A-Z Blogger Challenge – B is for Blogging

*Apologies this didn’t go live yesterday when it was supposed to. It was just one of those days!

I suppose this choice of word is a little obvious, but I feel ‘blogging’ is extremely relevant to my life right now.

I began blogging in January 2014 when Lamb was 10 months old. I was a complete novice and treated it like a hobby. I am a bit of a computer geek so I knew I’d enjoy it and it would hopefully be something I’d stick at. You see, I’ve never really had a proper ‘hobby’ in adult life so I was looking forward to something that would my little getaway when I had time to myself (ha, ‘time’).

Fast forward to today and I’m still blogging, and well, I’m not too bad at it! For most of 2014 and 2015 I slowly increased my stats, slowly gained followers and slowly improved my Tots100 rank. Something that has always been consistent from the beginning is working with brands, I think I just had a lucky break there.

However, like I’ve mentioned numerous times, when I was made redundant without notice in October 2015, at around 10 weeks pregnant, I made the decision not to find another job and pretty much take early ‘maternity leave’. I knew I would be launching my Lamb & Bear clothing brand at Christmas, so my husband and I decided I would just throw myself into my blog and brand and see what happened. I would of been on maternity leave in May 2016 anyway, so we just thought screw it, take this opportunity with both hands (and both babies lol) and go for it.

Turns out it was a pretty good decision to make. I mean, we are pretty screwed financially. Going from an annual joint income of around 45k to around 15k isn’t easy (this was due to hubby being made redundant in December 2014, and then me 10 months later), but we are coping (I think, I don’t deal with finances) and we are happy and that’s all that matters.

We are now both doing jobs we enjoy. Hubbys last job made him miserable. He worked nights and long hours and didn’t really have friends at work, most of the guys were a lot older, but he stuck at it because it paid well.

Now he’s an apprentice learning to be an electrician and you can just see the enthusiasm he has for learning a new trade. As for me, I love blogging and am so proud of what I’ve achieved over the last few months since throwing myself into it ‘full time’. Of course I also love designing. I feel so comfortable designing for children, rather than womenswear that I did in my previous job. I just feel like it comes more naturally and my quirkiness is much better suited to little rompers and leggings.

Blogging has opened so many doors for me. Not everyone really understands what blogging is about, unless you read them or write them, I certainly didn’t when I started. I had no idea how influential a blog can be. I had no idea how far a blog post can reach; how many people can be exposed to your word and pictures.

It’s mind blowing really.

In the 2 and a bit years I’ve been blogging I feel I’ve learnt so much but yet still have so much to learn. I have little goals I want to reach in the near future and big goals I want to reach overall, and it seems I’m going in the right direction to complete them.

I love my little blogging bubble and I hope you do too 🙂

Thank you to everyone who has supported me in my journey to get where I am today; friends, family, blogging buddies and brands.

Ax