The value in blogging your time in London

Thinking about starting a blog? Here is how I did it.

When I moved from the United States to London, I moved five, six, and seven hours ahead of my family and friends back home. I have to schedule most calls home in advance and don’t get to talk to my loved ones as much as I thought I would. I also lost the ability to text some of them, resorting to emails across the Atlantic. I simply couldn’t call all of them with every story of what I have been up to in the city. But I wanted to share my life in London with my people who helped me get to where I am now, so I created the Teran In London blog.

I had tried creating my own website to host the blog, but realized that Medium is incredibly user friendly and free. I create collages of pictures on Canva, download them as jpgs or pngs, and then upload them into Medium, where I write, edit, and post. For example, the collage below is of pictures taken at Cardiff Castle, in Cardiff, Wales. I created it in Canva, and then added the caption in Medium using their built-in caption function.

I write about interesting things that I am reading or writing about in my program, about fun events that happen in Lilian Knowles House (my LSE hall), and shenanigans that I get up to in the city. If I go to a musical or a play, I’ll add a section about what I thought of it, even if I didn’t like it. If I travel outside of London, I try to take as many pictures as I can, even of simple things I may not have noticed before I started cataloging my journeys. I try to post about every two weeks, but sometimes three if I am particularly busy or my weeks have been a little more studying and a little less interesting. Sometimes they are a short 10 minute read, sometimes 20, depending on how much of my life I want to share. 

I thought the blogs would simply share my new life with my friends and family who fought for me to follow my dreams, and it does, but it also turned out to be a fruitful venture for other reasons. The first is that it has made me a better and more confident writer. I have written plenty of academic essays, but never reviews of plays or restaurants, travel tips, or trying to convey what something might have meant to me to people across an ocean. 

Now when I go to the theatre, I don’t just watch the show. I think about weather or not I would recommend it or how to explain to someone why I liked it. When I travel, I take more time taking pictures because I know I will include them. I take notes on my phone of what I want to remember to write about. I think more deeply about the things I see and do because I know that I will soon be writing about them. I think about what I have done in the last two weeks worth sharing and what can be left out of the narrative. If I feel that I’ve gained some insight or new perspective, I have to find a way to put that into words. I try to come up with titles that relate to what I’ve been up to with meanings that will reveal themselves by the end of the post. It’s a new kind of writing that I wasn’t confident in at first, but I think it has made me a better and more well-rounded writer. 

I hope that when I stop writing this blog in September that I still keep this new detail oriented approach to thinking about life, and keep the love for photography that I would have never known I had until I started Teran In London. I plan to print a physical copy of them, so that in twenty years when I forget what in the world I was getting up to in London when I was a grad student, I can read about it in my own words. 

If you are looking for a way to share your life in London with your friends and family, or simply with yourself, I recommend some kind of project like a vlog, blog, or photography page. And I especially recommend trying out Medium-not sponsored.