Things I Hate About Blogging

I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but I’m actually a miserable bitch. However ‘miserable’ doesn’t really fit into the blogging world’s WordCloud, so we rarely talk about the bits of blogging that are actually really blady tedious/ piss us off/ make us do that eye roll disguised as puppy eyes emoji face. Here are the things I hate about blogging:

Auto DMs: Just in case following you on Twitter wasn’t enough, you decide to send me a novel’s worth of links from every social media you’ve ever even contemplated joining and remind me to check you out on all of them. Babe, as if I have time to go trace your family tree when you haven’t even followed me back yet. Plus DMs in general just feel really personal, I end up ignoring people who actually want to talk to me (apparently there are people out there that do, who knew?) because I just assume every DM I get is from the next Zoella promoting her floral Pinterest board. Stawp. 

Panic Monster Abroad (part 1)

Anyone who knows me or has read between the lines of my posts will know that I worry about everything. Literally, everything. From your average concerns like ‘did I lock the door?’ and ‘do my hips look big in this?’ (they probably do, I’m not really sure why I continue to ask this question) to the slightly more disruptive ‘what if I get lost?’ or ‘what if it kills me?’ Essentially, that part of How To Be Single where Dakota Johnson says super dramatically I TALK MYSELF OUT OF THINGS THAT I REALLY WANT TO DO is something I relate to on a spiritual level. I just worry so much it ends up not being worth it. Until now. Because on Thursday, Teamales, I’m going to New York City aka this panic monster is going abroad. So in order to prevent myself from having another mental breakdown, I’m going to share my fears with you and hopefully we can face/laugh at them (depending on how sympathetic you are) together.

Before I begin, remember my blog-anniversary giveaway is running at the mo and you can enter to win a fabulously feminist bundle HERE!

Firstly, you have to conquer the airport.

Happy Nudes Year

Just when I thought we’d made it through 2015 without too much interruption from the meninists of the world, I am introduced to someone expecting me to wish him a happy nudes year. It got me thinking about how, despite most of us seeing similar screenshots on Buzzfeed and Tumblr, you never expect the sassy feminist replies to be coming from you. So a rather unplanned addition to the blog this week: The Many Stages of Social Media Misogyny

The preparation: Meninists could appear at any time and, although it feels weird essentially bulling people you’ve never met in order to defend yourself, sometimes you’ve just got to grab yourself a glass of soya milk, readjust your bra straps and woman up. (If that fails to empower you, maybe do some Sudoku puzzles to warm up your brain or something.)

The bit where you check they’re not a troll: This is the part where you manically scroll through their Twitter feed to make sure they’re at least vaguely sane; in this case he’d retweeted some we-would-rather-gauge-our-eyes-out-than-have-Trump-as-President campaign so I thought he was a safe zone, especially because it started with him asking me about feminism. Even if you come to wrong conclusion (which, spoiler alert, you probably will) it always feels better to check.

The bit where it suddenly gets weird:

Free the Tampon

Let’s play a quick game of word association before we begin: I say ‘period’ and you reply with maybe ‘pain’ or ‘blood’ or ‘cramps’, the general feeling being largely negative (except from the grammar geeks/mildly naive amongst you who think ‘Oooh Punctuation!’ and get all excited and make out with your dictionaries). Let us continue.

There are over 3.5 billion women on the planet and most of us leak a rouge river once a month- unless you’re Leona Lewis who apparently also bleeds love- in order to keep the population going. Mother Nature pops up (in true toast style) rather inconveniently every now and then until we are lumbered with rather pregnancy, menopause or death, why then are our sanitary products taxed as luxury items?

Four Star Survival

In true Lionel Shriver style: we need to talk about hotel rooms. Despite the many eventualities of the past bank holiday- a wedding, a fever, a child being rescued from a water fountain- I can confirm the four walls of my accommodation were the most exciting. Especially as you realise, upon arrival, that you always get more beds than you need. Me, a single person (unless you don’t count 16 year olds as people in which case, I’m not judging your personal philosophy but, which delusional driveway did you park your car in this morning) in a room with two king sized beds. THIS IS AMAZING. I could fit the whole IT crowd in here, as well as the 4 remaining members of One Direction (it’s probably a good job one of them left, I’m not sure all that hair product in such a tight proximity is necessarily a good thing). We could all just laze around drinking freebie Earl Grey tea and watching…