Even Fashion Bloggers Get the Blues

It kind of sucks to be a blogger during the holidays. Everyone is doing gift guides, and for each one that is unique and well thought out, 12 are just trying to get as much affiliate income as possible. Brands are trying to increase sales, so you’re getting 500 pitches a day that utterly suck, and the ones that don’t utterly suck expect you to provide your first born for a pair of $60 shoes. On top of it, every blogger is photographing every personal moment 50 times to be sure their chin looks really great in the photo they put on their blog and that their tree looks perfect right at the golden hour.

To stop biting my nails and cuticles, I’ve been wearing acrylics. For anyone who has had acrylic nails, you need to fill them every two weeks. It has been over three weeks because there’s just no time. My nails are so long that I had to snip off a few on my right hand with a toenail clipper to be able to take out my contacts. From far away, the extra-long nail beds can look like skin and make my little sausages appear to be graceful and long, but up close, it’s pretty rough.

And my hair… I haven’t had anything done to it since I went to Salon 46, and that was at the beginning of October. My hair is the color of brass, visible split ends, and terribly unhappy. But time. Yeah, time. I remember time.

I’m writing this wearing my husband’s XLT sweater with the sleeves rolled up so much they resemble waterwings, sweatpants that are a size too small though they weren’t this time last year when I bought them on clearance at Old Navy, and my contacts. Oh, and moisturizer, I moisturize even when I am being a slug. Now that we have frigid temps and snow, outfit posts will be few and far between and that’s what brings all the boys to the yard… I mean pageviews to the blog.

In December, I wish I still had my old personal blog where I could write about hangovers and menstrual cramps and be cised when I received one comment in a week. It’s a weird world being a blogger – you aren’t nearly as well-known as a reality TV star, don’t make anywhere near the same income, but you still have people who are really really into you, and people who really really hate your guts. And these people make you overthink every single word you type into a blog post or every photo you share on Instagram. And if you think about it too much you become a sterile vanilla blogging robot who only shares the shiny, perpetuating all kinds of bad blogger stereotypes.

I should get off the couch and go to the nail salon or the gym or do laundry or take a shower or get on the floor and play dollhouse with Emerson or empty the dishwasher or scrub a toilet or fold the towels on the dining table that came out of the dryer or wrap Christmas presents… but instead I type furiously while Spongebob screams at me and Emerson lies upside down in the armchair, hypnotized by the television.

Yeah, this is why I schedule posts, so there’s quality content for you amazing folks while I am mega bah humbug and I write decent stuff when I'm not feeling this way. Though writing this makes me feel better, and reminds me that for every creep or troll or downright mega asshole there’s a kazillion wonderful human beings I’ve connected with thanks to this blog. Every job sucks sometimes, it’s a fact of life. And if blogging sucks big hairy dogs only one month out of the year, I’m a pretty darn lucky human being. And this lucky human being is going to post this drivel, snap the laptop closed, and try to do something useful. And I’ll likely freak out that I wrote this and at 3am wake up in a cold sweat and delete it.