![]() But most importantly, the thing I will truly be forever grateful for is that blogging brought three of my best friends into my life at a time when I needed them the most. It enabled me to capture all of my favorite vacation food memories and favorite recipes all in one place. ![]() Because let’s be real, I don’t think there are a whole lot of you still sticking around!įood blogging was a roughly five year period of my life where I challenged and pushed myself, learned more than I ever thought possible about photography and technology, and ate a shit ton of good food. ![]() And it won’t necessarily be a post for all of you, it will more be a post for me. If I ever feel inspired like I do today, you’ll get another post. But I wouldn’t place bets on me sharing a recipe post again. I don’t think it will be because I still feel I owe you a post about the Lyme treatment I have been doing over the past year. I’m not sure if this blog post is the official end of it all. My happiness is worth so much more than all of that. It is greater than shout outs and shares from “big bloggers.” It is greater than the monthly ad revenue that streamed in (and continues to do so, but at a lesser and lesser amount until it will eventually stop). It is greater than the “fame” of being a food blogger with six figure page views. Instead, I spend time doing the things that bring me joy, however simple they are, and that’s the greatest feeling in the world. I don’t spend hours of time sharing my posts on social media, hoping I will reach “x” number of page views on that particular day. I take naps when my son naps instead of trying to push through to get photo editing accomplished. I no longer plan my weekends based on needing to be home at a certain time to cook and photograph using natural light. There are probably a million reasons why my emotional state had improved, but not blogging was definitely one of them. I was actually happy the majority of the time (and still am!). I felt massively inspired at the end of October when I wrote about how much my outlook on life had changed. I told myself I would take a break and would return to blogging when I felt inspired to write again. It took away time spent with family and friends, especially my son. Spending hours developing recipes, photographing, editing, writing, and sharing was no longer a priority for me. I was both physically and mentally at my wits’ end as a new mom and a newly-diagnosed person with chronic Lyme disease and Hasimoto’s. But May of 2018 (heck, much of 2018) was rough. In fact, had I known, I probably would have posted a recipe with amazing photos and inspiring text. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I realized that chocolate wafer recipe post would be my (presumably) last recipe post ever. I no longer thought of it as a small way to contribute to the world of food and chronic illness (and how the two relate). Blogging no longer had anything to do with bringing me joy or making connections with others. It was about making money, getting page views, and hoping that thousands of people would share my recipes on Pinterest. While I know blogging is truly a way of life for some people who choose this path full-time, this wasn’t the case for me. Food blogging was a hobby turned into a fun side hustle. I walked away from blogging in May of 2018 not knowing when (or if) I would return. In fact, it’s been so long since I was last in the platform that it looks completely foreign to me now. That’s two times I’ve sat down and logged into WordPress. That’s one time I’ve developed a recipe, photographed it, edited the photos, and written punny captions. ![]() The first one being this recipe and the second: a life update. In the last year, I have posted a total of two blog entries. But I haven’t thought about search engine optimization in months, and I don’t want to start now. Normally I would include a keyword-rich sentence here to help boost the SEO of this post. ![]()
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