Five years ago, I started a blog.

It wasn’t this blog, this blog just launched today! But it was a blog and I had high hopes for it. At the time I was embarking on one of the greatest adventures of my life – I had taken my first international flight moving to another country where I would finally get to explore the wider world (and hopefully pick up a British accent) whilst living in London, UK. It was all incredibly exciting and I wanted to document everything – mostly for myself, but also for family and friends back home. I actually just had a cheeky look back at that blog and it was so fun to walk down memory lane, so I suppose it served its purpose a little bit.

As I’m sure you’ve gathered, that blog never really got off the ground. It had a few sputtering starts and restarts. I put up posts every now and then. And (to my credit) I uploaded loads of photos somewhat regularly because I’m a bit of a photographing fiend – have you seen my Instagram stories? However, exciting things just kept happening too fast (don’t you just hate it when that happens?), and a blog became too much for me to keep up with. I wonder if any of you can relate, and have your own lost blogs that live somewhere forgotten on the Internet, or in the files on your laptop?

Why did my first blog (essentially) die?

I’ve thought quite a bit about why this happened, especially as I’ve been working on this new blog – and how long it’s taken to get off the ground. Mainly I think I got swamped with the amount of stuff I felt I had to do – the hundreds, which quickly became thousands of photos to sort through and edit (my photographing strategy has always been to take loads of photos and hope that some turn out halfway decent – usually it works, but it requires so much time to wade through). And then there was all of the writing, proofreading, formatting, and as experiences piled up it began to feel like too much to keep up with.

All of this, combined with my indecision and perfectionism, resulted in a false start. I felt like I couldn’t craft blog posts that I deemed worthy of publishing. I don’t know why I felt so much pressure given that my readers were family and a few close friends who I knew wouldn’t have judged my posts (too harshly at least). But I’ve always felt a strong degree of (self-imposed) pressure to produce things to a certain standard, and in my head I couldn’t meet the bar.

That same perfectionism and pressure has played a big part in keeping me from starting this blog.

You may (or may not) be surprised to hear that I’d been thinking about starting a food blog for over a year now, with the original intention to launch at the beginning of the new year – yes this year, 2018. I know, I know, it’s August…so you can see how that went!

Side note for my Instagram peeps who have followed along with the whole slight saga – thanks for sticking with me! Can you believe it’s finally happening?? I hardly can, it’s really been a long time coming.

What were some of the hurdles to overcome to reach this launching point?

I think the main thing was that I had thought the content I was sharing, and even myself as a person, needed to be at a certain point before I could start – that I had to be super healthy and fit, a whiz in the kitchen, and an organised writer who had something polished to share with the world. Over time, as I’ve struggled with balancing studies and life and Instagram, dealt with some health issues, and felt further and further from that ‘ready version’ I thought I needed to be, I kept pushing blogging further and further away. It’s been a slow and gradual process, but I’ve come to realise that I’ll never reach that polished level of expertise I’m aiming for. And now I genuinely think a lot of the value of this community and sharing a blog is to bring you along for the ride and show you the journey along the way.

This blog might (definitely) be messy.

It will likely not be as organised or as professional as I want – especially when I look at how many incredible and beautiful blogs there are out there. I have to face the realities that I am at a different stage in my health journey, my blogging journey (hello beginnings!), and in my life as a full-time doctoral student also trying to live in an expensive city abroad.

But I’ve also recognised that I don’t have to be the end product right now.

And I hope that by bringing you into my life at this moment, as I’m still working on balance and health and life, that you can find some value, inspiration, encouragement or comfort from any of it.

I suppose that’s the aim of this ‘Blogging’ category of Bites by Bekah.

I want to share the process of launching and growing this little corner of the Internet. And I guess this is a space for me to muse about what that process is like. I hope it might be interesting. I hope even more so that it might be helpful. I’m not entirely sure what this series will look like, but at the moment I envision it being a place to share helpful tips and tricks that I learn and implement along my blogging journey.

So, this is the beginning of my blogging journey. Where are you on yours? Have you started a blog? Or ever wanted to? I’d love to hear any stories you might want to share (and how long it took/is taking you to launch yours? =P)