A few years ago, I decided to shut down my blog Sheridadaily.com (previously Coconutandcream.com). The blog was home to a myriad of topics, from fashion to visual culture and music. At the time, I was thick in my Master programme and had become overwhelmed with the various issues that were happening in my personal and professional life. At this time, I also deleted my Instagram, left Twitter, removed my Youtube videos and as a whole, and retired Social media. Much can, of course, be said of how social media has crept into the very intimate parts of our lives, particularly as a twenty-something-year-old whose presence on the internet is as natural as butter on bread. I’d just turned 16 when I decided that my thoughts on various topics ought to be shared outside of my iPod notes. From then on, I’d cultivated a following with my writing, fashion and social commentary posts. Years later, as the industry around blogging evolved, I landed various business partnerships that extended my blog more into a business. Vloggers and bloggers who centre their content around their lives can attest to the growing pains one goes through, especially when you start out as young as I did.
Though I eventually “grew” out of sharing my life, I still have always been grateful for the people I met along the way and the passion that grew out of it, namely writing. Being able to add ‘Writer’ to my repertoire is something I attribute to running Coconutandcream/SheridaDaily. Coming home after 10-hour workdays at the various creative agencies I worked at to write a blog post on how to pick the proper foundation is a bittersweet reality I can only be grateful for now. Though my writing has evolved from a bright-eyed 16-year-old, the various interests I used to write about have not, at least not really. I still enjoy the essence of beauty and fashion, design commentary, and the social sciences. And I think that blogging, or writing without qualm, is an understated quality in any industry. As I am now a designer, art director and published writer, I think of the various in-betweens that exist in my life and the interests that have been cultivated as a result of my working so long in the design industry and the things that fundamentally bring me joy.
The opportunity to reflect on those things again seem not only a pleasure to approach but progressively fundamental in communicating the complete picture of who I am. I’m often asked if I regret deleting my previous social media presence. I sometimes do, in that that I can no longer look back at myself, but increasingly seldom as time passes. So much of that online presence was crafted with a particular outlook on life and with a narrative of myself that I no longer really subscribe to. It’s not my intention to have this journal reproduce my previous blog, nor do I want to echo that blog’s success. Instead, this journal serves to bridge the in-betweens of my personal life with my professional endeavours. It’s not for nothing that I created my blog as part of my professional website, which my previous blog was divided from. I hope that through the merging of these two formerly separate contexts of myself, both spectrums of my realities able to see a more holistic approach to life.
With much love and anticipation,
Sherida Kuffour