“I
came to win, to fight. To conquer, to thrive. I came to win, to survive. To
prosper, to rise. To fly.”
Fly,
Nicki Minaj ft. Rihanna
Yes,
here comes another year on I’m NOT Disordered! To celebrate the start of 2025,
I thought I’d write this piece about a collection of things from this past
year! The post will include favourite blog posts and collaborations from 2024,
advice I’d give from the biggest lessons I’ve learnt this past year, as well as
my top purchases (from Amazon and ASOS), my most watched TV Shows, Movies, and
YouTube videos, and even my top five most listened to on Spotify! Then, I’ll be
wrapping up this jam-packed post with my greatest moments and achievements from
the entire year, some of my hope for 2025, and a bit of exclusive insight into a
few exciting, upcoming plans…
'Cause your punches
and your names All your jokes and
stupid games They don't work No, they don't hurt Watch them just go
right through me Because they mean
nothing to me
-Grace
Vanderwaal – Clay
The huge
catalyst for this recent ‘blip’ in my mental health was the news about my
abuser’s new job role. It brought back all the old feelings about him – the
anger, frustration, sadness… it all came flooding back, overwhelming me and
taking over all of the positive thoughts and feelings. To come through the
blip, I’m trying to regain some control over all those negative feelings and
bring them in check so that they’re manageable and aren’t influencing my
thoughts to self-harm or cause me to feel suicidal. Instead, I’m trying to
adopt the attitude that no matter what he says or does, I’ll just get on with
my life. I have to.
So,
for the past week I’ve have P!NK’s song What About Us in my head and have had
it on repeat on Youtube! When I watched the lyric version of the song/video I
found myself able to relate it to a lot of different things in my life and that
gave me the inspiration to write this post.
If
you want to read about the wide range of songs and singers that I relate to
different parts on my life, there’s a post here
We’re not broken just bent,
and we can learn to love again
Music
is, in my opinion, one of the most
powerful, influential, and incredible things in life. It can influence your
mental state in the most obvious of ways; you could be feeling really sad and
listen to an upbeat, motivational song and it has you up, out of bed, and
smiling. Dancing, even! Or you could be dancing and singing loudly in the
shower when a sad, moving, song jumps into your Spotify playlist and all of a sudden,
you’re remembering a difficult time in your life when all of these heart-breaking
lyrics applied to it.
So, quite a while ago, a video went viral; it was of Essena O'Neil who is known as a model and social media personality explaining why she was boycotting social media. Note: there are some rumours that the video is fake.
As my life/career/hobbies and interests, are centred around social media and in particular blogging, I thought I might write my thoughts on a few of the things Essena said that really stuck out for me:
'Having it all on social media means absolutely nothing to your real life'
Personally, I think that this is similar to the message that lots of well-known YouTubers try to get across: everything you see on social media etc. is edited. Giving the impression that they live a perfect life. But they don't. We all choose what our readers, watchers and followers see/read. For me, this is similar to the title of my previous post; it was actually something one of my best friends said when were catching up a few days ago. I have wonderful opportunities, know important people and just generally live a lovely lifestyle, but I get tired when it's an early start, I get travel sick with the taxis and trains and sometimes I'm just not at all motivated to do any blogging, emailing etc. But in the category of which I blog, I find that it's perhaps more common for me to include these and the bad days. However, my success in blogging does mean something to real life. It makes my life. It gives me all of the wonderful opportunities. 'Everything I was doing was edited and contrived to get more views'
Personally, I'd never do something purely to get more readers or to increase my followers. If something bad happens then I'll write about it but not for the views; for the people who are behind those views. In the hope that they'll benefit from what I write in some way. From my statistics, I can see that the more negative posts about self-harm and hospitalisations etc. are the most popular. They are viewed more often than those posts regarding meetings, exciting events, posts about my recovery etc. But I would NEVER do something negative for the sake of the views. 'You'd think that getting 100,000 followers would be amazing. It was. For the day, but then you want 200,000'
I've talked about my views and concerns similar to this quote; in that I worried I'd become complacent with the increase in my blogs readers as it reached such an incredible number. But no, I never get sick of seeing them rise. I think that it's natural for me to think of my blog having even higher numbers e.g. I've decided to throw another huge party when I reach 250k, and I'm not being cocky in this, im just basing it on my viewing statistics at the moment. Letting yourself be defined by numbers, getting excited over how many likes or followers... It's not life. And it's not what makes you happy'
I think that there's a huge difference between being defined by your number of followers and getting excited when they rise. Unfortunately, the truth with the social media industry is that when it's a career aspect then of course you're somewhat defined by your numbers. If I were to approach a charity, event organiser, fellow blogger etc. to suggest a collaboration, there's often a colossal difference in responses if I state I have 5,000 readers compared to the 122,000 I can now say. The truth is, more doors open to the person with the most followers/readers. 'Social media is now a business, if you don't think it's a business you're deluding yourself' 'Companies know the power of social media, and they exploit it'
I think that particularly in the past two years, a lot of companies have found the power and influence that those who are popular through social media have. For some time, companies have paid celebrities to put a photo online of them with a particular product. And beauty companies regularly send beauty bloggers their unreleased, or brand new, products to review and feature on their blog or YouTube. More recently, fashion bloggers are given a budget for a fashion store to then video their haul. There's now a lot of YouTube sensations who have released books, music, diaries, stationary, and beauty products.their followers are on such a huge scale and have such a variety that of course, businesses exploit this for their own gain.
