Those Graces is Coming to an End

I made my first personal site in 2000, before blogs existed. I adored the site Maganda.org. When Christine closed her blog, I had this feeling that something I really loved was ending. But it also taught me an important lesson–sometimes things end. Blogs end. People move on. After all, blogs are really just projects and hobbies for most of us, and yes, sometimes hobbies lose their luster and you fall out of love with them.

My blog has brought so many good things to my life. It’s brought me amazing friends from around the world, some of whom I’ve met and some who I will probably never meet. It’s connected me with people experiencing the same pains as me. It landed me jobs. It got me in a magazine. My mother is very proud of me.

I started this blog one summer afternoon four years ago in Pennsylvania because I wanted to share about my love for clothes and makeup. At the time, I was living in the South and felt so lonely. It felt hard to open up to people and share my interests. I felt like it was a way to share myself with the world. Eventually I got brave enough to talk about my opinions here. I shared about my thoughts on feminism, body image and being bullied as a kid.

Over the time I’ve had my blog, I’ve always felt like my blog grew with me, but over the past year, I’ve been feeling like I’ve grown past my blog. It’s hard to relate to the things I wrote about here. Writing feels more like a chore than not. I miss the days when everyone wasn’t talking about SEO and follower counts. I miss those genuine days of the Internet. I don’t think they’ll ever come back, to be honest.

There are no rules about blogging. There’s no one to tell you what to do when. For most of us who pour ourselves on to the Internet, we’re doing it for fun. For me, this has stopped being fun.

I’m at a place in my life where I feel more genuine and more myself than I’ve ever felt. I feel strong and I feel brave and I feel ready to take a step back from the online world I’ve built for myself over the past four years. This is not to say I didn’t enjoy it, but all things must come to an end. I admire those who keep up the same blogs for a decade, but doing something for inertia’s sake isn’t a great reason to do it. I want to do something because I stand by it completely and my heart just isn’t fully here anymore.

To people who have been reading for four years and to those who just started yesterday, thank you for reading here. Community has always been the reason I blog and I couldn’t have asked for a better group of readers. Your comments, emails and tweets have left me heartened. And, don’t worry, I’m not disappearing from the Internet, I’m just acknowledging that Those Graces is no longer a productive place for me to be. My plan as of right now is to leave this site up.

You can find me on social media as well. The best place is probably Twitter, but I’m also on Instagram, Pinterest and Tumblr. I’ll probably also be starting another (less personal, more professional) site in the next few months, so follow me on social media for that.

Until next time,
C.

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