Tag: blogging

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It’s Not You Facebook, It’s Me…

Dear Facebook,

I love you, but it just isn’t working out. It is not you, it is me. You give me these morsels of juicy goodness, that feed my FOMO. It is bad for me, and it has got to stop.

FOMO? What is FOMO, you ask? Ironic, I discovered FOMO on Facebook. It is Fear of Missing Out.

I suffer from it. I want to read everything you have to say. Every last bit of it. Which is toxic for me.

I need to take a break. I really hope we can still be friends. I mean, I’ll be checking in from time to time and all that. But I have to break this cycle of FOMO.

Without you, I got so much housework done yesterday. Grocery shopping. I watched a movie. I knit. I worked on Spoon & Knife. The world moved on by on Facebook, and I was blissfully unaware. It was a little incredible. I was still there for you a little bit – friends messaged me about things I had to reply to, and I maybe ranted on my Facebook Wall once late at night. (I was too weak to resist the booty call of Facebook. I’ll admit it.)

Overall, I felt good yesterday. Better than I have in awhile. Liberated.

I know you would want that for me, Facebook. You’re good to me like that. So I’ll see you around, but for now – we’re on a break. It just is not working out.

I really hope we can still be friends.

Love,
Christine

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It Is A Grey Day…

I don’t know what it is today. Maybe it is just the crash after the craziness of the past 3 weeks. Imaging USA, Asheville, flying, catching up on work, Dad 2.0 Summit, Mike heading to Calgary, me doing 6 sessions in 7 days when I normally cap them at 3 a week.

Yesterday was my first day to just stand still. To breathe. I took the morning off, mandated that there would be no work at all for 4 hours. Because that is the problem with self-employment – the boss never tells you to go home. I can never turn it off.

Then it was off to a much needed massage therapy appointment – the only thing that saves my back, shoulder & hip (I am so grateful to Angie of We Heart Massage!) – and I was back to work again.

The cycle continues. But I want off.

I woke up this morning at 5am, even though my alarm was set for 8:15. A feeling of “blah” covered me. Just … Lost.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE what I do. I have the most amazing “job” in the world. Hot Mama Photographer, Avenger of Sexiness? HELL YES!!! I have absolutely zero regrets about the time I spend “work working”.

It is the other hours that feel so blank. My actual photography business is not that time intensive; it is all of the other things I do to create “busy” in my life. Needless things. Things that are no longer bringing me joy.

So in the early hours of the morning, I started thinking of what I want to change. How that looks. What it means. What I am going to give up so that I can have room in my life for other things.

Then it hit me. FACEBOOK. Facebook is by far the biggest time suck of my day. I go in there for one thing, and I leave hours later it seems. (Figuratively, not always literally.) It has become a sensory overload point for me.

I also realized that with Ash Wednesday tomorrow, it is a good time to give up Facebook. Not all of Facebook because I actually do need to be on there for work, marketing, and my mentoring clients. By the way, what makes my marketing business easy is by the help of Sage Mauk Brooklyn SEO so if you’re interested, you may inquire to them. It is the other stuff. The time suck stuff. That has to go. It needs to be in and out. Do what I have to do and be gone. I’ve said for weeks now that I’m tired of giving my content to Facebook, so I have to go cold turkey to cut it off.

So for the rest of Lent, anything I would consider posting to Facebook gets blogged instead. Either here, on my boudoir blog or at Business of Awesome. Plus Spoon & Knife, my joint food blog with Mike will finally launch. My Facebook posts will be work related or otherwise kept to a minimum.

As I typed that declaration, a small break in the clouds appeared – literally. I’m taking that as a sign, there is more sunshine ahead in my future. I feel fractured right now, but I’m putting it back together — the way I want it to look.

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Photo from last May, flying from London back to Houston. It is time to head home.

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Conference Time, Asheville, and Avengers of Sexiness!

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It has been a busy, busy week around here! Last week I was at the ImagingUSA conference put on by the PPA in Atlanta, and from there I went to visit the fabulous Regina Holder in Asheville, North Carolina. So wonderful! We went and toured the Biltmore House while I was there, doing the private Butler Tour and the main house tour. A visit to Tupelo Honey happened as well – delicious! We didn’t get to do touristy things on Friday thanks to an ice storm and road closures, but that was ok! After Imaging, it was nice having a quiet day!

