I think this is it for me here. At least for now. I am going to try and keep this short, for once in my life, and avoid going on a ranty complainy tangent. It's highly unlikely anybody's reading this regardless of length, which is in essence why I'm finally calling time of death on this here corner of the web. Family emergencies kept me from coming back this summer and I had a whole slew of stuff planned for September and October but something's just....missing now. It doesn't help that I already know the work I'm going to put in for any posts is going to be for naught. It has been for naught for 9 years now, dating all the way back to when there was no Instagram or Snapchat and this was a soap opera blog. It's never taken off and it's taken me 9 very long years to make peace with that. This was my job, a full-time thing for me, and even though the published posts would suggest otherwise, you should see the amount of content sitting in my Drafts section. I'm sitting on literal years of posts. Good posts. I actually have two in draft right now that I've been working on for the better part of a month that were three years in the making. But there's no point in continuing to do this work and get nowhere, and so I've left them in the Drafts folder. As much as I love blogging and I love the fulfillment a successful post brings me, what I consider successful is technically still a failure. Here's the real real: as an influencer, I failed. I did not grow my audience, did not increase my engagement, and no changes I made were reflected in the end result of either blog. I'm tired. The great Kenny Rogers penned one of my favorite songs of life, The Gambler. The chorus very wisely instructs you to know when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em, when to walk away and when to run. I spent a long time not knowing when to fold and walk. I spent a longer time at that table refusing to fold, knowing that I should. I felt that if I had the idea, I should also have the momentum, the motivation, to gas myself up enough to finish the post. Truth is, there's no satisfaction in putting in the work knowing nobody will ever see it. It makes me incredibly pessimistic, fucks with my view of my self-worth as it pertains to the work I do, and makes me question the feasibility of my other professional pursuits. If I can't make this work, how can I move on to something else and do the social media shuck and jive all over again, knowing it can end up as negatively as this did? I already function by fear, and having to admit a failure halts my steps. Continuing to walk in that failure--i.e. posting here pretending I don't already know the results--seems to make it worse, compounds my fear that I'll never succeed. I need to do something new for a little while.
Cheese-laden comparisons aside, I'm done here for now. I'm sorry I could never give my all to make this blog everything I wanted it to be. It has truly been my pleasure to create posts and call myself a blogger, a digital influencer. I have influenced exactly 0 people, however, showing me that I have failed at my job, I am going to continue to fail at this job if I continue the way I am now, and it is time to move on for a little while. Finally admitting that publicly has finally given me the push I need to try something else. I would love at some point to come back, but there are a lot of things I have been neglecting or pushing back, trying to make this work. It's not working and has not been working for quite some time now and I just needed to stop being in denial about it and accept it. Hopefully by February I'll have enough juice to go back to ATV for Black History Spotlight, because it is by far the most important to me and the thing I am proudest of, but I don't know anymore. This will be the second time I've shelved All Things Vintage in what should be the middle of a series but it's time. It's been time, actually. I'm more upset about the idea of leaving than I am by actually leaving. More upset that I'll have left something unfinished, even though nobody read the entry that was already posted. Of course I wish the timing could have been better, but I just didn't have the energy to push through it this time. Something stops me every time I try. Which means it's time to go.
So what happens now? I'm going to lick my wounds for awhile, cry it out (I have PMS, gimme a break lol) and plot my next real life moves. If for some reason you still want to keep up with me, I'll still be doing book reviews on Goodreads, Amazon and LibraryThing and I'm still going to be reviewing products on Influenster. I'll still post occasional pics on Instagram, might do the occasional Insta Inspo for any vintage shop aficionados, and ideally, I'll be back here before long. I love my blogs and this isn't a decision I made because I didn't think I had anymore to give--the opposite, actually--, I made the decision because it had already been made for me and I just refused to accept it. Anywho, if you've read even one post here in this ghost town, thank you so much. I mean it. I appreciate it, and you, so much for spending a little of your time with me when there are certainly better blogs to be reading, better videos to be watching. I believe very strongly in my blog, and I believe in the vision I initially had when I redesigned this site--a one-stop review shop and a smattering of randomness. It's different, it's me, and the enjoyment I got out of finally figuring out my voice and using it is incomparable. Hopefully I can take that energy and pour it into new pursuits. If and when (preferably when) I come back, I hope you'll give me a click and let me show you what I've been up to. Have a wonderful holiday season (can you believe it's almost holiday season already? WTF) and I'll see you soon.
