Happy New Year | 2016

Haaaaaaaa. [That’s my audibly loud sigh as I sit down to write this — a sound similar to having just guzzled a large drink and afterwards wiping your mouth with a satisfied slide of your palm across your lips.]

I’m starting up Flower Friday again. And, as it’s New Years Day AND a Friday, I feel like my work’s cut out for me.

It’s been a thought for a while — getting back into writing personal posts on this blog — and there’s no time like the present as everyone (myself included) is making 2016 resolutions. I’ve been a professional writer nearly half my life. It was my first ‘real’ job as well as the way I made money after graduate school when I needed to start paying back those student loans (as in, instead of actually being able to get a job in the field for which I’d just gotten a degree, I took a writing position at a large company). More than a profession, however, writing has been there for me as a (not exaggerating) soul-healing psyche-enriching life-saving joy. Or, tool, maybe. Being able to express myself on a laptop screen or piece of paper has meant everything to me during my lowest moments (or hours, or days).

When I started my business, I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with work (client-commissioned work, that is). So, V & I started shooting a lot of personal projects, and several of them ended up on our two categories of Personal Posts: Succulent Saturday, which was always about what V had made for breakfast, and Flower Friday, which started out involving floral photos but ended up becoming about anything & everything I was working on. Succulent Saturday fell away within a couple months due to a lack of time (and, thankfully, a lot more client work), but Flower Friday always stuck — and grew, actually. I poured my heart into those posts, and those words were some of the most mindful, meaningful parts of my blog, revealing a lot more about myself than I intended (I see that more in hindsight, now, than in real-time). The write-ups seemed to resonate with other people, too, because I got more emails about Flower Friday posts than about any of the client work I was sharing. Anyway, work-work got a bit crazy, and Flower Friday became more chore-y than cheerful… and about two years ago, I stopped personal posts altogether in order to keep up with work posts (which also slowed as our bookings increased and time became precious). I’ve resolved, though, to be better about blogging in general not only because I think it’s important for business but, mostly, because I think my clients like to see how I share their story. It’s important to ME to show my clients how I share their story.

And, as for my personal musings, I think those are important to me too. They help me share my own story, which isn’t always #blessed. Shizz is hard, most of the time, and although everything I do is satisfying as hell, there’s no way I’m comfortable sharing only the polished results. Behind-the-scenes images & tales, the unsung accomplishments & accolades, the rejections & losses, the frustrations & why-can’t-I-get-this-rights… *those* are the details of people’s lives that I find interesting. So I want to share more of that myself.

So, yes, Flower Friday’s baaaaaaaaaaack, and I’m hoping that putting a little more of myself into my posts will help me connect better with readers, potential clients, family, and friends.

[If you’d like to read a few (or more) of these posts, please feel free to search Flower Friday Carla Boecklin (all the posts are on my Old Blog), and a slew of them should pop up, one leading to another with a click of the mouse.]

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