeller that I read this month, it's nothing super deep and meaningful but I really enjoyed it and when I was thinking of an article / blog post that stood out for me this month, this was it. I find stuff like this v interesting and I like that they really used a human perspective by asking different people instead of writing a standard these five points are what is different in NYC compared to London.

andy murray's sport relief game show

Part Youtube vid, part something from TV. One of the sketches from this year's Sport Relief featured my fave player Muzza being woken up by Michael McIntyre and a host of other ~celeb~ guests (Daddy Pig anyone?) in the night to participate in a game show to raise money for Sport Relief. It's v funny and his reaction to being woken up is why I love him. Worth a watch to have a lil laugh and you can donate afterwards which makes it even better.

girlz on tour instagram account

Now this is a CONCEPT. Four tennis WAGs (hate that term, but not sure what other way people will understand) created an Instagram account for all the things they get up to when following their husbands / boyfriends around the world to attend the tour events they play. Their account is so beautiful, the aesthetics just get me, and it's an influencer's dream account. The account has only been going since January but is easily one of my favourites on the whole of the gram, I'm obsessed. I can't get over what a good idea it is! These ladies are taking advantage of travelling around the world following their guys on the ATP tour by creating the most beautiful content around it, and I'm loving seeing the friendship they've all formed as a lil squad. The account is run by Julia, Noura, Steph and Clemence and I just can't tell you how obsessed I am with their feed, it is all the goals. Also would live for a version with the big five's partners, can we make this happen please because I've been lost with what to wear without Andy Murray on tour as his wife Kim is my ultimate style inspo. Imagine her outfit pics with Mirka Federer, I need this.




In terms of news, events, headlines and all of those things that caught my attention this month, of course I can't not mention the March For Our Lives that happened on the 24th. The videos of the speeches from it are truly moving, I'm sure you've probably come across one or two of them already but they really do move you. I admire and respect the MSD kids so much, the way they've turned what happened to them and their school friends into this movement that is attracting more attention than ever before to the issues surrounding gun control in America is something truly amazing.

I'm trying to think what else but really all I've been doing is watching the sunshine double and that's all I've been paying attention to. Del Potro finally won his first Masters title in Indian Wells in an unreal final against Federer and then he dedicated his win to his dog that died a month earlier by writing his name on the camera, I cry. Fed then got knocked out in his first match at Miami, where he was defending the title, by Kokkinakis (who I accidentally sent a tipsy snap selfie to yesterday ffs) which was a shocker headline everywhere. The women's side of the tournament was super interesting and culminated in the reigning US Open and French Open champions meeting each other in the final, Sloane winning in straight sets. Can't really comment on the men's final because that's only starting an hour after posting this but having a Lil Zverev v Isner final seems anticlimatic compared to last year's Fedal final. I think John will take it and there will be all-American winners for the last year at Key Biscayne (Sloane, Bryans, Isner and Coco Vandeweghe is playing in the women's doubles final after the men's final tonight so hopefully she can win).

Haven't rly been keeping up with much else apart from the ever changing Instagram algorithm, there have been rumours it'll go back to chronological but do we really believe that unless it happens? Yeah nah.


This month's blog posts are also listed below so you can catch up and giz a read on any you might've missed:

•  is there a blogging 'mould' and do diverse bloggers who don't conform to it get less opportunities?
• am i losing my sass because i'm trying to be too nice online?
• exposing my draft tweets from all my twitter accounts
• british people, it's time to stick your nose in other people's business
• five recent makeup + skincare favourites
• on 'revenge bodies', doing things for yourself instead of boys and finding happiness in being single
• does what we say on social media matter or does the problem lie with those who focus on negative posts?

So that's a lil roundup of my month and everything I loved during March, hope you find some new loves from this too.

Enjoy the rest of your long weekend!

♡
Yasmin


previous monthly roundups and recommendations: february // january