Goodbye to the Tweens/Teens … my wish for the 2020s

“Goodbye Noughties, hello “Tweens/Teens”. Cannot believe in last 10 years, have got married, had third “baby” and started my own business. Bring on next 10. I’m ready.”

This is what I wrote on my personal Facebook profile 10 years ago. My “baby” is now heading into Year 9; my eldest kids are adults; I’m still happily married and my business has just had its biggest year to date.

Not many of my friends were on Facebook at the start of 2010. Any photos on Facebook would have come via a camera (few of us had smartphones – and if we did the photo quality was shocking!) and then uploaded via a computer. Alex Perry had just taught me how to do a selfie with a camera, so my scroll back down memory lane showed I’d been putting those skills to the test.

Most businesses weren’t on social media at the end of the last decade either. I’d consult to businesses on how to start a Facebook page and create consistent content on blogs and emails to connect with their customers but mostly they didn’t get it. You’d be living under a rock as we head into the 2020s to not “get” social media, or think it won’t take off. 🤦‍♀️

Jumping out of journalism in 2008 was still, hands down, the best career move I ever made. I’d been blogging about 18 months before the end of the last decade but I was yet to meet another blogger in person. That happened in 2010 at a beauty blogging event organised by a Sydney PR firm that was extremely ahead of the time, engaging with bloggers in a way previously reserved for magazine beauty editors. It was the start of something that’s snowballed over the past 10 years – a changing of the guard in the way we source information and connect with other people.

Business-wise, 10 years ago I was doing whatever I could to bring in an income, all the while embracing the ability that blogging and Twitter gave me to connect me with women all around the world. It’s no surprise I jumped on board with Instagram when it launched in 2010. Many of those women I met from early blogging days, I’m still connected with today. Many have become incredible friends over the past decade.

I’ve been so privileged with Styling You to build my own community of like-minded women, some of whom have gone on themselves to build their own social media communities thanks to the #everydaystyle hashtag I started in 2013. Others within the Styling You community have become firm friends, meeting up in real life after talking with each other online.

All the while, I’ve been championing my message that style doesn’t have a use-by-date or come with a certain number on a clothing label.

That’s what truly has made my heart sing over the past 10 years. In a world that is ever expanding and accessible, creating communities reminds us that at the core of our humanness, we still want to connect with others, that life doesn’t end or change because we reach a milestone birthday or if our bodies change.

My hope and wish for the 2020s is that we continue to seek out meaningful connections with others, we lift others up, we celebrate diversity in style and that we remember that kindness will always be cool.