Blogtember 8: Discuss ways that blogging or social media has changed you.

To start off - I don't do much shopping on Etsy, which is why you don't have a post from me for yesterday. I felt like pretending I'd bought stuff would have been awful!

It's no secret that social media as a whole has changed the way that we do things in our day-to-day lives. With Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, it seems like there should be no way for us to have secrets from the world. Of course, at the same time, the oversharing drives me absolutely up a wall. As for me, though, I think it's changed me - it has made me more comfortable with sharing parts of my life I otherwise wouldn't have. It's fun to be able to post a picture on Instagram of one of my cats, or just something silly I'm doing, and have other people like it and comment on it. It's also great to be able to promote my brands (both my blog and handmade business) via an outlet like Facebook. I'm not one of those people who just sits on Facebook for hours at a time - in fact, I barely use it to communicate! It's just a good timewaster for when I have a few minutes.

As for blogging, for a long time, I always just read blogs and loved reading the stories of other people's lives. It was a bit of a double edged sword, since I've been a writer for a long time and figured there would be no reason why I couldn't do it, except for how I felt about myself and how I compared myself to others. Now, though, I've gotten comfortable enough to toss caution to the wind and just write again, which is something I haven't been able to do for years and something I can definitely thank blogging for. And I always thought it would be really difficult for me to think of new things to write, and things like that - but every once and awhile, a great idea just pops into my head and I run with it! That's one thing I love about blogging, and one thing I definitely wouldn't change.