Tag: blogging

Introducing… Made to Bloom Photography!

So, I did a thing.

I started a real, actual, legit, has-a-website-and-everything photography business.

*cue the internal screaming*

Without further ado, let me formally introduce Made to Bloom Photography!

I mentioned a few posts ago that I quit one of my jobs, the barista job that I had been at for two years. Quitting that job lifted a weight off of my shoulders, but it definitely wasn’t easy. It took some time to build up the courage to leave, but I’m so glad I did.

I rode that courage wave straight into the creation of my photography business, & am just hoping that it doesn’t crash any time soon šŸ˜‰

I’ve been taking photos for friends for the past year or so, and just absolutely fell in love with portrait and family photography. I love the challenge of capturing fleeting expressions and creating photographs that show these people and these families in their unique stages of life, imperfectly perfect and oh so beautiful. I am so honored that my friends even asked me in the first place, and definitely wouldn’t have taken this big leap if it hadn’t been for all of their encouragement.

Most folks who get into the photography business tend to name their companies after themselves or work their names in there somehow. I totally would have liked to do that, but there was something so clunky about “Margaret Fogarty Photography” and all of the variations of that! Of course, then I went on to choose a name that’s as long as forever & a day, lol, but that’s life.

It took me quite some time to come up with a name that I liked, but something about Made to Bloom Photography really stuck.

So, where did this name come from?

As a military spouse who has to move every few years to a completely new location, I know what it feels like to be plucked out of my comfort zone. I heard the phrase ā€œbloom where you are plantedā€ right after my first military move, and something about it really stuck with me. Even if we donā€™t love where we are at the moment (physically, mentally, in our bodies, our careers, anything!) itā€™s up to us to bloom where we are, or to try our best to do so. Weā€™re made (by our past experiences, our parents, our communities, God, or whatever you believe) to bloom right where we are. As a photographer, I want to help capture where you are right now, in all of its beautiful and messy glory.Ā You’re made to bloom & I want to help you see that, too.

I’m feeling all of those nervous feelings about jumping into this new endeavor, all of that impostor syndrome goodness, but hey, life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Cue all of the cheesy inspirational quotes!!

So please, if you don’t mind helping me out, could you go check out my website, give me a like on Facebook, or follow my Instagram? I would love you forever, but I’ll probably love you forever anyways!!

On radio silence + the new normal

As you can tell, I cut my #summersnaps a little short this year. Partly because I just wasn’t loving the format of small photo dumps every day on the blog {cluttered!} and partly because of the new puppy craziness. Mostly though, it was due to our ailing cat, Samson.

In case you haven’t seen my Instagram posts, we found out a few weeks ago that our big pile of love, Samson, had pretty terrible kidney failure. The vet gave him no more than a month to live, but was even surprised that he wasn’t in a coma when his blood tests were taken – his levels were that bad.

My heart lately had been swelling in size due to love for our new sweet pup, and simultaneously was shattered into a million & one pieces with the news of his.

On August 7, weĀ had to say goodbye to the sweetest, goofiest, and most loyal & loving cat that has ever existed.

Those weeks between the news of his kidney failure and the day he left this world {but never our hearts} were a blur of heartache and so many tears. He was not the same cat at the end of his life, and he made it abundantly clear that he was in pain and was suffering immensely – which was so hard to watch. We were lucky to have a very caring vet who mourned alongside us, and found a beautiful pet cemetery where we could bury Samson. We were also so lucky to have loving people surround us during the rough few days after he left us. There’s nothing like loss to show you who’s in your corner.

His absence will be felt strongly for a long while, which is a testament to how much he loved us in the year we had with him. He was the best cuddle bud. I’m so glad we got to know him and love him.

Do me a favor and search “Samson” on this blog, and you will see some wonderful glimpses at his life with us. And so much love.

So life moves on, and we’re figuring out our new normal, crazy pup & all. I was having a hard time for a while putting into words what Samson meant to us and how deeply we are still feeling this loss.

Add a wild work schedule, sickness, & some travel on top of all of that, and this space has been awfully neglected. You should have seen the plans I had for this month’s blog posts!

But tending to my sensitive heart & slightly shattered soul must always come first.

I’m back now, with plans & lists as always. I’m very glad to have a supportive partner in all of this, and to still have a cuddly cat who always wants to lick my face. Keep your eye on this space for some good content and possible changes soon!

Forty truths & no lies {about me}

Hello there, dear readers &Ā people that I actually know in real life! I love you all!

This is going to be like those beginning-of-the-year icebreakers that everyone actually hates, except I’m the only one talking and it doesn’t suck.

I’ve picked up a few new followers over the past few months & thought it was about time to do a proper introduction of myself.

Standing in the snow & wearing my LuLaRoe, as usual.

And what better way is there to do that than dumping a bunch of random {and some fun} facts out onto the interwebs? I can’t think of anything, so here goes! Continue reading “Forty truths & no lies {about me}”

busy bee

Oh hello there.

