200 Followers?! + Q&A Questions

Hey guys, so I know I’ve been really bad at keeping up with this blog over the last month and the only post I published last month was my January Favourites but it’s been hectic, I’ve been studying like crazy, busy with activities, there’s just been a lot going on basically.

But… I logged onto my blog today and to my surprise discovered that I now have 200 followers! Which was absolutely amazing! And now… this is where I go on to talk about how much I appreciate it, the usual really. But instead of just talking about my never-ending love of everyone who supports and engages with my blog I’m going to talk about my blog and how it came to exist and what it means to me.

So, I was always quite fond of the idea of having a blog. It wasn’t so much building up a following and interacting with others, whilst I love reading comments and posting them on other people’s blogs it was never a motivating factor in getting a blog, but ever since a young age I was always writing (I remember writing a Doctor Who story when I was younger, I guess you might call it a fanfiction now but it was just a story I wrote using the characters of Doctor Who and then my Mum typed it up onto a document for me.), I love/d writing fiction and from the age of 6 always wanted to write a novel. I have kept a journal since I was about 9-years-old, I was always writing these little documents which in my head were ‘blog posts’ I just didn’t have a blog to actually publish them, the reason I was writing these is because; I guess my brain just needs to write things down, it just wants to write and I feel like a blog is a completely unique form of writing, you write about things that you don’t normally get the opportunity to write about, for example, one of my favourite things to write on my blog is favourites posts, a blog is the only place where I properly get to share things that I’ve been loving in that way. I think it’s just such a great opportunity to have, or another example could be the home-education Q&A I did quite early on in my blog, that was a unique opportunity to answer lots of the questions home-educated people get asked. Also, political posts and humanity posts, both things that I have very strong opinions on and don’t get the opportunity to write about in the same way when writing fiction and it’s all well and good writing about it in my journal but it doesn’t give you the same satisfaction because it’s more like having a rant to yourself or, as my best friend would say, venting. It’s not sharing your opinions with the world in the hopes that somehow it will create change.

So, once I got older I started asking my Mum, or begging rather, to let me have a blog. It was so important to me and I had NO IDEA what I was going to do if she said yes, I must have been about 11 or something, I didn’t know anything about website design and probably didn’t even understand where to start. All I knew was that I wanted a platform to get my thoughts heard, to interact with people who understood where I was coming from and could relate to me in a way that I didn’t really get in the real world. A community that I could really feel a part of in a way I never had before. But, unfortunately for me my Mum didn’t want me to have a blog at such a young age (which, looking back was probably the right decision because I had no idea where to start or how to properly run a blog, I most likely would be terrified. And yes, whilst my blog needs a lot of editing and the design isn’t all that great – something I plan on dealing with in the summer – it’s a blog that I absolutely love having and that truly feels like mine. I understand how to work it and I feel like I can handle anything that the blogosphere might throw at me because I’m not young, under-educated and vulnerable anymore.) another motivating factor that my Mum had for not letting me have a blog was that I didn’t have a specific genre or topic I was going to be writing about. But that’s not the kind of blog I wanted to have, and I couldn’t explain that to her properly when I was younger but I just wanted a kind of lifestyle blog that was completely unique to me and that I could write whatever I felt like writing, whatever spoke to me in the moment or whatever I was passionate about, because let’s face it my interests and passions are going to change over the lifetime of this blog. But, I turned 15 and decided that I was going to start a blog with or without her permission. Yes, it was a ‘secret’ blog for awhile, but it wasn’t like a malicious secret blog, I wasn’t starting it because I was a rebel and wanted to defy my Mum’s wishes or views or anything. It was more that as I got older I suddenly felt that I didn’t need permission anymore and eventually I told my Mum about it and she was completely cool with it, so it’s all good.

So, now I have a blog. That’s my story I guess. The reason lifeofaninspiredteen exists. I’m not sure I can tell you the story of my blog name, although I wish there was something really meaningful behind it or something. I remember finally deciding, ‘what the hell, I’m going to get a blog’ and then there was the process of thinking of a name. I think the way I came up with the name was, I knew it was going to be about my life and so I really wanted to have it obvious that it was just a kind of general blog about me and my thoughts, interests, etc. so that’s where the ‘life of’ came into it and then I had to think of the end part of my name and keeping my anonymity. So, then I had to decide a catchy way of describing who I was and my personality. My best friend is always calling me inspired and inspiring, because I find a lot of things interesting and find a way to inspire myself using basically anything as a stimulus. I just love being inspired, whether it’s to study, to travel the world, to do an activity, whatever it is I love to be inspired. And… I’m a teen and so I juggled being inspired around with ‘life of’ for a little bit and then ended up with my blog name – lifeofaninspiredteen. And that’s it. After saying I couldn’t tell you the story of my blog name, I told you the story of my blog name.

Almost done, now we’re onto the cheesy part. I never ever thought I would get to 200 followers, especially not after less than a year. I don’t want to be all depressing and be like ‘I’m not that interesting. I don’t understand why anyone would want to read what I write.’ because I don’t bring myself down like that and I don’t want to criticise the readers of my blog because they obviously do find what I write interesting which is great and I love that. But, I think the reason I’m surprised I reached 200 followers is because I was never writing for anyone else, it wasn’t a concern whether I was going to be interesting to anyone else it was that I was doing something I was passionate about and I was doing it for myself. Obviously I knew that what I was publishing was public and people could read it and were going to read it but I never viewed it as something I was doing to gain followers or have loads of views or anything. So, when lots of people were reading what I was writing and following me it was a bit of a surprise but not because I didn’t think people were going to read it but simply because I never really thought of it happening. Every single follower I get really excites me but I decided that I shouldn’t write an appreciation post after every new follower so I only write a post when I hit ‘landmark’ followers. But, I remember getting excited about my 5th follower, my 2oth follower, the 45th follower etc. it never ceases to amaze me how many people find their way to my blog and leave lovely comments, it basically never ceases to amaze me how nice all the bloggers on wordpress are. Or all the ones I’ve had the pleasure of encountering.

Okay, lastly, I’ve decided that to celebrate 200 followers I’m going to do a Q&A, there isn’t a specific subject so just leave any questions you have for my below, whether it’s about my blog, my education, my routines, my life, my diet, literally anything that you’ve ever wondered about me leave them in the comments below and I will write up the answers and publish them in a post soon – but, disclaimer I won’t answer all questions, if I feel uncomfortable answering any or feel like they might put my anonymity at risk then I won’t answer them.

This concludes the end of my post – please like it if you enjoyed it, leave any comments below as I love to read them all! Also, if you aren’t following me already make sure to do that to keep up with my new posts!

If you would like to get in touch, my e-mail is – aninspiredteen@gmail.com

That’s all for now!

Inspired Teen 🙂

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