Hi, my name is Cheryl, and with my right sidebar as proof, I've been writing this blog for 20 years. Here's how it all began: Picture me, a 25-year-old living out her Carrie Bradshaw fantasies in early 2000s New York City and working in magazine publishing as a copy editor who'd rather be writing about fashion than proofreading stories about beer and football (I worked at a men's magazine). I knew people who had LiveJournal pages (remember those?), but then I heard about a platform called Blogger, so I decided to give it a try. I didn't quite know what I was doing at first—to save you the embarrassment (on my part) of having to read my cringey old writing, I'll provide a high-level recap—but after dabbling in commenting on other writers' work and doing TV recaps, I hit my stride listing all of the sample sales in NYC every week, as well as reporting on the ones I went to. I then expanded into shopping guides and halfway through 2006 (lol better late than never) I finally started incorporating photos. In September 2006, I was among the first group of bloggers ever given press passes to New York Fashion Week; I attended every subsequent season until I moved to San Francisco in 2013. I fostered relationships with PR agencies, got invited to all manner of events, and developed somewhat of a following. I started a partnership with The Find, a shopping search engine that was eventually acquired by Facebook. Internet shopping was growing by leaps and bounds, and I was spending hours every week compiling all of the sales, online and in person, and to be honest, I was getting a little burned out, both from the blog and from my day job and from the general battle that is living in New York City. A new social platform called Instagram started to take off. I took a new job in San Francisco, moved across the country, and pretty much blew up my life. When I wrote an ode to a pair of sweatpants, I knew that, after 10 years of blogging, I had lost the spark. I stopped blogging, and I didn't think I'd start again, until I realized I was about to turn 40 and had no idea how I was supposed to dress anymore. I went to Vegas, won big at the blackjack tables, drank far too many vodka-sodas, and decided to stage a comeback. Blogging had changed since I left—it was starting to be called influencing, and it was shifting heavily to video and social media—but I decided to confront my fears, put myself in front of the camera, and get more personal. That was 7 years ago, and now here we are. Being a wise Blogging Elder who's reached the introspective point of her career, I thought I'd share what I've learned in 20 years of blogging.
