Wednesday 19 August 2015

original image source: unsplash.com - image by Florian Klauer
 
Gosh nearly 3 months since my last post, it's tough to know how to start writing again after such a long break! I'm sitting here in my brand new workspace and I'm really not sure what to say.
 
Do I start with sharing the fact that I just moved into a blooming lovely new home?
 
Or tell you all about my experiences working on the Everyman Open  Air Theatre Festival this summer?
 
Or maybe I should start by talking about what I fell become a bit of a personal Elephant in the room when it comes to my blogging- Announcing to the world that I was going to challenge myself to  create  and post a different millinery project every week for 52 weeks and  completely fail at it!
 
In hindsight I really didn't plan the project at all when I first announced it here. I completely under estimated what I needed to do to put the ground work in to get the project under way. It was a tough lesson to learn, after the first two pieces were made I found I had neither the resources nor the ideas in place to carry on with the weeks ahead.
 
It hadn't been my intention to design a collection and share a pieces each week, the project was primarily to hone my millinery skills and share my work online, but without a plan of what to create or what materials I needed to source I felt like I was left a-drift. After the 3rd weeks post was late I really didn't know what I should create next, timed slipped by and as more time passed I felt really disheartened and embarrassed that the project had failed before it had really started.
 
After a while  I wasn't even sure that I could post on this blog again. I've always  struggled to maintain the regular blog schedule that I aspire too, before May I had managed to post fairly consistently throughout  the first quarter of 2015 but having the project fail so quickly seemed to prove to the self doubting part of me that I wasn't really up to keeping a blog  and it really knocked my confidence. At times I even wondered whether I should just give up the blog completely, but I new deep down I would want to return to blogging a some point and it didn't feel honest to just leave the work I had done here and start a new blog where my earlier mistakes couldn't be seen.
Instead I decided to sit down and write this post and  I have drawn up a brand new blog schedule, that's why it's a brand new chapter. I'm not promising myself that from now on I'll post every week ( or twice a week or 10 times a week hahaha) but I am going to endeavour to try to do a post as often as I can.  I took note of the lessons I have learnt through May and June  and decided that I am going to block out time to focus on work on my blog little by little  but also take into account the other projects and commitments I have going on at the same time. I do also intend on re-starting my 52 week millinery project but will do so once it is planned out carefully to ensure I give myself the best possible chance to complete it.
 
 I hope you haven't minded such a wordy post  as my return. I felt it was important to acknowledge the lessons I have learned from having a project fail and my long absence from blogging in an honest way  so I can make sure I can build on it in the future to become a better milliner and blogger.