It was a big day on my instagram page as I hit the illustrious follower count of 10,000. And it was exciting! Life changing? Not really. But exciting none the less. Yes, its a big milestone number, but the main appeal of having over 10,000 followers is that you have the ability to swipe up, which is pretty helpful when a large portion of your job is sharing links to various things. The convenience of that is really nice.

And I really didn’t have intentions of making any sort of big deal about reaching this number, but so many kind friends were helpful in pushing me across the 10K line and it developed this sort of celebratory moment today. Dwight even went and got me my favorite chocolate chip cookie 😉

When I started my blog and switched my personal instagram account into a business account just over 3 years ago, I set some goals for myself. No one was holding me to anything but I figured it would be good accountability as a jumped into the world of blogging. I think I had maybe 400 followers at that time (April 2018) and my first numerical goal was to get to 5,000 by the end of the year. So off I set, with a plan to post everyday, and I pretty much did just that. I mostly shared snapshots of happenings in the days with the kids, things that I was mulling over in my mind, a new recipe I liked and some outfits, which hilariously was made possible by propping my phone in between the slats of our shutters and setting the self timer. Seriously, go back a bit in my archives and you can see some of these real jewels, haha.

Around this same time, the algorithm changed in Instagram and made it harder, much harder, to grow your account. Just a year before, it was pretty simple to use hashtag or geotags and get hundreds of follows just through that, but that was no longer the case. January 2019 rolled around and I had still yet to even surpass the 1,000 mark. Talk about a major ‘womp womp’ moment. I didn’t even come CLOSE to my goal. There were certainly days I was discouraged, but I persevered because ultimately, I really enjoyed getting to do this little hobby of mine everyday. I don’t think there has been a day that has passed in the last three years that I haven’t spent time contributing to this in some way or another, but it really has all been so much fun.

Little by little, opportunities began to pop up and over time, my account grew. Slowly, still very slowly, but it grew. And there were many days of decline. The days I would see significant drop offs were when I would share about more controversial things (politics, my faith, advocating for the down syndrome community’s right to be born, etc) and made me question if I should even bring those sort of things into this space. 2020 was especially hard in that regard. I don’t think I need to go into any specifics as I’m sure you probably remember the many hard hitting topics that people were demanding a voice for and the pressure to speak, and say the right things, while not really knowing exactly what to say at times…it was just… a lot. I’ve felt myself retreat back in a lot of ways when it comes to sharing the things that matter most to the heart out of fear of offending or entering into conflict with people in my DM’s (hello, I’m an ennegram 9 and hate conflict). Honestly even as I’m writing this, I am sliiiightly anxious about who I’m going to offend, haha. But the truth is, the heart issues are one of the main reasons I even decided to start this blog. yes, fashion will likely always been the predominant topic you see, but I just hope that my influence can be more so about the important things in life rather than just sharing a good sale with you. I won’t do it perfectly, but I hope to do it all with love.

Anyways, now that I’m 4 or 5 paragraphs into this, its starting to feel somewhat silly to even be writing about, but I felt like I wanted to jot down some thoughts about the reason why today was a special day in the timeline of this blog of mine. I also loved feeling the support of so many friends, many of whom i’ve never had to opportunity to meet in person, come alongside me and cheer me on to reach this goal. There have been times in life where that was not the case and it was just really encouraging to me to see that happen in such a tangible way today. There’s a lot of crazies out there on the internet who are looking for ways to tell you that you’re doing it all wrong, but theres also a lot of good ones who want to lift you up as you are all just trying to figure this thing called life out day by day. I hope I can return the favor for many of them in the future.

Now, to go eat that chocolate chip cookie and watch the newest episode of Schmigadoon! Have you seen it? Lots of SNL cast members and if you love musicals, you’ll love this. Its pretty hilarious.