You must be thinking that moving and traveling is an interesting topic to talk about here on the blog, and I totally agree with you on this one. However, as I mentioned just above, the blog ruled my days already and I preferred to take advantage of these life experiences to stop being constantly behind a camera and start living in the moment. I used to waste spend a lot of time preparing photo shoots, sorting and editing my pictures and starting over again when I was not satisfied with the result. In the end, I just felt a real urge to let go. Blogging was supposed to be fun but I slowly turned it into a tedious task.

The question of the photographer

Talking about traveling: not only did I chose not to blog, I also didn't have any other option actually.

While I was living in Morocco, my brother (sometimes other family members) was my main photographer. When I started traveling and moving to different countries and continents even, I no longer had that designated person following me everywhere and helping me photograph my outfits. 

Tired of being the focal point of this blog

And talking of taking pictures of myself, I was honestly so tired of being the focal point here on the blog. Creating photos that make you feel beautiful and having a visual record of yourself that you can look back at and see how you have evolved is the best part. The not-so-cool part though is that without me even realizing I started putting a lot of pressure on myself to look better and only post a picture if I think that I am on my best light on it. I really, really needed disconnect.

Freeing myself from the consumerism trap

This one, ladies and gentleman, is a major reason why I decided to stop blogging.

Think about it: I blogged about fashion and personal style (mainly), creating new content was intrinsically linked to having/buying new clothes. Little by little, I became a victim of this consumer society.

But besides the fact that I was spending a lot of money on clothes, there is the fact that I grew more and more aware of the issue of sustainability and of how fashion (and fast fashion in my case) was negatively impacting environmental and human resources. I no longer wanted to contribute to that system, I wanted to free myself and it ultimately made me drift away from the blog.

The Serial what..?

Sooo this one is easy to understand. As a direct consequence of what is said right above, The Serial Shopper was miles away from who I really was. Clearly, I needed a new identity. I could no longer identify with the one created here. In fact, I went from "serial shopper" to "extreme minimalist" (the ridiculously empty luggage that I took with me on my 5-6 months stays abroad can attest of that). I started feeling the need to get rid of anything superfluous in my life, and that went beyond the mere material tangible things.

And here is a bonus reason why I stopped blogging: self-sabotage is my hidden talent.
Guys this is actually pretty bad and I really need to start working on this aspect of my personality.
Most people I know are scared of failing, I, on the contrary, am scared of succeeding. As crazy and twisted as it might sound, this is actually something that I have witnessed in many areas of my life. If a relationship starts going really well ("too well" I would say), I will freak out and make sure that it doesn't go so well anymore and will then walk away from it. When my blog started getting attention not only from readers but also from brands, I suddenly shut it down and disappeared. Yes, it is twisted and doesn't make any sense, but the underlying reason to this is that I self-censor myself. For a while, I never told any close friends that I had a blog. I didn't want them to think that I am just very full of myself and kind of pretentious (otherwise why would I be taking so many pictures of myself, right?), I didn't want them to think that I am just a "fashion victim" and that I "love shopping" when I actually love fashion. Of course, real friends would understand but think about it: when I started the blog I was 15 or 16, still in high school, and still in that difficult teenage phase of life. Blogging wasn't as common, it wasn't even a thing yet. It is no surprise that I had some level of fear of "what people think". Today I am 23 and soon 24, I have grown so much and accumulated all sorts of personal and professional experiences. My vision of life is completely different and I am slowly getting to that point where I can do what I want without thinking of other people's opinion.

Ah Hangzhou... Where should I start?

Hangzhou is the kind of place where anybody with a camera could be a great photographer because Hangzhou is the kind of place where the landscape does all the work for you.

Hangzhou is also the place where my friends and I ended up homeless in the middle of the night!

Long story short, we had booked a hotel... in a different city! I guess we should have seen it coming since we "organized" our trip at last minute. And by last minute I mean that we booked our tickets for Hangzhou on Friday night and our bus was on Saturday at 8am.

And by last minute I also mean that we left the house at 7:30am on Saturday whereas we had absolutely no idea where the bus station was. Lucky for us we made it to the bus five minutes before the departure.

But I have to be honest with you guys, I love misadventures! They always become our best memories. I will never forget our histeric laughs at eleven when we were saying that we had no hotel, I will never forget the same histeric laugh we had when we finally reached a hotel room at one in the morning and... I will also never forget how we missed the bus to go back home.

Misadventures with friends will always be great memories.