The last regeneration... hello Biscuits & Blisters!

Well! Look at this! It’s been a long week of designing, redesigning, googling, swearing, coding, and calling on friends for advice, but finally I have a new blog. Ish.

The hardest part of it all (aside from all the coding customisation) was rewriting my ‘About me’ page. I’ve had this blog for eight years now. EIGHT. I was 16 years old when I created it and it’s gone through so many regenerations in that time. It’s gone from Teen: Dreaming…, to echoamelie, to just my name. It’s gone from teenager to young woman, from GCSE student to graduate. It’s been through a lot and it’s seen a lot more. It needs therapy itself.

Being a blogger, as we know them now, didn’t exist when I created this space in 2009. It certainly wasn’t a thing for teenagers. This was merely a diary, a space in a corner of the internet for me. I wanted to be journalist so tried my hand at some opinion pieces, and definitely got my feet through a few doors because of it. But then life happened and everything I’d ever worked towards here got a bit… sidelined. But more about that in future posts.

No matter how much my brain thinks I should, I can’t bring myself to delete any old posts and start again. Have a fresh look, a fresh identity, and a fresh space on the internet for a new blog - the blog I’ve really wanted for a while. There’s too much nostalgia buried here and the growth I went through is astonishing. I spent hours the other day going through every single blog post of my teenage years (editing out any awful parts) and smiling, for the most part. I just wish I wrote more. I didn’t write about everything that happened in the last eight years; some things I really should have documented as they were, are, important experiences (though ferociously private) that brought me to this place, this person, now. 

But, I digress. Yes, I’ve hidden a lot of old posts, and a lot I’ve kept public for now (for my sins). But I’m staying put, while my blog has a new direction. I’m doing this properly now. I still want to write about mental health and running, but I also want to write about travelling and life too. Biscuits & Blisters is created from my love of biscuits (duh) and reluctant love for blisters. For I can’t have running and travelling without the blisters. They’re in tandem; one cannot live without the other.

I want to write often, and happily. Now this blog is all fancy and new, I want to mould it and build on it. I no longer want this blog to be etched into my identity, as I once felt it was. I want this blog to be a creation.

I hope this will be the last regeneration. I hope Biscuits & Blisters now grows with me through my 20s, and maybe even beyond. This feels right.

So, I really hope you stick with me. I signed up to Bloglovin’ and everything. I want to write and document and live, and I’m so excited and proud that I’m finally in a place where I feel I can do that, both mentally and physically here, in my space in a corner of the internet.