The girlies are doing girly things again for the girls! The girlies are girl blogging and the girlies who girl blog are sharing how they girl blog…. And I just love us!
I get so sad thinking about how, for some reason, my old blog - Five Sixteenths - is gone. I def need to see if I can somehow get it back? I’m not sure what happened - I’ve gone through my emails and there was some payment issue but it said my domain was gonna renew September 2026 so I’m not sure why it’s gone now… but those early days were FILLED with fun and uncertainty. Oversharing outfits, DIYs, thoughts…and blog tips! I started that probably in 2010-ish BUT I’d been blogging over at CrossxMyxHooks for SEVERAL years before that. There are a ton of broken links and missing images over there now, but it is a trip down memory lane and filled with early aughts nostalgia.
I’ve been scrolling TikTok videos and have found a TON of just girls being girls, blogging. A lot of them are young - late teens to twenty-somethings …. And …. Like there’s no unique experience.
Girlhood, womanhood, seems to be a similar journey for everyone. I read a twenty something's blog about how they were a bit stressed because they didn’t have their life together and how they didn’t know what to do with their life and how they were looking for a job or an apartment and it took me back to those same feelings at that SAME point in my life.
The feeling of a wide open journey, scared (sort of) to begin, unsteady but still moving …. And being young enough to have the best time of my life. When I budgeted $40 a week for groceries (unheard of now, and that was not even A LOT back then) was really one of the richest times in my life.
I saw this pair of shoes at the thrift store and they screamed 2010s
Seeing all the girl bloggers, girl blogging made me want to start a digital type of diary again. I am struggling...to say the least. Previously I'd just overshare on the internet. I'd just dump 5 sentences of whatever I was thinking and then do something else. But now, with everything seemingly over-curated, its hard to just 'dear diary...' my way through life! But I'm going to try because I remember it being so much fun and I yearn for the unicorn Frappuccino days.
I’ve also seen the term millennial optimism floating around …. Some agree with that feeling and some really don’t. I do remember being so optimistic about the future, albeit a little naïve. I voted for the first time ever for Obama - I remember filling out the absentee ballot in my door room on the floor. I remember where I was in the art building on campus when I heard his inauguration. I remember gay marriage being legalized. I remember the hope of it all and I remember the filters, the coffee shop pics, the uncurated feeds, the no-algorithm organic finding of bloggers and interesting people to follow. I remember thinking the whole world was open to me. That things could only get better because we cared about each other.
A lot of the blogs I’m coming across have a Y2K meets MySpace vibe and it’s absolutely AMAZING! yes I want to follow your blog link from someone’s sidebar. Yes I want to click a button and get a fortune. Yes I want to see my cursor have a trail of stars and see falling glitter when I go to your page. YES I WANT A SONG TO AUTO PLAY!
I just love us. I love how we share, I love how we just do, I love how we exist.
I love that the girls are blogging again. I love that the 2010s are back.
And … I wonder where a nearly 40 year old blogger fits into that because I was a millennial optimism blogger in the 2010s. I did share Instagram photos with the Amaro, Valencia, and Nashville filter in that active era. The nostalgia for the 2010s is unreal right now, and I’m here for it.
Bring on the twee, bring on the ‘stomp clap hey’ music, bring back mustache everything, bring back indie sleaze…. Let’s go!
ps. while formatting this post I discovered my blog images uploaded to the Five Sixteenths blog still exist.....so my blog has to be there somewhere right? I have to be able to recover it...right!?!?!
