This past weekend I was in London, a place which I don't have many fond memories of, but a place which has brought out some sort on enlightenment in me.
I went to London for the sole purpose of attending a skincare symposium and to attend Blogfest (both of which I shall talk about in more detail in another post), but I came away with a whole lot more.
I was terrified of taking a trip to London by myself and as someone who has suffered from agoraphobia until quite recently it was a big step for me. I was going to back out on multiple occasions, but I pushed myself to go and I'm so glad I did.
My trip to London taught me nothing about blogging - like I had expected it to, instead it taught me a lot about being true to myself.
For a good many weeks now I've had trouble sitting down and writing this blog, feeling as though so some of invisible wall was between my thoughts and the keyboard. I'm not short of inspiration, after all, I have a new baby son and so many photo shoot ideas to put into practice and share, but what I was stuck on was the thought of - "
who would actually want to read any of this?"
A writers job is to write for their audience and I think that's the thing I'm having the most trouble with.
At Blogfest, the importance of planning ahead, taking a batch of a whole months worth of photos at a time, if you can manage it and getting everything organised in advance was drummed into us - but I'm not that sort of person. I can't plan ahead, when I write and photograph it's a spur of the moment thing. My creativity and thoughts are not something I can schedule into my life, they simply happen when they happen and that's just fine with me.
I find my creativity flows a whole lot better when I actually don't think about it at all and I despair when some of my best words and ideas come to me when I'm engaging in run of the mill tasks such as doing the washing up or driving and I have no time to get to a pen and paper to jot everything down... some of my best work has never and will never be written, gah!
At the moment I feel as though my blog is at a crossroads in terms of where I want it to go. It's evolved from a beauty blog into a parenting blog and now it's in a weird limbo of lifestyle/photography. I'd love to add more parenting anecdotes and so on into the blog, but as this is my space to share all that I love, I tend to keep the everyday occurrences of parenting to myself and preferring to share just the special moments instead.
I want this blog to be inspiring to people and my everyday life isn't inspiring, in fact, it's God-awfully boring and not something which anyone would ever want to read about I'm sure!
My trip to London taught me to be true to myself and embrace the person I am. This whole sense of enlightenment inspired me to create the little 'collage of me' flatlay above (the flatlay of course, inspired by Emily Quinton's digital photography seminar at Blogfest). It's a little expression of parts of my personality, the pink loving, whimsical chasing, dreamy, nature loving, snap happy mother. I don't want to lose that person just to make this blog popular.
I want people to see me as a genuine person and the only way to do this is to stay true to yourself. A long time follower of mine on Instagram unfollowed me last night stating that they were uncomfortable that I had used the 'F' word... well I'm sorry, but I do swear, probably a whole lot more than I should. I strive for perfection with my photography but I'm not a perfect person and if my imperfections offend people then that's their problem, not mine.
I'm quite a nice person, always happy to help people out and give advice, especially to new bloggers as I was one myself once, but I don't entertain fake people just for the sake of getting by. I had an incident last week where another blogger, who was part of a comment pod I was also in, left a smartass comment on a picture Tyler had taken and which I was especially proud of as he's only three and had used the DSLR for the first time.
Their comment really riled me up and I must have called them every name under the sun in my mind, but I had hesitated to even bring it up with them because they were a fellow blogger - like why? If they had been just some randomer or reader I would have given them what for, so what was this hesitation for simply because they also have a blog? It's not as if that means we're work colleagues and it was at that moment that I realised that just because I'm a blogger doesn't mean I have to respect or get along with every other blogger I know, especially not this miserable cow...
I will never be a 'big' blogger, a popular person or have an award-winning blog, I'm too uncool for that and am too socially-awkward to every immerse myself fully into blogging cliques. I also don't entertain people I don't particularly like and believe that just because someone else is a blogger doesn't mean I have to be their best friend, and vice versa of course. I leave blogging groups on a frequent basis because some bloggers are too full on or pretentious for my liking...but they probably don't like me either so hey ho.
For years I used to think my life was shite because I wasn't out partying or getting the fabulous opportunities other people were, but you know what, I really would much rather be at home on the couch watching some TV programme that my other half and I think is absolute crap but love anyway, having a laugh with him and being safe in the knowledge that our babies are sleeping soundly upstairs and as for the opportunities, I live by the motto - "If it's meant for you it won't pass you by".
Being yourself is the most wonderful thing you can be and this is why I won't be changing who I am or what I love just to fit into the blogging world, or in fact, anything in life that requires some sort of social acceptance to succeed. I teach my children to be who they are and to never change for anyone, so why wouldn't I take my own advice on the matter?