On Niches (In Blogging and In Life)

I'm a person of many dichotomies.

I love sciences, but I really like design. I like being with people, but I love being alone. 

For a long time, I thought that was something I should change about myself. During the summer, I'd "decide" what kind of person I would be that fall--as if it was that easy. Some years I'd want to be that super sweet girl who everyone loved to be around. Some years I decided I would be the tough girl who didn't care about what anyone thought.

But I would always find out, by the second or third school day, that it just didn't work like that. I can't choose a stock character and make it me. 

More importantly, unlike the stock characters I tried to be when I was younger, I found that I couldn't put myself in a box. I was on the cheerleading squad, but I also played soccer. I was a good student, but I also flunked a test once in awhile. 

Eventually, and especially lately, I've begun to embrace the dichotomies (and sometimes, contradictions) within myself. It's really a beautiful thing to realize the value in loving and embracing your personality with all its quirks, and even FOR its quirks. 

I've begun to love the fact that I don't "fit in a box" and I should add that you should too--because YOU don't fit in a box either. 

Over the last few weeks (and really the whole lifespan of my blog), I've been exploring my blog, the concept of a niche and "categorizing" your blog. Quite similar to the way I feel about myself, I can't put my blog into the metaphorical box. And again, like the way I felt about myself, I thought this way a bad thing, that no one would ever really like my blog if every post I wrote doesn't fit in their little niche of "positivity bloggers" or "design bloggers". 

But I thought to myself, why have I accepted and embraced that fact that my own personality doesn't fit into some stereotype, but I still expect my blog to? 

Though it seems all over the board, 80s music, plant microbiology, black + white design and positivity mantras have one thing in common: they are loved by me. And though the topics of my blog may seem equally random, they are united under the fact that they fit under the umbrella of my passions. 

And as I've thought about my many passions that I've chosen to represent in this blog, I think I've truly stumbled upon one of my biggest passions in this blog. 

I'm passionate about loving myself. Not in an "I believe I'm beautiful" way, though I think that's real truth. I believe that my existence, my interests, my loves, my hates, my quirks, my inconsistencies and dichotomies (and yours, too!) are totally valuable to the world and one of the things that adds to the texture and richness of our lives. And I'm passionate about making sure you know this truth too. When we embrace our weird personalities, we can live bravely and freely. 

That's why when Bloglovin' asks me to categorize my blog, I have no qualms about shamelessly and fearlessly choosing "other".