EXPECTATIONS /// A POST WITH NO PICTURES

About a year ago i wrote a post for another blog about certain elements within Cape Town's hipster scene. It wasn't a very kind article and i received a lot of probably well deserved negative comments. I was being a bit mean so of course people were mean right back to me. I responded and it went on and on to well over a 100 comments, so from that experience i learnt not to respond to some comments. I don't delete them either, just because you don't agree with an opinion doesn't mean you should suppress it. And then a couple of months ago i went to an exhibition which i didn't enjoy much, i got home and wrote about it and i said it wasn't my kind of thing among other things. The first comment on that post was from a reader who let me know that i didn't know what i was talking about and that i had no respect. Whilst i do believe that i should be able to say what i want to on my blog, mean comments are sometimes exhausting and i have a bit of an aversion to conflict so i kinda decided to just focus on what i like and leave well alone what doesn't tickle me. And then a couple of months ago I awarded the Marie Claire Fashion Blogger of the year Award, which was a real honour. Robyn Cooke who is a leading SA fashion blogger and a fashion journalist that I have a lot of respect for wrote a beautiful post about that event.  One sentence that has really stayed with me from her post is "In today's world it is so important that the bloggers who get read by thousands every day use their power for good. And an award like this encourages that kind of responsible behaviour". That really kind of made me think about what i put out there, and further convinced me to focus on what i like and leave the rest. The fashion industry in our country is young and small, designers struggle to succeed, the last thing we need to do is put them down. However we must also find a way to be honest without destroying people. I'm rambling a bit but i'll get to my point soon. Thing is, this blog, however popular it may get one day, it is not a job. It has always been a place i come to have fun. That is part of the reason i do not take advertising. It keeps me free of the expectation the exchange of money creates. It frees me to do what the fuck i want when the fuck i want.   I feel very strongly that i do not owe events that i attend a specific type of coverage, and i am grateful that so far the invites have come with no strings attached. So the reason i'm telling you this is that i attended a fashion event recently and it was a lot of fun and i took a few pics of the people in attendance. I didn't say much about the fashion because well...it wasn't what i normally like. I'm not saying it was bad at all but most of it wasn't my vibe. And my vibe is no bench mark, I like a lot of stuff that other people think is quite shitty. and there's quite a lot of stuff in this blog that trusted friends have told me is shit. But that's okay, I like it and i have fun posting it. So I was sad and a bit freaked out when a reader who saw my post on the event  commented that "It is very sad to see that the "Marie-Claire Blog Award" winner has no wish to describe what was on the ramp at ***********...... lazy? or just... lazy?". Nevermind the 'lazy' comment, to be honest he is quite right about that, outside of my day job i'm very fucking lazy. But i was sad because I had decided to censor myself out of a sense of 'responsible behaviour' only to receive this comment. A bit freaked out because i realized that an expectation has been created. But i am learning. To be fair, as the blog has grown over the past few months i have also placed expectations on myself. However, along with those expectations I also felt blogging become less fun. I am posting less, i'm editing more, i stress about my awful punctuation and humour is hard to come by. At times i have thought about a pro future for the blog, but then i am reminded that I started this blog because it was fun and i continued to work at it after hours because it is fun, and because i placed no heavy expectations on myself. I apply myself fully to my dayjob as a fashion buyer, i love the pressure and the rush, but it is not necessarily the same thing i want for my little home in blogosphere. And i certainly do not want to find myself in a place where i am being told what to write about. I really am truly honoured by the MC Award and I have a lot of respect for the people who gave it to me, i also understand that it creates expectations in the minds of some readers so i just want to clear the air. This is not a job, this is a place i come to have fun and indulge myself in things that give me joy and i am grateful that people come and share in that joy with me. And please don't get me wrong, I believe very strongly that the expectations of others can be a good thing, a motivating force, especially when you expect too little of yourself. But there are moments when you do not need to make the expectations  of others your reality, and i am slowly learning to differentiate between the moments. Anyway enough rambling, I am an hour into my birthday. I must go sleep and dream of a fun-filled 33rd yr of my life.