You know what's real? The struggle.

Damn girl, blogging is no easy feat! Coming up with new things to write and share is becoming harder day by day because this community is bigger than ever, and the almost all the topics you can think of are probably blogged already. Beauty blogging, for example, is becoming challenging and coming up with original posts are energy draining and headache inducing. Sometimes you just want to write other things aside from reviews, tags, and empties, no? No matter how passionate and game we are, we all come to a point where we're just drained and clueless, and we find ourselves staring at a blank screen, hoping for some idea or inspo to pop up. Hello, love, welcome to the blogging slump.

Breathe in, breathe out, laptop off. Here's what I do to somehow combat the slump and dive head first to the blogging world again, with fresh ideas this time.

1. Take a shower

You have no idea how powerful a bath or shower is. In fact, most ideas that pop into my head come when I'm taking a bath, like my current blog name or my current post about blending sponges. Maybe it's the tranquility and coolness of the water that clears my head or the relaxing scents of the bath products I use. Either way, I get ideas. Ideas that I write down as soon as I finish my bath.

2. Go out.

Most of the time when I'm holed up in my room, I check out different sites that can help me find inspo for my next post while feeling bad that I don't have any to publish. It's quite suffocating sometimes, especially when I'm really pushing myself to write. So I go out. A quick trip to the mall here, meeting up with a few friends there. It's nice to refresh my brain by seeing a different scenery other than the four walls of my room and that helps a lot. I get to relax for a little bit and after a few hours, I'm good to blog again.

3. Watch a tv show or a movie.

If I'm not in the mood to go out, an episode of a tv show I really like helps me relax and regroup. I'm a big tv junkie and I get a lot of beauty-related inspo in these shows. I was recently into Daredevil Season 2 so in turn, I did an inspired beauty look. I'm currently planning to do a day to night look inspired by a couple of characters from a new show I really like. The beauty aspect in tv shows and movies nowadays is pretty significant so I'm sure as hell that inspo will come my way. And all it takes is a couple of episodes.

4. Read.

Magazines, online journals, handouts, novels...I try to read them all, or at least look at the visuals. Book art alone conjures up inspo, a bonus considering my goal's to read, not to ogle at the front page. I turn to magazines and beauty books when I want to find a look I want to do or when I want to know the recent trends or cult products to try. A theme will come up, I'll work around it, and bam! New post. ;)

5. Back to the blogs.

When everything fails, I can always count on the lists. You know, the 100 item blog topic suggestion lists. :)) I like checking out the lists created by The Sunday Girl and Thirteen Thoughts as they really help me make a post I haven't done before. There are some I won't be doing anytime soon but they're nice to keep in the back of my head for future use. Those lists are really good and I recommend checking them out.

And that's how I combat the blogging block. It's totally normal to feel inadequate and incompetent sometimes but there are ways to get yourself back up again because if you really love what you do, you'll do anything to be 100% again. Writing/blogging isn't easy but it's fun and fulfilling. All it takes is a push out of the slump! Good luck! x