Hey there, it’s been awhile!
It’s been a over a year since I published my last blog post, and honestly, I didn’t really know if I’d come back here.
I started blogging back in 2010 and things were different. I was newly married, no kids, and had loads of free time. (Or at least it feels that way looking back – ha!) Blogging itself was also so, so different. I wasn’t on Instagram, being an “influencer” wasn’t a thing, and I honestly started my blog not thinking anyone beyond my family and friends would ever read it. I never anticipated it being a hobby that I would actually stick with consistently for so many years, and I never could have dreamed of the wonderful connections, both online and in real life, that I’ve made thanks to blogging.
But despite all the positives blogging has brought into my life, for me it has always been a hobby and not something I viewed as work or a job. And I always said that if it stops being fun and adds stress to my life instead of being a creative outlet, then I’d need to step away. After leaving my full-time job in recruiting to stay home with Henry in 2014, I enjoyed having this space to share about the new “mom” phase of life I had entered into. However, when Charlie was born in 2016, life just got a lot busier. Two kids less than two years apart means way less time for anything extra, especially in the beginning. So simply put, this blog just sort of fell to the bottom of my priority list and there weren’t enough hours in the day for it.
Beyond that, I know I said it already but blogging has really changed SO MUCH. From what seemed like a bunch of people just sharing online journals when I started is now this whole full-blown industry that, if I’m being honest, feels kind of daunting to keep up with. It seems like things are all about affiliate links, SEO, sponsored posts, analytics, and the constant promotion of products and it all just feels kind of intimidating. And don’t get me wrong, I truly admire women in my same season of life who have been able to turn their blogs into a successful brands and have built these incredibly lucrative businesses. But I think because I follow so many bloggers on social media who seem to view their blogs as businesses, part of me started to question if there was even any point to having a blog if you weren’t going to try to really monetize it and earn income from it? And then because so many people I follow do treat their blogs as businesses these days, they’ve also really invested in high-quality photography and constantly sharing posts revolving around things you can buy and writing a post for the sake of just writing seems to have fallen by the wayside.
And then if I’m being really honest, a big part of me taking a step back from my blog is probably to do with the fact that I really just don’t read blogs anymore because Instagram has pretty much replaced them for me. I follow many, many bloggers on Instagram, but rarely do I actually click over to their blog to read their posts unless it’s for some specific purpose like getting a recipe or a travel recommendation. It’s just so much easier to follow along with people on Instagram and now with the addition of Instagram Stories, I feel like you get such a better sense of who someone is from Instagram vs. their blog. I myself have enjoyed essentially “micro blogging” on Instagram and it’s been so much easier to just share my thoughts, feelings, and photos there since becoming a mom. And because I do so rarely read blogs these days, a big part of me felt that it was basically pointless to spend my limited free time working on something that most people probably weren’t even going to see and that it probably made sense just to stick to Instagram and call it a day.
So what changed?
Over the past year where I haven’t been blogging, I slowly but surely realized that I actually do miss having a space online to share beyond the confines and character limits of Instagram. Sometimes I want to share links to recipes we’ve been loving or my favorite beauty products or things I’ve been doing with the kids and it’s hard to do that sort of thing on Instagram. Way (way) back in the day, I used to scrapbook and there’s something about putting together a blog post that sort of captures that essence for me in a way that Instagram doesn’t. And more than anything, I just missed having a place to write.
I’ve heard many people echo my feelings and say that blogging is dead and it’s all about Instagram now. However, I’ve also seen some bloggers I followed in the past who stopped blogging that have now come back and started blogging again. And while I agree that Instagram is more than likely going to me a main focus, I think other people like myself are missing the old school blogging that used to be fun where people didn’t take themselves so seriously. So whether it’s in my imagination or it’s actually happen, I’d like to believe that there’s somewhat of a resurgence of blogging that’s taking place.
For whatever reason, I’m just the type of person who feels compelled to share my life on the internet. And so being a “blogger” just feels like part of my identity. So when I wasn’t blogging, it almost felt sort of strange because at this point I’ve been blogging almost as many years as I’ve been married so it really feels like part of who I am. And so I sort of had this realization that my blog can really be whatever I want it to be. Just because I don’t want to blog multiple times a week and make it into some huge business doesn’t mean I need to shut it down completely. I can stay in my lane and treat it as the fun creative outlet it’s always been, regardless of what other people are doing.
