Doll Up Mari 7th Anniversary

Ha? Doll Up Mari is 7 years old now!

Yes, if Doll Up Mari were a child, Doll Up Mari would be going to the first grade in the next school year. Time flies so fast. The last thing I remember, I was making a blog post about used coffee grounds out of nowhere seven years ago. The rest is history.

I’ll be spending this blogversary in unprecedented times. These days, no one has an idea what the future holds in the middle of this COVID19 pandemic. I just want to take this opportunity to thank my readers, followers, supporters, industry partners and colleagues. You’ve all made it worthwhile.

7 years has had its fair share of ups and downs. There have been mean people and there have been very abusive brands. But I just always want to focus on being grateful for the amazing people whom I have been blessed to cross paths with through this. I also want to be grateful for many meaningful partnerships and campaigns with many brands and PR agencies I have worked with.

But like any other 7th anniversary, this came with its own 7-year itch. In mid-to-late 2019, I actually already had no idea if I was still to continue with blogging. While there are many priceless opportunities in this kind of industry, there are a lot of opportunity costs. It’s also a very time consuming and costly venture all in all. I also have long been wondering if I actually have been making enough impact to make it worth the while to continue all this. And I guess after so many years of all work and barely any play, I won’t deny I’m extremely mentally exhausted.

I’ll be honest that I have already been getting ready to change industries from mid-2019, and was supposedly in the process of making the change early this year. But then, all my attempts in trying to enter other industries have been totally decimated by this pandemic. I also found it quite therapeutic to just be focusing on content creation while I have no idea what is going to happen to anything at all. I don’t know, but maybe it’s the universe’s crazy way of telling me to not leave? I won’t know for sure. No one knows. But definitely, it’s not the kind of sign I was asking for.

I have more questions than answers at this point, but like I’ve always done, I’ll just try to take this one step at a time and see what happens. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to all the well-wishers.