It's 2025. This will be the tenth year of my blog's existence, and in that time I've changed and grown a lot. If we're honest, I feel like I've done most of that changing and growing in just the past few years. In light of those changes, I feel like this blog hasn't been fully reflecting who I am as a person in real life. So, let's set that straight a little bit.
This blog launched with the tagline "The Real Rachel Claire", a statement designed to affirm my teenage self's shaky identity. In 2016, I had only just started using the name Rachel in my daily life, so I needed all the reinforcement I could get. I was crafting an identity for myself from the ground up and trying to figure out which parts of my personality were real and which were fake. I didn't know who I was or what I wanted from my life, and this blog was created to help me try to figure that out. In the years since then, I've outgrown that need.
For years, this blog was basically a placeholder that I only kept up in order to justify renewing the rachelhoots.com domain name. I used automated tools to keep it updating with each of my YouTube uploads. This year, though, I stopped making regular YouTube videos, and I felt like it was time to rethink and relaunch this blog. That started by rebooting my old album review series, and today, the final phase of that relaunch is complete: a new web address and a new title. Welcome to clairehoots.com!
One of the many changes in my life this year has been the realization that I want to go by my middle name, Claire, instead of my first name. I've spent the last six months or so gradually changing over to Claire, starting with my close friends and expanding from there to my work life, my social media accounts, and now my blog. Every time I start going by Claire in a new area of my life, it just feels natural. Going by Claire makes me feel like a whole new me, but it also feels like a recognition of how much I've grown. I'm not the person I was when I started this blog. I'm not trying to build a new identity from scratch- I'm just letting myself develop into someone I enjoy more every day.
So, if you're reading this, it's nice to re-meet you, and I hope 2025 is kind to us all.
