Life? Funny.

Life can be funny.

It's a fact that everyone knows but you never truly acknowledge it until it slaps you in the face screaming laugh with me!

When Lockdown first occurred, my only thought was that it'll be over before I know it. And then it wasn't, a week went by and there was no sign of it stopping so I said "Rae, you've got to get a grip and DO SOMETHING"

I've always had the dream of owning my own restaurant, so it's no that a food blog was my brain child. I started it on TikTok but apart from the ease of editing, it wasn't working for me. My videos weren't flashy enough, I didn't fit the archityple TikTok female image and my food wasn't random enough to go viral.

I tried, oh boy did I try, but sadly I flopped.

My next thought was, why don't I try instagram. I'd already made the videos so why not post them somewhere else, there was no additional effort involved but it was a new market.

And this new market was perfect. Suddenly the lack of flashiness meant people could use my content. I was posting on meme pages asking for advice and getting useful feedback. Take a photo from this angle, use a video cropper, add your ingredients to the post.

Message after message was coming and my page was getting fancier and fancier. I started using canva - I rave about this website because it's amazing - and people started saving it. People were sharing my work on their stories, people I didn't know where following me and using my recipes.

Pretty early on, I had decided that I didn't want to tell my friends about the page, see how organically I could grow. So every additional follow, like and DM meant the world to me. These were people with no complusions or ties to me, they were following my content for. my. content.

Now I look at Rae's Kitchen and I see a fully fledged blog, with over 1000 followers, I can truly say that lockdown hasn't been wasted. By no means am I done, I've started reaching out to brands to see if they'd be interested in collaboration.

If I hadn't been forced into lockdown, and university hadn't shut down early, chances are owning a restaurant would still be a distant dream to one day be fulfilled. Now however, my brand is growing and I can see my dream coming to fruition.

So yes, life is funny sometimes. All you can do it sit and enjoy the ride.