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BlahBlahBabble

Making Plans to Reboot My Blog

Here I go again. This feels both familiar and strange, all at once.

A little bit of backstory to start. In November 2022, my Facebook account was hacked. I know exactly when it began, as I had a strange “you must change your password” message. My Facebook account and my Instagram account were linked together, and whatever they did once they got inside was so bad, Meta would not give me my account back. At all. I tried everything short of working with a lawyer on it.

What a nightmare. My Facebook account was 16 years old at that point. My Instagram account was 12 years old. If you look at my decline in posting on this blog, it aligns with those time periods.

I have found the silver lining in it all, as it has been nice to have a fresh start. It is like moving houses, you don’t notice what all you have until you have to pack it up and find a place for it in your new home.

The only part that still bothers me is all the content that I gave Meta that is now just … GONE. From articles or quotes I found interesting to entire lengthy posts that really belonged on a blog. Photos from Instagram. Comments from friends. Gone.

The irony of all of this is that when I published my book in 2015, I talked about building on the land that you own – but I was not doing that myself.

Lesson learned.

My purpose here now is mostly selfish. Much like in the original days of blogging, actually. I want to write about what I think about, in a space where I know it will be here later. Probably. (Note to self: another post needs to be written about how none of us really own anything we put online, but not yet. No need to scare people completely.)

I want to use it like a Commonplace book, where I can reference and find things as I need them.

It will also function as a journal, a diary, a photo album. A place to put a good quote. A place to just keep my thoughts.

Here is my to do list as I get this site ready – in the form of links to articles and videos.

Commonplace Books, PARA Method, and a Second Brain

Productivity

WordPress Design Updates

This site is using a Block Editor theme at this point, but now there are Patterns. I need to figure out what they are and what to do with them.

Close the Backdoor in my WordPress blog

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BlahBlahBabble

Happy 20 Year Blogiversary!

Twenty years ago today, I started this blog.

Originally known as BlahBlahBlog, and later renamed BigPinkCookie, my first blog post was possibly my most groundbreaking:

These blogs seem to be all the rage, and hopefully it will be easier then editing the old fashioned way… we’ll see how it works out! =)

A thought for today:
“What we need in the world is manners…. I think that if, instead of preaching brotherly love, we preached good manners, we might get a little further. It sounds less righteous and more practical.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

This was actually my second attempt at blogging, after I was inspired initially by the Digital Divas to blog by hand coding an HTML page and replacing it each time I added to it.

Thankfully Blogger came along, and then Greymatter, and MovableType, and eventually WordPress.

As I woke up this morning, I started to think of all of the things that blogging has impacted in my life.

Without blogging, I never would have met a community of friends, many of which I’m still connected with today.

I never would have met my husband, Mike. Thank you Ann for that connection.

I never would have met Matt Mullenweg and named WordPress. (Hey, Matt? Remember when I thought you were crazy because you said it would change the world? Yeah. You were right and I was wrong. 30% of the Internet and still growing.)

Without it, I wouldn’t have started sharing my photography & had the courage to start a business – where I’ve since photographed hundreds of weddings and thousands of portraits – touching so many other lives – and my blog helped me connect with those people.

The lessons I’ve learned from blogging + social media + business are things that I’ve tested over and over again with others, and formed the foundation of my coaching business.

Without blogging, I wouldn’t have had 20 years of adventures. I wouldn’t be ME.

I dreamed back in high school of being a photographer, a teacher, and working with computers. Back then, you couldn’t have all of that. I never could have imagined the future I’d have, where I have been able to blend all three of those in to a perfect medley of my business.

Twenty years. I can’t believe it has been twenty years.

Thank you to all of you reading this now, who have read so many other things I’ve written over the years. None of this would be possible without YOU.

    People I’ve visited, shared a meal with, spent a trip with. I’ve watched their families grow and change. We’ve supported one another in times of joy, and times of sorrow.

    A community – completely unlike one we could have ever imagined 20 years ago.

    Blogging made me believe that I could do anything.

    My first photography clients, and my biggest fans, came from my blogging circle. I’ve traveled to England, Bermuda, and around the USA to photograph people that first came in to my life through blogging.

    Social media came along; Twitter, then Facebook, and Instagram, and it all changed how we blogged. The posts became faster, the reactions and interactions more spontaneous, and blogging for many has evolved or faded away.

