Blogging?? In 2019???

My big 2019 fashion goal that I have sort of been keeping a secret is that I would like to start blogging. Specifically, I would like to establish my blog enough to join the Lolita Blog Carnival (if that is even still in existence!). This is an anachronistic time to start blogging. The era of the fashion blogger is beyond dead, to the point that many of us are finding Instagram a little tired and wondering what will be next. I can't help but hope that blogs might just be getting old enough to see a nostalgia-fueled revival. People still listen to records.

The fast-paced social media environment of today has its fun aspects. I remember when I was in high school I used to pour over the same magazines and library books over and over for creative inspiration. Now, it's almost a subconscious reflex to turn on my phone and open Instagram or Closet of Frills and jump into a sea of exciting new images-- any time, and pretty much anywhere. There was a time when I could not have dreamt of this kind of access to creative content, and yet now it is commonplace.

This is not a rant about the evils of social media. However... The current popular forms of social media do foster a certain way of thinking. This became extremely clear to me when I was revisiting some EGL Fashion blogs from the early 2010s to rekindle the dreamy feeling that first got me into this fashion. I found myself wanting to click a non-existent like button. "Ooh, what a gorgeous coord." I poised my cursor to select the heart react.

The react buttons were not there, of course.

Instead, when I scrolled down, I found thoughtful comments from other bloggers who had be responding to the same prompts, and staying in touch with each others' posts for months. To get to the next post, I had to go through the laborious process of actually navigating to the next page and waiting for it to load. This was not the world of the endless scroll. There was a built-in pause.

In that pause, I had to just sit with my own reaction, instead of selecting one from a menu. Within that pause were thoughts and feelings more nuanced and ambiguous than like or dislike, yes or no. A taste of the dreamy magic that my nostalgia craves is in that pause.

Blogging in 2019 is a strange choice. So, to some people, is wearing a petticoat and carrying a parasol. In the spirit of this fashion itself, I'm going to start now.

Or in the words of Kamikaze Girls, "Lolitas do not recognize any authority. They follow only the values they have chosen for themselves, regardless of what anyone might say."