I headed home Saturday with only a little drama. A quick jump back in to everyday life, and … Drumroll please …

I launched AVENGERS of SEXINESS!!!

You can read more about why over there, but let me just say that I have BIG plans. Not just for me, but for all of us! It is time for a change, and I can’t wait to help even more women rediscover their beauty!

I really, truly hope you will join me for this. The world needs more Avengers of Sexiness!

Avenger of Sexiness

So this week could not have been timed more perfectly. I picked up C.C. Chapman at the airport yesterday, and lunch with him just added to the Avengers of Sexiness fire. (A gang sign may have even been invented!) After lunch and a tour of the Heights, we headed to downtown* for the start of the Dad 2.0 Summit.

Biggest lesson I’ve learned? Stop assuming it is all about the mom. And the culture needs to change, allowing flexibility for parents in the workplace. Stop looking so hard for where you are going, and stop to think about where you are.

We are just part way in to the first day, but it is so inspiring! Inspiring to where I see my future going. Even though I’m the Hot Mama, the dads have a lot to teach me!

The next Cooking with Mike post will be coming in the next few days – Vermillion Snapper that was delicious! So check back soon!

The future? It looks amazing..,

* My phone now autocorrects downtown to Downton. I am highly amused!

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Where, Oh Where Should I Blog? YOUR Feedback Needed!

I have had this struggle for some time now. The problem of having too many blogs. As much as I love a good niche website, I feel somehow fragmented, and it frustrates me. All of these pieces are a part of ME, of who I am. I have an idea of what is the best decision, but then I realized – this isn’t all about me. It is about YOU too, the people that READ my blog. So here it goes.

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I have the following blogs:

  • BigPinkCookie.com – 12 years old, my personal blog, my original personal brand, and the reason my twitter name is ChristineBPC. You are HERE.
  • HotMamaBoudoir.com – not quite 2 years old, I set this site up as my boudoir business to complement my wedding photography business. I wanted to keep the brands separate, but the site was never completely finished because of my overall change in my business.
  • Christine Tremoulet – 5 years old, my former wedding photography brand (I now only take weddings by referral) and now my primary focus for my glamour, boudoir & beauty photography. My wedding archives live there as well, but I’ve set it up so that in the main portion of the site you see glamour & boudoir work only. At this moment, this is the URL that gets the most traffic daily, mainly because I was neglecting BPC.
  • Two other sites – Business of Awesome and my future New Orleans boudoir photography – have very niche purposes. Business of Awesome is all about writing about being in the creative business world. My personal feelings, but not “brand me” so I want it to live in its own space. The New Orleans boudoir site is because I want to get to where I am going there quarterly for sessions, and I want a place where people can go just to get information on those.

The problem is, I am Christine Tremoulet the BigPinkCookie Hot Mama photographer. It is all ME. Spread out across 2.5 sites. And it isn’t working. When I write a post in one place, I don’t know what to do with it anywhere else.

It makes me want to beat my head on my laptop keyboard. So I keep turning my options over and over. I need some outside perspective.

Here are some of my options — and I’m open to considering any you want to add!

  • I was thinking of just pointing HotMamaBoudoir.com to ChristineTremoulet.com. Type in either URL, and you get the Christine Tremoulet site.
  • But … the “Hot Mama” thing is catchy! People call me “Hot Mama!” now. All the time. I love it! So I could keep the site alive and post only boudoir work there, exclusively.
  • BUT!!! I am my brand, and I want to post everything under my name. Christine Tremoulet, the Hot Mama Photographer. As I add more Glamour & Flirt Sessions to what I offer, I don’t want to be limited by the word boudoir.
  • Then there is the BigPinkCookie issue. Again, brand ME would mean posting it ALL on ChristineTremoulet.com — so should I move even my personal posts there? Everything? Point all URLs there?
  • OR … do I keep BPC as my personal brand, and ChristineTremoulet.com just shows off my portfolio work + is that “landing site” type of place where you go to find everything about me.