'Go do things that you love to do in the real world...' I'm a big enthusiast for doing things that aren't centred around social media. Visit somewhere new without 'checkimg in' on Facebook. Go to a party and keep you phone in your bag the entire night. Have a meal without posing the cutlery for an Instagram pic. Spend time with your friends without taking selfies. Ask someone a question rather than Googling it. Visit a craft shop and hand make or personalise gifts for others rather than using notonthehighstreet.com
Those who know me, will know that I've followed Zoella (Zoe Sugg) for quite a while (admittedly nothing compared to how long she's been YouTubing/blogging for. I can't even remember why I began following her but it was not long before she became a household name after launching her beauty range. I look up to her for many reasons; the most obvious being the success of her blog/YouTube, but I also admire that she too entered this industry as a total novice and has learnt as she went. Admittedly I do sometimes question whether opportunities are handed to her on a plate, but watching her vlogs you can see how hard she works on both editing her videos and writing her books/attending meetings to plan new products. And so, I fully believe that she and Alfie Deyes (PointlessBlog) have earn their million pound home.
I think that there was a mention of fans finding their home in one of their vlogs but the internet exploded two days ago when Zoe tweeted 'Really starting to lose my patience with people just turning up at our house & peering in or ringing our doorbell 😔 makes me hate my house! 😢' and around the same time, Alfie also tweeted 'Parents who drive their kids to our home & put them on their shoulders so they can lean over our walls to try and take pictures of us without us realising... I see you! I'm on the sofa in my pyjamas relaxing. Go away. If you want to meet me, I'd love that! Come to a meet up just like everyone else who wants to meet me does! You can't just drive to my house & climb our walls, that's really not fair.'
Of course there was a surge of responses with such a variety of opinions. Everyone who expressed their views was immediately jumped on by others who either agreed or disagreed. As I read through some comments I formed my own replies but resisted posting anything at fear of starting drama.
The most popular point of those who weren't on Zoe and Alfie's side, was to say that filming their private lives had made them and famous and so they should've realised what they were getting themselves into. 'Welcome to the famous life. Didn't you see this coming at all?' Zoe and Alfie promtly pointed out (correctly, in my opinion) that in beginning their YouTube channels, they'd never set out to become 'famous' and that even still, that shouldn't mean they should tolerate an invasion of their privacy. I feel that in some ways, I can relate to this. I don't mean to sound big-headed in saying this, but I'm well known in mental health through my blog and if readers started showing up at my little bungalow I'd be mortified. However, I am very grateful that it is almost solely in that area that I'm known so there's little chance someone will stop me at the shops as they regularly do with Alfie and Zoella. But like them, I started my blog to document my recovery for myself to look back on. There are many bloggers out there who begin their blog or YouTube channel in the hope of becoming well known and making some money. Alfie and Zoe were never those people.
One aspect of this entire debate/incident/Twitter war, that I can completely relate to is that people assume that because you do disclose aspects of your life that some may view as private and personal, then you must be sharing everything. Many YouTubers regularly point out that their vlogs are edited and a twenty four hour day is often condensed in under twenty minutes, never mind that they rarely vlog whilst having a bad day.
I think that perhaps discussing my mental health, the abuse I've suffered and feeling suicidal, makes me more vulnerable to this. But the amount of important things going on in my life that I can't discuss is probably unbelievable to readers. And one reason that I never discuss one aspect is that the person involved wants to maintain their privacy. And I respect that. Because I believe it is an individual preference.
Finally, a lot of people are arguing that the two never complain about the money they make but neither do the footballers who are paid ridiculous amounts per match. At the end of the day, no matter how 'perfect' you may deem someone's life to be, they will always have something that they aren't happy with in their life.
No matter tear what your occupation, everyone deserves privacy and to feel safe in their own home.
.png)
