This marks the fourth design Georgie has done for my blog, for me. We started working together again late last year, and at this point I would be hard-pressed if a time came when she couldn’t design my blog anymore — that’s how much I love working with her. We vibe well, and working together doesn’t mess up our friendship. (Which, amazing, considering I’ve learned working with friends/family doesn’t work so well most of the time.)

She brought to this design magic. 🔮✨ Personally, I think the ✨real magic✨ sparkles in dark mode. 🤩

In addition to a redesign, I’ve rebranded my blog yet again, this time to hej. gay!.

Initially it was thatadult.com, but Facebook wasn’t letting up on the site blockage. It’s one thing to not use Facebook. It’s another entirely for your site to not be able to be shared at all, ever, on Facebook.

Janepedia was my attempt to control my personal & professional brand like it was one.

I felt pressured on the daily to constantly be “on”, so I thought it made perfect sense to blend who I was altogether, all the time, because I was under the impression that that’s who I am.

Then I started using dating apps to find a girlfriend, which allowed me to link my Instagram, and believe me when I say that I have never been so wrong about anything in my life the way I was about my personal brand.

I am not my blog. I am not the scheduled posts. I am not a carefully curated Instagram feed or polished LinkedIn page — the most polished thing about me is my nails, and that’s not top-dollar but my DIY manicure does make me feel like a million bucks.

Yet still, my matches would hold me to this expectation that my emotions, too, were so compartmentalized they could be scheduled and not at all occurring all the time. Of course, I’ve since concluded many people are so emotionally closed off they blame other people for “feeling too much”, as if feeling at all is problematic, thanks to chatting with a person bee who is ever so lovely and darling. 😍😍😍😍

Janepedia’s sole purpose was to distinguish myself as Jane — not as Sarah — which I use only in official legal documents, to emphasize that my chosen name is not a phase, but a crucial part of who I am. Our names define us, and my chosen one aids in defining the me I am these days, rather than continuing to impose upon me who I was before.

My dirty laundry has been aired online since I was a kid, and ever since I learned how to make my own websites, I was keen to air it myself. I figured it would put me in more control, but I didn’t learn how to balance it until damage was done and people were already hurt — including myself.

Over the years, I learned damage control and how to rebuild my reputation while the people who expected me to fail miserably watched.

Moving into my apartment felt like a new chapter that didn’t fit into anything I wanted with my blog as-was. Janepedia worked as a personal blog, but I don’t want to be a primarily personal blog. There will be personal topics and stories and touches, but I found a gap in the blogosphere despite all the things out there and desperately want to fill it for when the next person goes searching it.

Which means…I want my blog to be findable, and found, so I have to stop thinking about myself first and foremost in regard to it and begin thinking about it from not only a reader perspective, but a business one as well.

Because I realized I don’t to build a new blog, even though I don’t want to continue personal blogging, and that it doesn’t mean I have to play by other people’s blogging rules because this place is my playground.

It is a series of small things that led me to decide this, similarly to how I decided to rebrand to Janepedia in 2016.

No more “announcements”

The feeling that I had to announce what I was going to do before I was even going to do it comes from familial bullshit, and I don’t want to bother with it anymore.

I’ve not posted into Jane Out Loud because I decided to go back through and edit it, and will release episodes on a monthly basis as I complete the editing.

Future series and changes may be noted in passing, in posts where they fit into conversation, but not officially announced. 🤷‍♀️ It just doesn’t work for me to make and share goals/etc. and then actually make them happen. I’ve noticed they happen when I share work-in-progresses with a limited number of people, but otherwise…it has no place here. And that’s okay.

In the past six months, I have had to explain to several people what I am doing, when I am doing it, and how I am going to do it — and several people have given me their two cents regarding my answers — just because I was getting a fucking apartment.

It’s ridic. I’m tired of explaining myself to people, like I’m supposed to prove my worth or the worth of what I’m doing in a few succinct sentences so I may sway them into believing I can do the very thing most everyone thinks I’m going to fucking fail at. 🤬 It’s irritating.

So now it’s…well, my business is my business.

A few things to note

• The fancy handwritten font is Just One (affiliate link), for which I’ve a license, darlings.
• This theme makes me happy. The rebrand makes me happy. Separating myself from my blog in this way? It makes me happier, less suffocated.
• Living on my own is allowing me to truly be myself — inside and out — and I’m not settling for anything less any longer.
• My business name will be Flannel Femme — not my name, not related to any endeavors in regard to keywords. ‘Tis purposely ambiguous and yet still representative of who I am.
• If things look wonky, hard refresh your browser. If they still do afterward, email me.
• I rewrote my about page and it’s magically 🔮✨ darling 🎀.
• Book review info parts look sexyyyy.