Remember the days of carefully curating your RSS feed and having full control of the content that showed up? Remember troll and bot free comment sections? Remember when it was important to put care, thought and creativity into content? I miss those days. Perhaps it’s nostalgia, perhaps it’s social media burnout… whatever the reason, I’m ready for a reboot.

Reignite that old flame.

Back in 2008, I started a blog called Flights of Fancy. At the time, I owned a wedding stationery business and the blog was a place for me to share all kinds of wedding inspiration. I pulled together mood boards showing how the invitations I designed would work with different wedding themes and styles, I created color palettes brides were inspired to use for their weddings and I even posted ‘Real Weddings’, spotlighting the weddings of my customers who happily shared their photos to be featured.

It wasn’t the biggest blog in the wedding niche but it was successful and I genuinely enjoyed creating content for the eight years Flights of Fancy existed. The blog also helped me establish authority and expertise within my niche, strengthened brand loyalty and served as an effective marketing tool for my business.

If you told me two years ago that I’d be blogging again in 2025, I would have laughed out loud but here we are… and I’m excited about it! Of course, I don’t want go into this wearing rose-colored glasses – blogging wasn’t always easy and I didn’t always feel inspired – but I do look forward to recreating a space where the pace is slower, the content is more intentional and the trend-chasing is non-existent. I look forward to reconnecting with real people who really value authenticity and the beauty of creativity… and I look forward to doing it on my own terms.

Autonomy and ownership.

These days, there are several different platforms that serve a similar purpose: Substack, Medium, even Patreon. The main reason why I’ve decided to stick to the tried and true blog format is simple: ownership. Third party platforms like the ones listed above make it really easy to get started quickly with little to no hassle but it also means that you’re building a house on borrowed land. When that company changes ownership, policies, pricing or even crumbles completely, everything you’ve built crumbles with it. I’ve learned this lesson the hard way. More than once. Of course, it’s impossible (or at least very challenging) to be completely self reliant when establishing an online presence but my aim is to reclaim my autonomy in whatever ways I can.

Slow-cooked content.

A quick snack or microwave meal is fine every now and then but it’s not all that satisfying long term. These days, ingesting social media content feels a lot like being on a junk food diet and many of us a ready for a detox. My intention with this blog is to create slow-cooked content. It might take a little longer to prepare and you’ll need to  settle in and sit with it for more than 3 seconds but hopefully, in the end you’ll feel satiated and eager for the next serving.

Evergreen and always seen.

The other challenge with creating posts on social media these days is that the content has a really short shelf life. You might spend an hour editing the perfect Reel or TikTok, pairing it with the perfect trending audio and writing the most perfect caption, only for it to be forgotten within 48 hours because audiences are inundated with so much content at such a fast pace.

The beautiful thing about blogs is that the content is evergreen. Posts can be discovered by anyone at anytime if they have an interest in your niche. In many cases, posts become even more valuable over time by steadily increasing traffic to your site and improving your site’s SEO value. Yes, Google has introduced massive changes to its algorithm but SEO still has value, even in 2025. Every post you publish creates another opportunity for your site to be discovered by search engines and eventually, new readers. Of course, this won’t happen overnight and it’s important to be strategic about your content but the opportunity to thrive long-term is still there.

Deeper than a caption.

As frustrating as the social media landscape has been lately, social media (Instagram in particular) has been very good to me. It’s where I built my confidence by sharing my digital art experiments when I first transitioned from traditional graphic design. It’s where I gained a great group of virtual art friends. It’s where creative directors have found and hired me for some of the biggest projects of my career. It’s the reason I started teaching online courses. Social media can absolutely be a boon to your business – but as times have changed, so has its efficacy.

Audiences seem less and less interested in reading captions these days, making it more challenging to genuinely connect. I don’t plan to abandon Instagram entirely but I do like the idea of having a space where I can dive a little deeper and make connections beyond a brief caption.

Moving forward.

With this blog reboot, I want to create a space where I can share content without the noise, pressure or distractions of social media. I want to capture a bit of that old vibe social media used to have when like-minded people gathered around a shared interest and engaged with the content (and each other) in a genuine, friendly way. Will that be possible in 2025? I don’t know. What I do know is that I’m not the only person out there who is ready for a social media alternative. Maybe we’ll find each other in this tiny corner of the internet.

This time around, I will be doing things a little differently. At the height of my old blog, I had a team of interns who helped me post almost daily – I don’t plan to do that again. I’ve packed away the hamster wheel and I plan to take things more slowly this time.

I shuttered my wedding stationery business several years ago and I am now a full-time digital artist, creating illustrations and hand lettering for product-based companies. I also began teaching digital art courses 5 years ago, after many requests to share my creative process and digital drawing tips. This new blog will be a place where I share behind-the-scenes peeks at my creative process, along with tips, mini tutorials, inspiration and insights for digital artists (and those who aspire to become digital artists). This will be my Draw Journal.

However you found your way to this blog – I’m glad you’re here! Were you into blogs during their heyday? Do you think it’s possible to recapture some of that old magic? Are you also ready for a social media alternative? Feel free to leave a comment – I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks for reading and I hope you’ll stop by again soon!
xo
Gia