falling out of love with blogging

It's my day off and I'm sat typing this crossed legged on the sofa, on my lap my beat up macbookfrom circa 2006, complete with fake replacement battery and charger, is whirring away slowly burning a hole in my thighs. I check twitter and bloglovin' to stay up to date with everything that's going on in the huge world of blogging and every other tweet reminds me why I'm writing this post....



I was talking with some fellow blogging ladies whilst I was in London last weekend about blogger meet ups away from the big city. I constantly see non-Londoners complain about the lack of meet ups away from the big city and this led to running local meet ups with the help of some lovely fellow blogging girls, but I've noticed that people's motives for attending these things has changed so much over the past few years. I remember attending my first meet up and bouncing off the walls with excitement that I could photograph my cocktail and not get a funny look from the woman sat next to me, that someone else understood me when I spoke about the importance layouts and html and everything else...we shared local restaurant love, our favourite bloggers and spoke about how fun blogging is. But the past few meet ups I've attended have been about SEO, how much to charge per post and anticipating how much the goody bag will be worth. I remember leaving an event with a blogger once who exclaimed ' I won't go to another of their [a large beauty company] events again, the goody bag is terrible'.

I remember spending days trying to sort out lifts to get to blogging events, but recently I've noticed people wont even attend an event that's a £12 train fare away...it has to be on their terms in their city and needs to have a goody bag. It doesn't feel like it's about meeting other people any more.

The twitter chats really annoy me to, I almost forgot about them when I had my social media free stint, however I realised I was missing out on chatting with so many of you that I cam crawling back and there's even more blogger chats- bbloggers, fbloggers, lbloggers, tbloggers, fdbloggers, fblchat, bloghour and so on...and each week they're all pretty much about the same thing, getting more hits/followers/cash/free things. In fact I noticed quite a 'large' blogger bring up the topic 'who's your favourite blog right now?' in one of the chats a few weeks back, since when did that have to be a topic...surely the whole point of twitter chats would be to share the blogs you love the most and ask for a little bit of advice now and then?

And the expensive technology thing....please just stop. You do not need a macbook pro and canon 5dmIII or any other DSLR at that to blog. IF you do insist on buying a DSLR please fucking well learn how to use the thing. I worked 3 jobs to afford my first camera and it pains me to go to events and see 100 people whip out a £700 camera and use it on auto. 

I also feel the need to just mention gurugossiper, I dont even know if it still exists but hearing about the horrific things said about one of my friends on that site made my blood boil. Slagging bloggers and youtubes off is not okay, they might have 10000s of followers but they're real people too, with real feelings and it's not okay...

And I'm sorry to moan, I just feel that I needed to let it all out and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one who feels this way. I don't ever want to stop blogging, in fact I think all this falling out of love with blogging business has taught me to only blog when I want to, to get out and enjoy my life and make my blog work around me and my life and not the other way around.

So here's to blogging for blogs sake, without any blogger politics. Blogging because it's a great way to share a new restaurant, to share beautifully sunny pictures from your holiday to brighten up someone's dreary day in the office, to reccomend an amazing new product you discovered by pure accident, not because someone sent you a box full and a £50 topshop voucher, and to tell that funny story from when you ended up rolling down a muddy hill in the middle of nowhere. Here's to blogging because we want to, not for hits or followers or google rank, not to get PR emails landing non stop in inboxes. Here's to blogging because it's an amazing way to learn about how other people live no matter if they live in Nottinghill and instagram pictures of deisgner eclairs or live in a commune in Bali and spend their days practising yoga in the jungle, to make new friends; the kind of friends you can be yourself around, who don't laugh when you take 1000 selfies and delete 999 just in case Ryan gosling happens to find your instagram, who don't start eating until you've got that picture.

Have you noticed blogging has changed since you started?What's your biggest blogging bug bear?
x

 

A relaxing weekend in Bath

Life right now is Hectic (yep, with a capital H) so when the lovely people at Francis Hotel, Bath suggested we come down for a weekend break I jumped at the chance. 

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'The Francis Hotel has been restored to its former glory following a recent, complete refurbishment. In the heart of the historic city of Bath, this historic Regency style townhouse hotel, a member of the MGallery Collection boasts 98 individually-designedbedrooms, many with four poster beds and views over the city. Our stylish bar and lounge offer a haven of tranquility after a day exploring the many attractions of this World Heritage city. Enjoy Dining in Brasserie Blanc that adjoins the hotel.''

We set off on the beautiful drive early afternoon and arrived in perfect timing to explore the city before dinner. We parked the car in the on site car park and before we turned the engine off a wonderfully polite gentleman was there to carry our bags inside. We checked in and then made our way up to our room....

Where we were greeted by a huge, comfy bed and flawless decor, which definitely lives up to their boutique claim. 

A wonderful waterfall shower and some luxurious toiletries

We quickly hung our clothes up in the wardrobe and packed a new bag with our swimming gear ready for a trip to Thermae bath spa, which sadly was packed full of noisey tourists and far too many PDA's so we cut our time short and headed for dinner. Luckily for us there was a wealth of restuarants a stones throw from the hotel, we settled for wagamamas and then dashed back as the heavens opened.

We got back soaked, luckily the shower was a gift from the gods and left me feeling perfectly relaxed ready for pyjamas and a movie in bed. The bed, there are not enough words to described how blissful it was to sleep in, perfect mattress, big squishy feather pillow and a wonderful feather duvet. I slept like a baby....

The next morning we woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed and skipped walked down to breakfast with grins on our faces...

Which got even bigger when we discovered the buffet....

I wish I photographed everything, we got ourselves a little selection and then a waitress came to the table and asked if we'd like anything from the menu, I hadn't yet had time to comprehend more food but rushedly shouted PANCAKES, whislt Dan opted for a fry up... 

We then sadly checked out and did a little bit of retail therapy before heading home.

A massive thankyou to all the wonderfully polite, attentive staff who couldn't have done enough to make sure we enjoyed our stay (nb : they didn't know I was blogging about it!).

Francis Hotel  is part of the MGallery collection by Accor hotels, room prices start at £119 per night.

xo

This post has been written in collaboration with Francis hotel, all views are my own.

a wilvery wander

Last weekend we decided to make the most of the sunshine so headed out to Wilvery in the new forest for a nice long walk....

We tried to recreate the picture of us in this post (which my mum now has hanging over the fire place) although forgot we didn't have pup last time, not that it matter as she's part of the family and it helps the picture resemble our hectic little life a little bit more. 

What've you been up to lately?

xo