a blog in 2023?

i recently wrote a more personal note for v.3 of my 333 newsletter and i chatted about my tomboi hiatus but i didn’t truly get into it all. so here i am, getting into it….

i’ve always consumed content about other people’s lives… it’s honestly wild to see me write that because it sounds so crazy, but it’s da truth! the wild thing is i 100% believe that as a human race, we are over-stimulated and i 100% believe that our minds are not supposed to have this much exposure to all the happenings of the world. but personally, i just find people to be so damn interesting so i tune tf in!

i can’t remember when we got internet at my house. i just remember plugging my moms laptop into the ethernet cord underneath the table in her room to even get online. but when i eventually got my own computer it was a wrap I was on-lineeee! youtube and tumblr were my main spots. i was in middle school at the time so i was experiencing one of my first periods of self-discovery. and seeing how other people went about their lives opened my eyes to so many different things.

whether it was the makeup or vlog gworls on youtube, or the it-kids of tumblr, seeing everything they were doing was influencing the development of my sense of style and my understanding of how i wanted the world to see me.

as time went on, in came other platforms, youtube just became bigger and eventually my time on tumblr dwindled to non-existent. while all these platforms developed to the times, one thing never changed. i never stopped consuming. i’ve watched youtube channels grow to full-on brands, and i’ve seen creators create communities bigger than i would have ever imagined. while deep down the whole time i wanted to share my life too.

it’s 2023 who is about to read a blog?! as a marketer I see trends come and go faster than you can say skee-yeee, and as a creative on the side, i got discouraged about what i was doing based on all the data and strategies i was seeing at work. the ideas i was coming up with were great ideas, but they weren’t realistic with where i was at; with tomboi and in life.

when i created “tomboi” i knew i wanted to share things that i personally liked, i wanted to create stories about people I found interesting and curate moments whether being irl or url. when i first launced in 2020 i had motivation on my sideee honeyyy! but what i didn’t realize was, motivation wasn’t what i needed. it was discipline and determination. i’ve started and stopped “tomboi” damn near 4 times at this point and every single time i stopped was because life became a lot and i wasn’t treating this like a hobby. i was putting so much pressure on myself to turn this into a brand when I needed to treat it like an outlet, i needed to treat it like a blog.

so here we are, round 5[?] of growing “tomboi”. it’s wild how lighter you feel when you realize you don’t give a fuck about something. for so long i accepted the mentality that “tomboi” couldn’t just my personal blog because i wanted it to come off as more. but burnout is beyond real and when i would finally gather the energy to take a stab at growing “tomboi” i wouldn’t last long because i would be asking myself of too much. i’m excited to grow “tomboi” in this way, it feels more real and authentic. i’m still going to chase after these big ideas, but i’m going to allow them to develop without expectation. so welcome to my blog, “tomboi” :)

- iz