‘IYBC/JURRDOT’ CIRC. 2007
The countdown is over. The months of excruciating waiting has finally come to an end. To my many readers who repeatedly typed “jurrdot.blogspot.com” into their address bars and met with a “Open to Registered Readers Only” message, I do apologize, and sympathize with your frustration. Back in 2010, I anticipated 2011 being a life-changing year, but never could I have comprehended the degree of said changes. And as I’ve always said, my blog is a direct extension of my life – albeit a controlled and edited one – I soon discovered that IYBC became obsolete in my life. The person that ‘Jurr Dot’ represented was a complete stranger to me. Scary thought.
Back in 2007, I read a newspaper article of a serial killer who documented his thoughts via a blog hosted by Blogspot. The thought of an online pseudo-journal frightened me, but it also enticed me. That was the day I logged unto Blogger and created my blog. In coming up with a name, I literally sat there and thought of the most pretentious and conceited title I could give myself, and thus was the birth of I’m Your Biggest Competition.
Little did I know, this blog and the identity I constructed through it would becoming such a major part of me and who I was to become. Constantly scanning the internet for cool gadgets, inspiring architectures and the latest in fashion, I was always trying to one-up myself. Through this, I invested in my first DSLR and really honed into my photography skills – or lack thereof. I had the honor of attending Fashion Week in London, and moving to Europe for a few months to pursue a fashion internship in Amsterdam. I was constantly hounded by random PR emails on everything from jewelry to Ugg boots. The pressure was always on: how can I have a better “Style Staples” outfit, what designer bag can I buy to post on IYBC, what party/event can I attend, what interview can I land? To put it simply, the competition was with nobody but myself. In the process, I realized IYBC has transformed into a fashion/style blog – something that I never anticipated when originally signing up to do this blog thing.
I envied those who started their blogs later in the game, because they had the luxury of viewing countless blogs and websites on the interwebs and then really deciding what they wanted to include in their own cyber-interpretation of the world. They could learn from others’ shortfalls in design or marvels in HTML/CSS. For a while I felt trapped with IYBC – to take photos in a certain style, to numerate my blog posts into neat titles like “Then & Now” and “Update”, to make sure to include x amount of Labels per post. In short, I was not IYBC, and I was not happy with the output of my blog by any means.
Throwing myself into the real university life (studying for hours and hours on end) and being faced with many emotional challenges over this last year has made me into the person that I am today, and that person is by no means anyone’s competition. I guess all that combined to equate the eventual but very official death of IYBC. I was so caught up in this “fashion blogging” game that I really lost sight of what was most important to me.
With this realization, came the difficult decision of what to do with ‘jurrdot/iybc’; the url, the content, the identity. This met with the immense struggle of juggling a full time university education, part time retail jobs, my first serious relationship and the ongoing social demands of friends and family meant for the most part, the blog ended up on the back-burner. But the concept for The Endoxist always reminded me of why I wanted to do this thing in the first place. So this is where I find myself now: new blog, new outlook on life. Everything that IYBC was is still permanently embedded into the internet (and into my life) – all the posts, comments, photos and all. But now, I am excited to once again share a slice of my life (as it is now) with all of you.
Why the Endoxist? Stay tuned for a pull post on that soon.
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