    Blogs have evolved, which isn’t surprising for a medium that didn’t even exist 20 years ago.

    Blogging is what made my life as I know it possible.

    Categories
    BlahBlahBabble Everyday Avenger

    Out with the Old, In with the New…

    If you follow me on Facebook, you know I’ve been going in circles about this blog for months. Actually, now that I think about it … I’ve been going in circles about it for years.

    My business, my work, has always been focused around ME. Who I am has always been at the core of it. I have never hidden myself away from my clients. Back in 2007 when I started my photography business, I went back and forth about consolidating this blog with that blog. It made no sense that they were separated, but I wasn’t ready to let this site go – so it languished instead, neglected.

    Lately, I have found myself writin I have gone crazy trying to figure out what I want to do about that blog, this blog, my photography from my road trip, Vivid & Brave … well, you get the picture.

    I finally asked my smart friends. I do actually have the smartest friends on the planet. Most of them said to consolidate EVERYTHING. It is far too confusing for them to have to go to different places to get a piece of me here and there. I completely agreed with them, yet it still didn’t feel right.

    Then my friend Bobbi asked me about upcoming conferences I am going to, and what did I want to brand? THAT question was easy to answer. I want the world to know about the work that Stephanie & I are doing at Vivid & Brave!

    So my plan was to focus my personal writing at my photography blog, my travel blog posts at a travel blog (very niche focused so that Google liked it) and put all of my energy in to Vivid & Brave. Easy!

    Until I started spinning again.

    I woke up this morning and really wanted to write a blog post about hotel sex and why it is so incredible. No, I did not have hotel sex last night. Maybe that was why I was thinking about it being so grand? Anyways… that post didn’t belong on a blog where my photography clients might see it before they see anything else. It doesn’t belong on a travel photography blog (although it is hotel related). CRAP. Once again? The circles were back. I was spinning. Again.

    Stephanie & I finally had a chance to get on Skype and chat this evening. As soon as I told her my dilemma? She pointed out that those posts belong on Vivid & Brave. She has no problem with me putting them there. We both agreed that as we ask our coaching clients to be crazy vulnerable with us, we need to be just as vulnerable with them. We don’t have many “rules” for the Group Coaching, but the biggest one is tolerance and understanding. If I write about hotel sex and someone runs away from the post? Well … they probably shouldn’t be working with me anyways. Yes, this is true for my boudoir clients too – but I have BIG DREAMS for 2014, and they involve Vivid & Brave. Every last one of them.

    Finally, the spinning has stopped.

    So it is with that that my personal blog posts – and all my energy and focus – are moving to the Vivid & Brave blog. I realized today that part of why this decision has been SO difficult every time I face it is because this blog is such a part of me. It saw me through the ending of a tumultuous relationship that left me heartbroken, and emotionally broken as well. It has brought me hundreds (thousands?) of friends that I wouldn’t know otherwise. It is because of my blog that I met my friend Ann, who tipped me off on this great guy Mike who was living in London at the time but was moving back to Houston. It was through this blog that I announced our engagement, 10 years ago yesterday. Through this blog that I met Elaine, a month before I met Mike, who embarked on the adventure of being a professional photographer with me. The list goes ON AND ON.

    However, it is time. As I start the new year, it is time to move on to other things. Mostly, it is time to stop feeling guilt about how little I update this site, how much I want to share but how my focus is pulled elsewhere. My focus is pulled elsewhere because I have changed. I have grown a LOT in the past 13+ years since I started this blog back in 2000.

    I have changed.

    It is time to close the book on this blog. Time to put it up on the shelf and focus completely on the new story.

    This site will live on, remaining here online. I’m going to take the name back to being BigPinkCookie because that is what it has been for the past 10+ years. I’ll link to it from time to time, and reminisce in the memories about it — but it is time to start a new book.

    One that is Vivid & Brave.

    Things You Should Know – My Greatest Fear…

    The Grand Tetons, Summer 2013

    “What is your biggest fear in business?”

    My friend and Philadelphia wedding photographer Mike Allebach asked that question today in the Brandsmash Facebook group. It stopped me.

