Tuesday, January 5, 2016

I quit.

photo c/o Jessica Joan Pinkstone

"Hello. It's me. I've written this post a thousand times and then just pressed delete." - If Adele was a blogger.

I've been writing this post for close to two years. Some days just in my head, on a few occasions I even wrote it down. One brave day I even typed the post up in blogger. My life changed a lot in between those times and somewhere I pressed delete.

Stir and Scribble was created as a safe place for me to practice writing and food photography. Very few readers will remember that it was once a Tumblr page, but, before Tumblr was a thing. I look back at most of the old posts and cringe. The writing was bad, the photos were silly. But it was my lovely little corner of the internet anyways.

I got it in my head that blogging full time would be the next step in my career.  I had already spent the better part of a decade working for Alton Brown, and honestly I'm still not really sure what the 'next step' from that kind of work might be, but blogging was going to be the thing.

I took every class. I attended every workshop. I rebranded. I moved to wordpress. I tweeted, I pinned. I did all the things that the good, big bad bloggers do. And a terrible thing happened: I lost my voice.
So much time was spent trying to catch 'some big break' as a food blogger, so many hours wasted on pin-able images, that I lost sight of the whole thing.

The silliest part, of course, is that I basically had the dream culinary job already.  I worked full time for one of the biggest names in food media. I worked on New York Times best selling book series. I got to write recipes, cook, talk about food, and occasionally take pictures at my day job. 

In the last two years, in between all the drafts of this post - the written and unwritten - I've learned a lot. I stopped working for Alton full time. I had another baby. I freelanced as a food stylist and some times copywriter. I went back to work for Alton. And I've pulled back from this place.

I'd like to get back to where I started. I still need a place to write awkwardly, to take crappy photos, and to find my voice. Frankly I'm tired of being another white-brunette-lady-food-bloggers who is equally earnest and witty. I need more deep conversation, more interesting images, and I think the internet might need that too. I'm not quitting this space, I'm just quitting this photo, text, recipe formula familiar to blogs.

Fair warning that I'm about to delete a bunch of old posts and things are going to get awkwardly bad around here again while I try to figure it all out. Hope you'll join me.

31 comments:

  1. Can't wait to see where you take this place that is yours. Love scrappy writing and silly pictures.

    ReplyDelete
  2. When you figure it all out, will you let me know as a fellow white-brunette-lady-food-blogger? Seriously, I think we need an offline feelings dump/brainstorming session. Get on a plane and get to Gotham West Market. <3, Casey (who doesn't have any of those login things in the dropdown)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ha! At this point I'm hoping to not figure it out. You are one of my inspirations, mostly because you never seem to take any of it too seriously! I hope I can come visit soon.

      Delete
  3. I still think about the days of you redoing my blog, going to a silly blog mixer, starting a blogging group, and always waiting for something to feel like it was working. I get this post so much. My voice feels silly and lost somewhere too and has for a while. IF you find the magic again let me know where and how. Or let's just have a blog group meeting just because they are fun. ;-)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Let's just hang out! You are one of my favorite 'mommy bloggers' because you always wrote from your heart, I'm finding it much easier to get back to that then re-branding or workshops ever were.

      Delete
  4. I feel like so many are trying to shout and be noticed. I love that you are doing what you want, what you need, your own way. I'll be following your little space, as perfect, or imperfectly perfect as it may seem to you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Amanda this is my favorite response and I'm going to carry it around for a while. Thank you for being here.

      Delete
  5. Not going to lie, when I read the title of this post, I was really really scared; I thought you were throwing in your towel. I am so glad that you're staying and that you're going to work your way through the mud and keep writing. I love your site, your recipes, and YOU so much. Can't wait to see how things shift around here.

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