Where to go from here?

Hello out there in blogland! I hope everyone's been doing well since the last time I popped in with a post. Did you have a lovely holiday season and a sparkly New Year's Eve?

I wanted to take a moment to type up some thoughts I've been having lately about Verbal Mélange and blogging in general. I started this blog in April 2011, when I was not-quite-23 years old and about six months in to my first Real-World, Big-Girl job. I had practically zero sense of style and almost zero budget to expand said style. (True story: When I got my first RWBG job, I opened a New York & Company credit card and frantically threw $200 of semi-professional clothing on it...clothing that I ended up barely wearing because I had no idea what I was doing.) My point is, I needed to figure myself out, sartorially.

Now, I'm nearly four years in to my second RWBG job. I have a semi-carefully curated closet of easily mixable business casual basics. I have a decent clothing budget, but over the last few months I've been using it on a few high-quality "investment" type pieces instead of trendy flash-in-the-pan statement pieces. I started this blog, in part, to help define my style, and I think I've done that. (Not that I could put it into words for you, but I know what it is and I like it, so that's all that matters to me.)

The other reason I started this blog is because for the first time in my adult life (really, since I was about 15 years old), I had a lot of free time to fill. I was working full-time and doing a small amount of technical freelance writing on the side. I needed a hobby.

When I changed jobs in 2012, my main hobby became freelance writing for the magazine I had just left. And I loved it. Then I took up photography as well the following year, and I loved it even more. Now, when I'm not at work, doing housewifey things like cleaning, taking Cam for a walk or to the dog park, or cooking (another hobby of mine), I'm usually working on a magazine article or taking and editing photos, either for my portrait business or just for funsies. Blogging has very much taken a backseat for me, particularly style blogging.

So where does that leave Verbal Mélange? I'm really not sure. I don't want to let it go just yet, mostly because of the fantastic people I've met (virtually or IRL) because of this blog. And if I'm being honest, I also just like talking about myself. #sorrynotsorry

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you come here just for the outfits, you might be disappointed. That, I am sorry for. But if you come here for my rambling, and for weird little peeks into my life like what I made for dinner or how I redecorated my living room or the weekend trip I took with Matt and Cam, then I guess you're still in luck. Because I'm always down to ramble. (And who knows. From time to time I might get really excited about a random outfit and decide to photograph/post it.)

That said, I feel that I'm freeing myself up quite a bit here to showcase my photography. Yes, I have a blog over at my professional site, but I think I'd like to keep that less personal for now. So you can expect to see more of my funsies photos around here, from trips to the local botanical gardens to the 52 week photography challenge I started this year. (More on that in a future post.) And if there's anything in particular that you think would make a nice addition here, let me know! I like knowing what you guys like reading.

So...that's it, I guess. Thanks for reading this rant all the way through to the end, and thanks for sticking around as I figure out what I'm going to do with my little corner of the internet.