Oh, Hi There
Hello, Internet Void. This has been a long time coming. I mean, I’ve been writing online now for over a decade, which feels insane, because where did all that time go? Am I a decrepit, shabbily cloaked webmaster now? Possibly!
I started my blog, An Aesthetic Feast (RIP), when I was still in high school. It was a branching off of my Flickr posting, a very-of-the-time hobby of LiveJournal girls where we would go to post photo dumps of our outfits, meals, friends, pets and purchases long before Instagram, YouTube vlogs or even touch-screen phones were old hat to the masses. Sharing badly lit makeup tutorials, questionable Outfits of the Day and my musings on the coolest places to go in New York (because everyone wants the advice of a Canadian high schooler tourist) was how I expressed myself back then, in a completely earnest and unfiltered way. That blog, which I’ve always felt simultaneously proud of and ashamed of, became the gateway for my writing jobs with xoJane, Rookie and later FLARE and other freelance stints in print and online (much of which you can read over on the portfolio page). I was incredibly lucky for these opportunities, but it was also a very bizarre time for online publishing, and media in general. I was given free reign to share whatever thoughts I had, including many that I wish were never published.
That being said, I’ve always loved writing, particularly about beauty. And to my own disappointment, I’ve abandoned it for far too long. Part of the reason for that is simply bad timing. When I moved to England in 2016, I dropped everything I had in Toronto, including many PR and publishing connections there and in New York, to start my life over. I got wrapped up in trying to build a life overseas and writing took a backseat. During that time, xoJane and xoVain, places where I had been sharing my opinions and excitement regularly for roughly five years, were also sold and ceased publishing any new content. I took it as a sign that maybe I wasn’t supposed to be writing anymore (it was not a sign).
So I retreated into myself and became convinced that I was not a good writer and that nobody needed to hear my opinions on anything. And yet, friends and sweet strangers from Instagram still kept asking me what foundation I liked, or how to heal a zit as quickly as possible. I cherished the fact that people still cared what I thought of the beauty world and wanted my input on it.
Here I am, wondering if blogging is a dead art.
Slowly but surely I’ve been culling together my pieces from the past and attempting to get my thoughts down again. I don’t know how regularly I’ll be updating this blog because I still have those voices of self-doubt holding me back, but I’ll do my best to talk with you, the Void, about lipstick and acne. Will anyone read this? Who knows! I’ll be sitting here listening to the brown noise I need to focus and typing my random stream of garbage thoughts anyway! Let me know here or on Instagram what you’re interested in reading about. What excites you? What are you spending your hard-earned money on? What infuriates you about the beauty industry? I want to know. Let’s chat.
Until then,
Hannah