SIGH. So hard to choose. In part because choosing means giving some things up.

As easy as it would be to post everything under ChristineTremoulet.com and be done, it would mean giving up this site that is 12 years old. And as I’ve written recently, this site is a lot of ME.

As I attended ALT Design Summit back in January, the question was posed, “Do you want to be a photographer who is a blogger, or a blogger who is a photographer?” I immediately identified with wanting to be a blogger who is a photographer. Because of that, plus countless hours of pondering this, I think what I should do is this:

  • ChristineTremoulet.com is my professional, portfolio site. Go here to see my work. Hot Mama Boudoir points to the same URL, so either URL pulls up the site. It has a link in the navigation for my personal blog, and once a week, I also post a “weekly roundup” on Sundays of my other posts online. The site is completely focused on my goal of helping Hot Mamas grow their confidence and rediscover their beauty, and shows off my work with Hot Mamas.
  • BigPinkCookie.com is my everything else site: my personal brand, where I write about whatever randomness I want (I can be random) and post vacation photos, personal life updates, recipes we made at home, whatever goodness I want to share. Photography, Houston & The Heights, Travel, Food & Recipes, Design. When I post new work on the professional Christine Tremoulet site, I would post here an image or two and an note about the session, so you would know to go there to check it out.

Now it is your turn — what do you think? What would you want to see, where would you go to read? What do YOU want to see?

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By George, I Think I’ve Got It!

I’ve realized that part of why I don’t blog is my overwhelming need to compartmentalize what I blog. But then how? What? What goes where? What do I want to do with it all? Ugh!!! From there, I just go circling down the drain.

I used to post anything and everything here. That is why BigPinkCookie has such a crazy diverse history. Then things like Twitter & Facebook came along. Now if I find a funny joke or a cute photo, I post it there – not here. Which to be honest bugs the crap out of me. I have no archive of it personally then – when it is gone, it is just gone. Although in the case of my Twitter stream, I guess the Library of Congress has an archive of it. Which seems bizarre. It also reminds me that I still need to share my photos from Washington DC. But anyways…

Here is the plan:

  • BigPinkCookie – Write about life. Random things. Whatever I want. The joys of living in the Heights. Places I love to go here in Houston. Things I find amusing. Personal photo things. The day to day. Goal is to get back to writing here 5 days a week. Give me time to get warmed up…
  • Christine Tremoulet – Houston & Destination Wedding photography. Pretty much just wedding related posts, whether my photos or tips on wedding planning as it pertains to photography. Update 2-3 times a week, since I have a HUGE catalog of photos I’ve never shared.
  • Hot Mama Boudoir – using my super powers to help moms rediscover their beauty. Update as possible, since I only post what my clients say I can, and some clients ask that I post nothing online. Also post things related to women, beauty, and how mass media distorts our view and the battle to recover that. Update as often as possible.
  • Delightful Bicycle – why yes, I do want to blog about cycling, specifically cycling on a cruiser. The Slow Bike Movement. It isn’t about the speed, it is about the journey. Houston isn’t recognized for the cycling potential it has, and this is my little way to combat it. Or to write about my bike that I love & adore. Either way, it is going to be awesome. Planning multiple updates each week as the site gets going. Oh, and we’re going to have a biker gang. Yes, yes we are.
  • Business of Awesome – I’ve written about business topics here before, but they don’t make sense here. When it doesn’t make sense, I don’t do it. But I have a TON of info I’m happy to share, considering that I’ve owned a business in one form or another since 1999, and they’ve all been successful, including selling my dot com related one. I’ve been told that makes me a dot com success story, since that was every other dot com person’s dream. Whoo hoo! My dream? Helping creatives learn how to be better business people. It isn’t easy. We battle a lot with putting a pricetag on our work, and so many other things. So while it is a dream still right now, I can sense it coming to the surface. It is time…

This was actually the first thing I thought about when I woke up this morning. I realized that having a place for everything and everything in its place makes me happy. I’ll do a weekly update post here about what is going on everywhere else. And all will have a way to get here, because I like giving people a chance to know the real me.

Good. Glad we’ve got that sorted out now. On to other bigger things! YAY!!!