And is anyone still out there?
It took me a couple of hours to even get back into the backend of the blog, 3 years after I was last here. Because the time has come, my friends, to say hello again!
The last message I put out there was that I was leaving Rebel Angel behind to embark on new adventures over at Quietly Curious which was to be a new space dedicated to all the things I love and enjoy. I felt I’d outgrown this space and wanted somewhere new and exciting, where I could leave behind everything I was no longer about.
But many things happened all at once. To simply say it was 2020 will probably suffice! I managed to publish a few posts, but living through lockdown with a just turned 1 year old was quite the experience. If I’m truly back here to stay (who knows yet, this may be a one off post and I’ll be gone again, but I thought I’d give it a go), I might tell you more about that time. But in short, Ben was furloughed so spent his days with 1 year old Emmy, while I was the only remaining member of my team not furloughed which meant taking the workload of 3 extra people who were full time employees while I was still only working part time. Luckily for me, my brain thrives on those sort of conditions in the short term, so I came out the other end with a whole barrel full of new skills. It just meant that other areas of my life had to be sacrificed at the time, and the blog was one of them.
I can’t lie, it was partly already dying a slow death at that point anyway and lockdown was probably a handy excuse for me to leave it alone finally. That’s why I’d made the move to Quietly Curious, to try to reinvigorate it and make writing it less of a chore. So when my job, which is digital marketing and suddenly expanded more in social media at that point, became bigger, I wanted to be out of the online world as much as possible in the rest of my life.
So we’ll get back to those lockdown days one day!
Instead let’s catch up on a few other things. The little one year old I left you all with? She’s now soon to turn 5, is an absolute whirlwind of life and joy, and has started at school. She’s brimming with curiousity about everything, never stops talking or moving, and is the craziest little creature that walks that planet in my opinion! She is also a big sister!
In December 2021, her baby brother Archie joined our crazy crew. And if lockdown hadn’t put a stopper in my blogging career, he certainly would have done! He’s just turned 2 now and is the most hilarious, strong willed toddler. His sister is his favourite person in the entire world and he wants to be just like her. He’s even battling her for the title of chatterbox! But let’s just say he was an entirely different baby from Emmy. He basically didn’t sleep for a full 6 months, and if he did, his entire body had to be touching mine. He also was born with a tongue tie which got our feeding journey off to a very tricky start. And he still remains a velcro baby to me whenever I’m around (although apparently he doesn’t have a problem as soon as I’m gone!).
So if I manage to come back here again, I’ll tell you more about them both in the future, and probably will talk more about the journeys I’ve mentioned above that we’ve come through.
But why am I back? Tricky question to answer that I’m not really sure of myself!
I’m still totally immersed in the online world, which is sometimes hard work when I just want to switch off. I’m still working at Bronco, but now my job is digital marketing across the board as I manage a variety of clients’ content marketing, digital PR, paid social ads, organic social posting and influencer marketing. This includes everything from the ground up – from set up and strategy to creating the content itself. It’s balancing a lot of plates and juggling a lot of balls, but that’s something I’ve always done.
I’ve also recently spent 2023 working part time with a YouTuber with just under 1 million subscribers as his channel manager. This was an incredible experience which meant that again I’ve been able to expand my skillset into a new digital space. Even though I’ve worked on YouTube in the past, this was a different scale and meant I had access to all sorts of tools and analytics that I’d never been able to before.
But where I’ve always had my own space online since 2010, I’ve been missing that. Working on clients feels like being a ghostwriter – everything I do is hidden behind someone else’s name. You wouldn’t know that I have hundreds of articles published in national and international publications, my content word for word which is published under journalists’ names (as that’s how press releases work – I’m not trying to start a copywriting claim or anything!). It’s something I’m used to now, but I’ve also missed having my own digital space out there.
I’ve also missed that place to just write. With no boundaries and no holding back. Just to talk about my experiences in life, and sometimes have people respond to that.
So here I am! I’m not sure where I’m going to go with this – I can say with 90% confidence that it’s not going to be personal style any more. We discovered a couple of weeks ago that my old camera is no longer working, plus my wardrobe is an absolute mess of leggings and old jumpers nowadays! I’m sure at some point I’ll address my wardrobe’s lack of direction here as it’s something on my mind, but that’s for another day. I’m getting back into reading, so I think that’s probably something I’ll veer towards writing about in the most near future. We’re enjoying lots of lovely days out around Yorkshire at the moment, so there’s that too. And of course, parenting has to come into it somewhere! I think I partly disappeared from the online world as not wanting to become a “mummy blog” – in hindsight, I know there’s nothing wrong with being a mummy blog, but it was something that was so separate from my original identity here that I didn’t want it to become that. But at the end of the day, this is just a personal lifestyle space about me, and parenting is the biggest part of my life right now! So if that’s the content that comes, that’s what will be here!
So we’re going to start like this, a page full of words and not really any explanations. At some point I may update themes and layouts and all that jazz, but for now, I think somewhere to put words down a page will suffice. Hopefully I’ll be back again soon!
PS: Another thing I’ll probably come back to – Disney holidays with 2 kids, as pictured here! I needed something to illustrate the post, and this family photo from our trip last year was the best I could find!
