Originaly posted on Black Leaves Tea Blog

Today I publish my 100th post on Black Leaves Tea and to celebrate that mark I thought it would be interesting to talk about my blogging journey. This blog is up since 2015, but I started way back when I was between 10 to 12 years old, maybe. I would love to be more precise but I’ve already deleted it – I think… It was really BAD!

I can’t recall how I discover blogging but I know I created one at school for an IT class and by that time I already have been playing with it before. I remember my first topic/niche was about Manga/anime. Back then I was starting to know more about it and loving it. Nowadays I still enjoy it A LOT and I get obsessed with some stories but is a side of me that I usually put aside to focus on other things. As the artsy that I am, I wanted to learn how to draw it, the reason way I started the blog to share my passion with others. Although I wasn’t teaching anything. I still remember doing a copy/paste post from Wikipedia!! HOW EMBARRASSING! Why did I do that? WHY?? But I was just a child and I didn’t post much more than that.

I still remember having in the bottom widget bar posting a few manga images and tried to tell a story with them – not the worst idea if it wasn’t so exaggerated and dramatic. As funny as it can be, now that I’m remembering, I’ve always loved to imagine and lost myself in my fantasies and writing them down always gave me a great pleasure, even today.

Don’t even get me started about my profile information! Obviously, my pic was some manga character but I didn’t describe myself, I described what I would like to be. So for the record, I had a boyfriend who was a sweetheart and loved me so much – so desperate! – and I was a great ballerina – false but I do love dancing. It’s true we can be whoever we want to be online and I was taking advantage of it. The blog didn’t have a great future I could tell and I forget it after a few weeks. BUT… Who doesn’t love dogs and would love to read about them?? Again… WHY?? I copy/paste AGAIN from the Wikipedia. It was my only post in that blog and no one ever saw it again…

As the time passed by I grow up and realised how stupid those blogs were. Every time I cross path with one blog I really liked I always felt the need to write my own but my problem was always the same, what do I have to offer, what would I be writing about? Therefore I didn’t create one for a long time. When I went to University was the fist time I ever knew about Youtubers. The first channel my roommate showed me was ThatcherJoe and later I discovered he has a sister who started off with a blog. Soon I begin to search and know more about blogging and I decided that now was the time to try and have a blog once again.

This time I had another question in my mind: in what language should I write? Since I’ve only had blogs in Portuguese I thought for a change to write in English. This was also the time when Sweety Pretty Delicious was born. I wanted to create a new email account to make the blog anonymously, so in case any of my friends would be looking around the web, they wouldn’t know that was me. I don’t even know where the hell did I get that name from.

One passion that I never got in common with any of my friends was miniature stuff. From food to furniture I love it all and can spend hours searching and seeing others make them. The idea for my niche appear by the lack of tutorials, especially the realistic ones, for miniature furniture and my plan was going to do it myself and then share with my viewers how to do it. So I published my first post on the third of August in 2014. By that time I was working on a scale model of a small cottage on my grandparents land. I thought it was a great idea to use the blog to register the development of the model. But then came the classes and the free time I had during the summer quickly disappeared living me without content for the blog.

After a few posts, I realised how hard it was for me to write them in English. I knew I had to get back to my origins and trust in my mother tongue to help me out. So using the same name I created a new blog this time in Portuguese. By that time it was so strange to write in Portuguese and I didn’t use to it. Just a heads up, I got more into British Youtubers so I was starting to hear English every day, there’s the reason why writing in Portuguese was starting to feel so strange. Also, I didn’t want the language to limited me and even though English was hard for me it’s the must spoken language in the world. So I was still having second thoughts and mist feelings about in what language should I write.

I even thought to create a bilingual blog but it takes the double of the time to write a post and it’s hard to give a soul to a text with the same information in two different languages. In the end, I realise that my writing change between both languages – which is funny being the same person, I sound different in English and Portuguese. Soon I knew if I want to go through with the blog I needed to choose one language first and only one.

Until 2015 I was using always the Blogger platform. It is great, free and really easy to use, but I love to discover new apps and platforms. I decided to change and learn how WordPress works. Even though the free plan is so limited, they offer great free themes and the interface is so CUTE! I LOVE IT! As I was starting to explode WordPress I set a new blog private just to know how everything works.

I was still having huge doubts about what to write about and if it was worth the time spend. Suddenly, I cross path with one of the most inspiring blog posts I ever read and it couldn’t have come in best time. The post basically, talks about the self-dought and fears everyone has when starting a blog. It was/is so accurate that gave me straight to embrace this new adventure. Since then you can see for yourself my journey with Black Leaves Tea. I haven’t deleted any post, even if it is really bad. When I feel is time to do a big makeover I’ll probably save them into my PC before deleting them from the blog. Despite making me cringe so much it’s a reminder to what I’ve improved and what I’ve conquered over the time. Especially with my English, I still might be murdering it – I’m soooooo sorry about that – but at least I know I’m getting better.

I don’t know if the 100th blog post is something to be celebrated but I never reached this mark on any of my previous blogs. And according to my historical, this was an unlikely scenario to ever happen. Hopefully, I’ll still be here to reach the mark of the 200th posts and much more to come.