Why we enjoy blogging.

I had someone recently ask me how long we’d been blogging (separately and as a team) and when I told them, their response was “wow, and do you still enjoy it after all this time?” and so we thought it would be an interesting post to get both of our opinions on why we enjoy blogging.

Ashleigh’s POV

I’ve been blogging since mid 2012 now, it all started when I had to make a blogspot to log my Media Studies coursework on, which in turn made me interested in what other people were blogging about. I then fell down the rabbit hole of bloggers like Lily Melrose and Zoella (back before her fancy new site) and it sparked an an interest in writing that I didn’t know was there.

From there my blog was born (and I’ve managed to find it, for those of you that want some entertaining!) and although I started off writing about make up and fashion, I can still see a lot of my passion for things like feminism and mental health deeply rooted even at that time.

I lost the love for it a few years back, everyone was transitioning over to YouTube and I just didn’t have the confidence for something like that, but I also didn’t want to. For me it was all about putting my thoughts down into a worded document, and YouTube didn’t ignite that same feeling in me.

Eventually when Mark and I got together, we discovered we both had blogs at one point or another and thought “hey, why not start one together?” and so The Stevenson Life was born.

We’ve now had The Stevenson Life since early 2017, and I can honestly say I still love blogging. For me, blogging has never been about getting anything from it. I’m not bothered about getting free stuff, or getting followers (although since starting our Instagram we’ve been lucky enough to make connections with some really lovely and genuine accounts). For me, I’ve always struggled to say how I’m really feeling, and writing is my way of getting those feelings out.

So regardless of the outcome, I think I’ll still be blogging for a long time.

Mark’s POV

I’ve been blogging for years, too many years really. I think it first started when I was at Uni back in the early 2000’s – as a way to document the on-goings whilst away from home and drinking too much! From then, I started to take it a bit more seriously when I started my career-proper.

I moved to Cardiff for a job, and started to get involved in the tech scene there, talking at public events such as Ignite, and it made me want to talk more and more about what I was doing, and what I was learning. Having people interact with you is a nice feeling, it makes you feel like your thoughts are valid, which sometimes is a nice little pat on the back.

Of course, Blogging has it’s downsides – I’ve had my fair share of “stuff this” moments, where I just want to delete everything and hide from the faceless keyboard warriors, but thankfully not so much these days (maybe I don’t write things to spark opinions – maybe I should try harder!).

Most recently, the blog post I wrote as an open letter to Greg James received some incredible feedback – we had something like 30,000 views on that post alone in two days – and the feedback from Twitter (including a nice chat with Greg) just gave me that feeling that, no matter how crap or pointless you think your posts are, writing your thoughts down and letting them loose isn’t always a bad idea – sometimes it’s just saying the small things that makes the biggest difference – and that’s why I enjoy blogging.