In the 8 years I've been blogging, I've never taken a break longer than a week or two. Now, I'm posting about the 6 month hiatus I accidentally went on. Not gonna lie, I'm not actually sure what happened. When I say "accidentally", I mean accidentally. I'm racking my brain and I can't for the life of me think of a moment where I thought "I'm gonna go on a hiatus now", it just sort of happened. 2015 rolled around and it was almost like blogging just didn't really make it into the new year. I kept posting but not very often at all and when I did, it was more out of necessity than anything. It's a really weird feeling when you realise you've been posting fortnightly at best, when you spent a full year previously posting three times a week. The weirdest part is, I don't even know why I did it. I really did just fall into a hiatus and vanished for 6 months...sorry 'bout that.
Right, so let's work out what I've actually done instead of blogging because I sure as hell don't know.
January got off to a shaky start after a bad NYE. I spent the first few days of 2015 in a wee bit of a mess but eventually came out of my stupid rut better than ever so I guess everything really does happen for a reason. It taught me a lesson. I started spending a lot more time with my friends and made a real effort to push myself and get out of my comfort zone more often. I got on a whole lot of public transport and put myself in situations that I probably would've panicked about a few months before. I took myself out for lunch. I went on day-trips alone. I went on day-trips with friends. I watched friends play beer-pong (note the use of 'watched'...I'm too much of a light-weight for that stuff). I re-joined my local library. I cut off a large amount of my hair. I taught myself how to knit. I started cooking for my family at least once a week. I got Netflix (both a blessing and a curse). You could say I got weirder than I already was but a massive part of this lesson was to stop caring what people think. I guess taking a step back from blogging allowed me to get out of my own head and stop over-thinking things quite so much. As a lifestyle blogger, it's really easy to get stuck inside your own little bubble because you're blogging about your own life. In my experience, I've been using my blog as a diary and a way to collect my thoughts so instead of being able to use my blog as an escape, my blog reflected my life way too accurately. I couldn't use my blog to escape my worries because it reflected every single one of them. I needed to take a step back from my blog if I wanted to take a step back from my anxiety, mistakes and worries. I'm only just realising this now. Blogging really is like therapy.
Don't get me wrong, I love blogging and I love my blog. I guess the problem was that I was using my blog in the wrong way. I was using it to record every little detail of my life - good and bad - and I thought at the time that writing it all down was helping me cope. Writing my problems and thoughts down is sometimes a good idea but I'm realising now that it's often better to leave negativity behind me and move on, learning from my mistakes. I'm also realising that having every single little worry I have out there on the internet to live forever may not be the smartest idea. This hiatus should help me take my blog in a slightly different direction. I just need to hope that you don't give up on me quite yet.
I'm not making any promises but hopefully this post will help me gradually come back to blogging and make my blog into the blog I want it to be. Thank you so much for all the support over the past 6 months. ♥
Cat