Meet The Blogger: Marina From Marina Writes Life

Welcome to another instalment of my Meet The Blogger series, designed especially to help you discover some new and exciting blogs to follow. This week’s feature is all about Marina from Marina Writes Life who posts about all things beauty – check out her blog photos, they are just amazing! I hope you enjoy learning about the lady behind the blog as she answers my Meet The Blogger questions.

Tell us a bit about yourself and your blog:

My name’s Marina Rosie (well, essentially that’s already a lie – It’s Marina Rosee, but the double ‘e’ situation can be very annoying so I thought I’d keep it simple for online purposes) and I’m a 17 year old British Expat living in Western France. I moved over here in 2015 and am currently in college studying Languages, Literature, Philosophy, History, Geography and Music and will begin University in September 2019 (EEK!). Of course, although academia is the main focus of my life at the moment, I have a variety of passions elsewhere, two of them being writing and beauty which, in 2016, I set out to combine and share with the world – Marina Writes Life, my blog, was born!

How long have you been blogging? 

I’ve been blogging for almost 3 years now (by the time this is posted, it will have been 3 years I reckon!) – my first EVER blog post was uploaded sometime in early January 2016, however, due to the cringe factor, I deleted it and a few others last year.

What or who inspired you to create your blog?

I created my blog for two reasons, the first of which being that, when I first moved to Western France, I was incredibly lonely. Not only was I unable to find another child my age outside of my family for miles (we live in the middle of NOWHERE) but I was also unable to speak and communicate with anyone as, at that time, French sounded like pure waffle from my perspective. Personally, I’m not the type of person that can cope with feeling suppressed and bottled up for a long period of time; I soon grew frustrated at my situation and simply had to find some friends that would understand the many words I wanted to express. And those friends are you, the people of the internet, to whom I owe a big thank you for ridding me of my loneliness. The second reason was definitely because of my older sister, who already had a blog herself (although nowadays, with a job AND University hours, she can’t really dedicate any time to it) – I saw the amount of satisfaction and pride she drew from creating content for others and I desired the same thing.

What’s your favourite thing about running your blog?

My favourite thing about running my blog is, by far, getting to interact with everyone in the comment section – sometimes I get the most beautiful, heartwarming comments about how much people enjoy what I’m putting out and it honestly makes my day. Every time!

How do you stay motivated?

Here, I’m going to have to be boring and answer the same thing as the last question, as I definitely draw a lot of my motivation from readers who are kind enough to, firstly, give me 5 minutes of their day to read each week and then follow it up with some positive feedback/suggestions – the fact that people think my blog is even worth their time gives me enough of a boost to carry on.

 What’s been the most challenging part of your blogging journey to date?

Admittedly, the most challenging part of my blogging journey has been (and will probably always be) time management as, being a full time student, I have SO much going on at all times, which leaves me exhausted and lazy yet up to my EYEBALLS in work; sometimes blogging has just got to take a backseat. However, I’m determined to change that within the coming year and use my time more effectively (i.e No more month long breaks – sorry).

Tell us about your favourite blog post (feel free to add a link!)

My favourite blog post to date simply has to be my collaboration post with the Balm Cosmetics – it was such a surreal moment for me to receive PR from them as, before starting my blog, I would purchase their products (and completely bankrupt myself over them, might I add) on the regular. So to be recognised by them as somebody they’d like to work with was just so flattering and I still can’t believe it to this day. You can check out the post for all of the tea and my thoughts on the products here: https://marinawriteslife.blogspot.com/2018/07/high-end-haul-balm-cosmetics.html

Describe your blog in four words

My blog in four words? Hmmm – Crazy, funny and in depth. And, trust me, the readers would agree!

What are your future hopes and dreams for your blog?

This question is a really big one for me as, to be honest, I’ve never really thought about the future before literally two seconds ago. From here, I think the goal is to just continue producing content for years to come and making people smile – if anything remarkable comes out of it at some point, I’d be incredibly grateful for the added bonus. But, for now, all I know is that I’m loving what I do and that the future for Marina Writes Life is going to be a BLINDINGLY bright one. For sure. Who knows, I may even migrate to Youtube at some point…