    Fear? I don’t have fear in my business. Ok, ok, I mean – I have the fears everyone has. Will there be customers? Will some major catastrophe happen and shut my business down? But I have systems in place for a lot of things. I have an amazing network of friends locally and nation-wide that have my back. I don’t have fear about my business.

    “Letting my business take over my life, no longer having free time.”

    It is so easy as a business owner to slide in to this mentality of it consuming everything. What I offer to my clients is built around my passions, so it is a part of me as much as my eyes are blue.

    A few hours later, it hit me.

    I have a far bigger fear — my story not being heard.
    (Which of course starts with me telling it.)

    I’ve spent a lot of the past six weeks going in circles. I have stories I want to tell, and choosing where to tell them is hard. I know I want them on my blog and not on Facebook, even though it is easier to just slide them in there. Faster. Always open. Quicker feedback from people.

    But Facebook is so transient. Fleeting. My stories belong on my blog.

    Having so much that I want to say leaves me silent. I don’t know where to begin.

    Then there are the stories that overlap with the stories of others, and the blurred line of what I can share and what is not my story to tell.

    If I want my story to be heard, I need to tell it. Plain & simple. I should get on that, shouldn’t I?

    I thought long & hard about this week’s Things You Should Know Thursday. If we’re going to be BFFs, you should know that I need to be heard.

    My goal for 2014 is to tell more of my story. Here. On Vivid & Brave. When working with my mentoring clients. When working with my photography clients. It is all about the story and being heard – and hearing them. We all have stories to share. I can’t wait to see what the new year holds.

    Categories
    Everyday Avenger

    Why Not Me?

    I had the strangest day today. I’m still whirling from it all a bit.

    My makeup artist asked me on Wednesday if I knew any event photographers. Uh … yeah. ME. (5+ years of weddings? Yes. Events.) She was doing makeup for an event, and they needed a photographer. I exchanged emails with the event planner, and at first all I knew was her name and the time of the event; at first, I did not know the client’s name.

    Yesterday I was annoyed at myself. Events? They don’t fit my “Why” of helping women grow their confidence and rediscover their beauty — I was thinking of handing it over to a friend. After all, Stephanie & I are are in the middle of preparing a series for Vivid & Brave on preparing for the new year. I have a lot to do between now & Monday.

    Then I got the email back with the name, and discovered it was a luncheon for Emily’s List.

    I AM SO GLAD I WAS THERE.

    Know when the world keeps pinging you and trying to send you messages? This summer when I was at BlogHer, I almost went in to the panel about how to run for office. Hahaha… who do I think I am? I could never run for office. I didn’t attend it.

    Today’s event? All about encouraging women to run for office. And then I flashed back to my activities in high school – I was in a model state government program in Illinois; I was selected as an “Outstanding” delegate for the Model UN program in Houston. (Pretty big deal when you’re one of 5 selected out of a hundred or so.) I went to Close Up in Washington DC.

    On my road trip, I said many times that it was easier to understand how certain regions voted certain ways when I spent time in their geography.

    As the gears were turning and I was talking with State Senators today from three different states, I realized — why NOT me?

    The moment that brought it full circle for me though — irony at its best — was when Ohio State Senator Nina Turner started talking about women, and how women are often the most critical of themselves. We as women tear each other down, and it is terrible! It is time that we come together in the sisterhood circle. “It is the Sister Circle that will make the difference.”

    Well, crap. THAT? That is exactly everything I am about.

    WHY NOT ME.

    WHY NOT YOU?

    I’m tired of a government full of men, mainly white men, deciding my fate. The current state of affairs in this country is horrible. I considered more than once trying to figure out how to stay in Canada this fall when I was in Calgary, just to get away from the insanity.

    Maybe, instead, it is time to stand up and start figuring out how to change it. What I can do.

    The start? Helping to get people out to vote. I’ve complained for years about people not turning out to vote. As someone said today, Texas shouldn’t be called a “Red State” when only 20% of the voters turn out – it should be called a “Non-Voting State”. 20%!!!!! That is just pathetic!!! Texas is LAST in Voter Turnout. Next election, when someone tells me that “they don’t bother because their vote doesn’t matter” I will point out that they are told to believe that, but it is not true. Not true AT ALL.

    Beyond that? We will see. I need to spend some time thinking about this. I’ve always believed you have NO right to complain about something if you’re not willing to work towards a solution to fix it.

    Why not me?