Darla!

Category: this blog

  • Changing Lane


    Life is crazy.

    Like, the craziest thing I’ve ever done.

    I’m sad to see a lot of my favourite bloggers have started to go AWOL. The ones who’re staying have started to become unrelatable and in turns also become annoying. Remember when blogging was easier? Like when we can just write a post about what happened that day and people would just leave comments. Now it seems like every blogger is giving recycled blogging tips. Nobody seems to blog for the sake of blogging anymore. Personal blogs are no longer personal. Every blogger has LLC’d themselves and rebranded their blogs and started labeling themselves as a pro and offering expensive ‘blogging class’. It’s exhausting. I followed you because I wanted to read the posts about your cats, or your home tour, or how you turned that old coffee table into a chic ottoman. I don’t need recycled tips, I want your writings; authentic words from you.

    For months I’d been contemplating about shutting down this blog and starting fresh. New blog, new name, new platform. The plan was almost complete, but then I took a look at this blog and realise how much I loved it. This blog has been with me since I was 18 and has helped me through a lot of things. It’s been 7 years, and even though it hasn’t grown as big as I used to dream it would be, it’s big enough for me now. It’s enough.

    So like I’ve said again and again, this blog is staying. I will no longer aim at becoming a ‘big blogger’; I just want to be a ‘blogger’ right now. As simple as that. And since I started this as a personal blog, I will make this personal blog personal again.

    Now how’s that for a campaign slogan, eh?

    Dara | Bloglovin’ | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

  • Life Lately

    Dara + Miss Jess | Hola Darla
    It was never my intention to suddenly abandon this blog. I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed with life lately. I feel like time goes by so fast each day, yet I’ve accomplished nothing so far. Time management is never my strength, and it’s become even worse these past few weeks. With Ramadan and Eid coming, and a new small business in mind, I can barely breathe. I’ve spent too much time on the road, commuting, and with all these things inside my mind, blogging has to be put aside.

    It’s a shame; I used to love and enjoy blogging, but now it feels like a chore. Like I am forced to do this. Like if I stop entirely, I fail. I’ve been seeing a lot of blogs shut down these past years, but I don’t want to do that to this blog. I want to keep doing it. I think I need to rethink about the purpose of this blog. Refocus. Rebuild. And by doing so, I hope I can grow both this blog and my own self. Bear with me.
    Miss Jess | Hola Darla

    PS. Wait for a good news from me later this week 😉

    Dara | Bloglovin’ | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

  • A Letter to Everything

    Dear husband
    Dear husband,
    I’m opening this letter with one simple sentence for you: I love you. Those three words are exchanged for a gazillion times but I swear I mean it. I say it with more and more love everytime. This April, you’re turning 25 (a quarter of century!) and the same day will mark our third year of saying ‘I love you’s. And I’m so very super glad to be able to call you ‘my husband’ this year. I love you (for the umpteenth time).

    Dear Jess
    Dear Jess,
    You’re fluffy and hyperactive and amazingly annoying and annoyingly amazing. Can you please lessen your nap time and spend the day cuddling and playing catch with me instead? I told my husband that I needed a cat to keep me company during the lonesome days when I was home and he was at work, but you’re not helping at all! No, just kidding. You’re entertaining even when you’re asleep. I love your tail, baby.

    Dear skin
    Dear skin,
    I’m 23 and a half this month, so can we break up with the breakout already? It was fine during my teenage years because although my friends had flawless skins and I was the only pimpled-faced kid in high school, I accepted it because that was normal during puberty. But I’m an adult now! I want to wear make up without pimples making my eyebrows look ridiculously uneven (what pimples pop out on eyebrows, anyway?). Please?

    Dear April
    Dear April,
    I have high hopes for you. I must say that I miss sunny days when the skies are blue and cloudless. I miss those days when I can do my laundry and hang it out and then go nap-nap without worrying if it will rain. Please bring the sun out, April. I’m counting on you.

    Dear readers,
    We’re having a long weekend for Easter here in Indonesia. I stay at home to avoid the traffic. (Trust me. The roads practically become parking lots because the vehicles are not moving. At all.) But I’m going to spend these days cuddling with my husband and my cat and also finishing Veronica Mars #2, so Weekend Links won’t be up this weekend. It will be back next week. I hope your weekend is as relaxing as mine (if not more).

    PS. I’ve created a new Facebook page for this blog. Give a girl a like? 😉

    Dara | Bloglovin’ | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook

  • I’m keeping this blog.

    Look at this Clothes Mountain I should be ironing and yet here I am blogging instead

    Man, I miss blogging. And by ‘blogging’, I mean like 2011 blogging: consistent and regular, with the words as if they were flowing like a river out from my brain. Yesterday I read my old posts and I couldn’t recognise the person who wrote them. Was it really me? Because it didn’t feel like reading my own writing; it was like somebody else’s.

    When I quit teaching and decided to work from home, I thought I’d have time to be back to regular blogging (like I had promised for a gazillion times). But no, friends. I’ve been busier than I have ever imagined. Being a stay at home wife is not always rainbows and butterflies; it’s also dishes and laundry and groceries and errands. Blogging can’t be a priority right now. But I’m also too much in love to quit it for good. So here I am, making yet another promise:

    I’m keeping this blog.
    I will try my best to post once a week, at the very least.
    I don’t even care if nobody reads it:
    I’m keeping this blog.

    I have tons of stuffs I want to tell you all, like our wedding (or weddings, ’cause we had two receptions), our honeymoon, our very first ferry boat ride together, our house, and Miss Molly. And I will.

    Oh I will.

  • October is My Month

    All the SEO masters will surely cringe at my choice of lame title for this post, but hey! I mean it! October is my birthday month and so it is my month, right?

    Alright. So I finally got a time to go back to the blogland after two weeks of not-even-turning-on-my-laptop-for-anything-besides-doing-progress-on-final-paper. In fact, I just finished marking some posts read on Bloglovin’. Hundreds of them. (Exhausting!) And I didn’t even do that on my laptop. I’m using my (brand new :D) tablet to read blogs and post this tonight. Tiny screen, awkward keyboard, tethered internet connection, but it’s the only convenient way as for tonight.

    I feel like I need to tell you that I hate complaining about my final paper to anybody other than my boyfriend and a few friends. That’s why I’ve been avoiding this blog. I’ve ranted enough on Twitter, I think, that I shouldn’t bring the negativity here. Like I said before, I should probably go back to using this blog as a getaway whenever real life seems unbearable, just like what I did a couple of years ago. Reading back to those days, I can see that my writings nowadays look dull compared to the old ones. I also used to have quite a number of royal readers and commenters. I don’t know if the decreasing number is because of me or if it is because of the big changes in the blogland just like what Kaelah talked about on her blog a few days back. Well, I was never a famous blogger, but even the amateur like me has been feeling the shifting so perhaps it is real.

    Anyway, while I was gone, I got myself a plenty of part time jobs and one that I had to cancel due to the conflicting schedule. (See? I wasn’t kidding when I said I was busy.) I am now a coordinator assistant in a private course institution and also a social media manager for a startup fashion line. Busy, arent I? 😉

    So, yeah… Here’s to October, my super special month.

    PS. My tablet’s wallpaper is from Kristen Victoria.