Lifestyle

Saying Goodbye To Blogging

This sounds ridiculous, but it’s actually kind of scary writing this! For nearly ten years now, blogging has been a huge part of my life. Despite the fact that that this blog is only two years young, I’ve actually been writing online since 2009. That’s right! On various platforms and under different guises, over-sharing online has just always been something I’ve done.

However, for a while now I’ve been growing real tired of the blogging industry. Where do I even begin? I guess the thing that irritates me the most is how opinionated women are completely ostracised. A lot of people will have you believe that blogging comes with a super supportive community. Whilst that may be a reality for some, I would say it’s a rarity. Sure I have a handful of supportive blogger mates, but generally speaking the ‘community’ is only supportive as long as you don’t rock the boat.

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Fashion, Vegan Alert

Vegan Footwear For Every Season With Iron Fist

It’s been over four months since I went vegan. I’ve mentioned on my blog before that I still have a few products that aren’t vegan-friendly lying around. Most of which are too used to donate annoyingly. However, when I buy new products I try to buy from companies that are specifically vegan & cruelty-free (remember some products can be one and not the other sometimes!). It’s not always possible sometimes, but I do what I can.

One thing I’ve recently been focusing on at the moment is footwear. I had about six or seven pairs of leather shoes that I donated earlier this year. This caused me to look at the rest of my collection and also search for retailers that sell vegan footwear for future reference. One brand that kept coming up was Iron Fist.

As baby emo, Iron Fist were a brand I adored growing up. Home of quirky, inventive, gothic designs, they were the epitome of alternative fashion and not much has changed. Revisiting them now, I’m thrilled to see how much of it is vegan-friendly and even PETA approved. Ethical fashion doesn’t have to be boring and Iron Fist’s shoes are a perfect example of that.

Whether you’re a summer goth, or into pastel grunge or just like cool designs, there’s something for every season at Iron Fist.

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Freelance

4 Things You Can Do When Business Is Quiet

Like I mentioned in my last post, August has been a pretty quiet month for me. I’ve been talking to a few other freelancers and it seems I’m not alone. My mentor (of sorts) warned me this might happen and said every August is the same for her. She thinks people are in ‘holiday-mode’ and not always thinking about business. And she wasn’t wrong. August has been a real struggle.

A few of my clients didn’t have the budget to continue and I also made a decision to let a client I was no longer comfortable working with go. When clients leave, I don’t normally have much trouble finding new ones. The great thing about social media is that most businesses need help with it. However, August has just been particularly quiet and filling the gaps is taking longer than I anticipated. It’s been one of the months where I’ve gone into my overdraft and had more time on my hands to freak out about it.

When I first thought about writing about my job, I decided I wanted to try show a more accurate depiction of freelance life if I could. There are many blogs out there that don’t really go into what some would say the ‘cons’ of working freelance, but that’s not in my interests. I want to be transparent and give a more balanced representation. So…with that in mind, here’s are some suggestions and some things I’ve been doing to try bounce back from a rough month.

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Feminist Film Club, Film

Films By Women I Watched In August Part 1

If you caught my last film-related post, you will know that I’ve been trying to watch more films by women recently. This is a conscious decision and one I’m really enjoying! August has been a struggle to be honest; work has been slow and my mood has dropped with it. As a result, I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors watching a ton of movies.

Here’s part one of my list of films directed by women I watched last month.

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Beauty

3 Steps To Fabulous Hair With Tangle Teezer

Back in May, I shared my bright hair routine. In this post, I spoke about how I use three brushes to look after my hair. I shared the post on Twitter and tagged the brands, which soon led to Tangle Teezer getting in touch. Pleased to see I’m a fan of ‘The Original’, they were interested to see if they could convert me to using three of their brushes.

Tangle Teezer were kind enough to send me another beautiful variation of ‘The Original’, a brush for blowdrying, as well as ‘The Ultimate Finishing Tool’. Here’s what I made of them.

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Beauty, Vegan Alert

Up Your Self Care Game With Bloomtown

Hi everyone! It’s been two weeks since I posted and I think this break has done me good. Things have been pretty quiet throughout August and I’ve been enjoying some time out. However, I did write my first piece for The Nopebook recently. It’s all about how to navigate period sex for the first time and you can read it here.

I’ve been meaning to up my self care game a little, I was getting to a point where I felt like I wasn’t looking after myself. Back in July, I tried out some products from Bloomtown and today I thought I’d share them with you.

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Film

4 Reasons You Should Watch More Films By Women

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been getting back into cinema recently. I tend to go through phases with film. We used to have a Cineworld card, but we moved a year ago. There’s an Odeon nearby, but there’s not enough films out that I want to see. In addition to that, Summer becomes a time for marathoning television shows. October is normally the time I get back into cinema as we try do an annual horror marathon (you can see last year’s here.)

However, I’ve made an early return to it this year for a number of reasons. 1) I’m needing more time out and film works as a great escape, 2) Iain has Amazon Prime!, 3) I want to watch more films by women.

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Lifestyle

4 Things I’m Doing To Try Get Back Into Writing

I hope you enjoyed my bonus post on fertility awareness last week. It’s been fun trying to revisit past categories again and I want to try keep it up. If you look at the ‘sex’ category, the content is pretty sporadic. Hopefully that’ll all change soon and today I thought I’d share some things I’m doing to try get back into writing.

As somebody who kind of works two jobs (social media manager and writer), burnout is something that’s hard to avoid. I have a lot of issues with the blogging industry and at times it does genuinely get me down. However, I’ve managed to keep my blog regularly updated for a while now and wanted to share some things I’ll be doing to hopefully keep it up.

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