Not to mention, now that Charlie isn’t nursing and is down to one nap a day, our schedule is definitely a little more settled and I have more time for things for myself. Don’t get me wrong, things are still busy and chaotic and messy and some days I don’t get to go to the bathroom by myself all day, but things have calmed down to the point where I do have some time in my week (or at least my month) where I can take some time to blog since it is something I enjoy.
So to give you an idea of what my thought process was over the past year, it was sort of like “If you give a mouse a cookie…” When I stopped having time to blog, I continued to use the Instagram name @inthepinkandgreen. But when I doubted if I wanted to come back to blogging, I started feeling like I wanted to change my Instagram handle back to just my name. But then when I started feeling like ok, I actually do think I still want to have a blog, I had already kind of decided that I didn’t want to use the “In the Pink and Green” name anymore. Although that name has meaning to me and has served me well for many years, I just felt like I had outgrown it and I wanted to use something a little more true to myself moving forward. And I knew that using my name wasn’t something I’d want to change or get tired of down the road, so regardless of what happens, I feel like having a website/Instagram with my name just makes more sense. So once I realized that I wanted to re-launch my blog with my name instead of In the Pink and Green, I decided that it probably made sense to transfer my blog from Blogger over to WordPress, so that way I’d have more options for my site moving forward. And that’s where my wonderful friend Rachel comes in, as she’s the one that switched my site over from Blogger to WordPress and has just been amazingly helpful in walking me through this whole process.
So my old blog has actually been switched over to WordPress for a little bit now, but I haven’t officially unveiled the site until now because I was trying to fiddle around the layout, organize old content, etc. And guess what? All that stuff is still not done – ha! But I know that if I keep wait until everything is perfect or exactly how I want it, then I’ll never get this blog up and running again and that kind of defeats the whole point. So please bear with me as I continue to update my site as I’m guessing it will be somewhat of a work in progress for awhile.
As for what you can expect to see here on my blog moving forward? Only time will tell – ha! First off, I definitely still plan to continue to focus a majority of my energy on Instagram. So when it comes to sharing bits and pieces of our daily life and things we’re doing as a family, I’m going to be more likely to share that stuff over on Instagram vs. here on this blog. I used to write blog posts detailing what we did on the weekends and every little trip we took, and mama just does not have time for that – ha! That’s not to say I won’t share anything about what we’re doing as a family here, but that’s just not going to be the major focus of my content for the blog. (I am planning on posting a little family update later today though so stay tuned for that!) I really want to use this blog as a space to share things I’m loving! So whether that’s my favorite podcasts or recipes we’ve been loving or beauty products I’ve been enjoying, those are some of the types of things I’ll likely be sharing here.
Also, I mentioned earlier in this post that these days, a lot of people view their blog as their business. That’s not where I’m at, at least not right now, but I realize there are a lot more tools available for bloggers now that would allow me to share products with you guys in a way that may financially beneficial to me as well. To be honest, I’m super clueless when it comes to how a lot of that stuff works; for example, the ‘Shop My Favorites’ widget you see at the bottom of the page? Rachel added that for me and I still need to figure out how to update it…ha. But I am hoping that’s something I can learn a little more about in the coming year! Turning this blog into my job isn’t my plan but I realize there are many brands who are looking to partner with bloggers, and I’m very open for opportunities to partner with brands that I respect and share that stuff with you! However, I will only share things here on my blog that I genuinely like, and I’ll definitely be up front about that sort of stuff if opportunities arise!
Finally, if you have any ideas for posts or content that you’d like to see here in the future, please comment or email me because I would LOVE your ideas!! Additionally, if you have any feedback on the design or how things could be organized in a way to be more accessible, I’d love your suggestions! (At the moment, a lot of my old posts are not labeled so if you click on a category, the posts won’t show up yet and I’m aware of that. But I’m working on getting those categorized ASAP!)
Thank you all so much for being here, it really means a lot to me! And yay, I’m really excited to be blogging once again!!
(And special thanks to Malina Rose Photography for these headshots!)