Every now and then I open up an incognito window and type in key phrases that I want my business to be found under. I do this so that I can see where I stand on google and how my ranking has changed since the last time I checked. I just did this a couple of nights ago.
I’ve got to admit, I had an entirely different blog post scheduled for today, but when I was doing this keyword search, I found something.
I found my old blog.
My FIRST blog.
The blog where I started as “Life As I Know It Photography,” before changing it to my own name. So I got lost in the rabbit hole of my old blog and reading all my old posts.
And I realized something. Well, I realized a few things.
One – I’ve come a really long way since I’ve started. Why the heck did I photograph so many things on a tilt?!
Two – Now I actually know when I started my business. I could never quite remember, but now I know that this is my fifth official year of business (I started making a go of this in 2012!)
Three – I started taking myself too seriously somewhere along the way.
I’ve written almost SIX HUNDRED blog posts now. Holy smokes. I can’t even believe that I’ve been able to create content 583 times now. But there have been a lot of shifts in my blog. You hear a lot of things you should and should not do as a business owner, and sometimes I listen, and sometimes I don’t. I like doing what feels right to me and marching to the beat of my own drum.
My old blog has a really great mix of personal and photography related posts. Some posts are literally a paragraph long. Some are longer than that. I was having fun with my blog and sharing whatever the hell I felt like sharing. It didn’t always have a purpose. Sometimes it was just to talk about a trip to the beach, or a new photo technique I was working on. Other times it was geared toward a goal – of educating or showcasing recent work.
I think that I still do a good mix of personal and photography related posts. However, as I’ve been sitting here thinking, I’ve realized I have started to really filter out what I decide to actually post. Sometimes Steven will tell me some ideas he has about posts he’d like to write for me, and sometimes in my head I’ll think but why would we do that? I have those thoughts about my own ideas of things to write about. Because I’m thinking about those “rules.”
Can I be honest?
I don’t even know why I’m doing that. I don’t even know HOW I’m doing that. It’s just happening.
I think it’s time to get back to my personal roots of blogging. To not be afraid to share a post that’s only a paragraph long. Or a post about random thoughts. In the end, I want my couples to know me. I want people to know me. I’m an introvert at heart, and having a blog is probably one of the most extroverted things I can do in my mind (hard to believe sometimes that I’m a photographer and teacher! ha!). I’m saying screw it to those rules.
Don’t get me wrong, I still want my blog to be a place that shows my work and is a source of education (I am a teacher after all!), but I think I’m going to take a little inspiration from the 2012 version of my blog and, in the words of Miki Agrawal, do some cool sh*t.
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