It has been aĀ busy week!! How busy, you may ask? Well, all of these things happened in the past week:

  • I accepted a second part-time job {that I am SUPER excited about}
  • I worked aĀ Christmas Eve closing shift at the coffee bar {people get a little, um, difficult to deal with around the holidays…}
  • Ben & I flew to DC on Christmas morning to see my family
  • We had a packed 3 day trip that included lots of food, movies, & sitting around the table and telling stories
  • We flew back to Dayton, & with delays, didn’t get back home until 1:30am
  • I worked the next day
  • We unpacked & packed up again…
  • Aaaand now we’re in Cleveland for 3 days visiting some of Ben’s family!

So yeah, just a little busy.

My mom & sister
Visiting the Arlington National Cemetery

I’m looking forward to starting my new job next week and hopefully finding a good routine to settle into. One of my favorite Christmas presents that I received was an Ink & Volt planner – I have loved planners for as long as I can remember – and I’m excited to use it in the new year.Ā I have a gut feelingĀ that 2017 will be a year full of change and growth and exploration. I thinkĀ it’ll be a year of being busy and I just can’t wait.

Resolution revolution

Every year, I make resolutions & barely keep them past week two. I want to change that by not making any resolutions at all.

{I think I wrote a post on this a while ago, buuuuut Iā€™m fairly sure it got lost in the transition last week and Iā€™ve been too dang lazy to figure out how to find those posts againā€¦ so here we are.}

It seems odd to think about starting the new year without making specific ā€œresolutions.ā€ Itā€™s a family tradition to get together on New Yearā€™s Eve (or a few days laterā€¦ or a few weeks laterā€¦) and go through a multi-page document that my dad puts together, where we write down our favorites & memories from the last year, and make resolutions and predictions for the year ahead. As weā€™ve all gotten older, the predictions for each family member have been more and more similar from year to year! Itā€™s always fun to go back to see the previous yearā€™s predictions and to see where we were wrong or right.

For me, though, it is soĀ disappointing to look back on those resolutions, year after year, and not be able to check off any of them as completed or kept.

Even if the year has been fullĀ of love and laughter and emotions and growth and all of that good stuff, it still makes me feel strangely inadequate to know that I wasnā€™t able to stick to these lofty resolutions that wouldā€™ve apparently made my year so much better and worthwhile.

So Iā€™mĀ rethinking my need to make resolutions this year.

Continue reading “Resolution revolution”

Bear with me

Please bear with me while I take a (hopefully) short ride on the struggle bus with my blog – I decided to switch to a self-hosted blog, and while many sites promised the transition to take justĀ five minutes and be as easy as a few clicks, that hasĀ not been the case for me!

I’m currently missing about 30 posts (I don’t know which ones) and my galleries within posts are no longer formatted the way they used to be, so some things look a little wonky and not the way I planned. Changing this blog over to self-hosted is turning out to be a mess-and-a-half, complete with tears at 2am when I couldn’t even access my blog.

Here’s to hoping that things only get better & more beautiful!

In pursuit of passion

Maybe not everyone has one big passion, but many people seem to have that one passion that drives their career. Itā€™s what they get higher education in, what they studied and practiced for, what gets them going in the morning, what gives them butterflies to think about.

I used to be so set that my passion was education. I thought, Iā€™ll get a teaching license, get my first classroom, then have a career for life. But every time I thought about having 25+ children relying solely on me for their entire education for a year, my stomach dropped – & not in a good way. I kept telling myself that this was just nerves or self-doubt, again and again, as I was student teaching, doing pre-practicum, and searching for jobs after graduation. Iā€™ll get that confident “teacher voice” one day, I kept telling myself. During those two weeks of full classroom takeover, I was a mess,Ā but that wasĀ just because it’s my first time doing this, right? Being up in the front of the classroom isn’t supposed to feel totally natural at first, right?

passionpost

Iā€™m not assuming that everyone who teaches feels totally natural at first, or even after their first full year, but to me, it just felt a little too unnatural. I donā€™t know if it ever really clicked. It felt like I was trying too hard at something that I didnā€™t have my head fully into. My heart was there, all there, still is there, but thatā€™s not enough sometimes. Or it wasn’t enough for me. Iā€™m not writing this to say that Iā€™m completely, totally, & forever giving up on the idea of being a teacher – but that I’m thinkingĀ itā€™s just not for me at this moment, and I need to stop beating myself up for not going down that path right now. Iā€™m listening to that tiny voice coming from the depths of my soul telling me that itā€™s okay to spend some time flopping around like a fish out of water, and that maybe Iā€™m just trying to find the right pool to dive into.

Maybe itā€™s photography. Maybe itā€™s something in the coffee world. Maybe itā€™s being a librarian. Maybe itā€™s working in publishing. Maybe itā€™s writing a book. Maybe itā€™s something else that hasnā€™t even yet crossed my mind.

I keep trying to remind myself that this is normal. This is so fucking normal, especially for people my age. It’s also such a privilege to be able to spend any time at all waffling around with different career ideas & not having to rely on my job to pay all of the bills. I know I am so lucky to be where I am, and to have the time to figure things out. Still, it’s hard to be in this limbo where I have no purpose in particular & I don’t know exactly what I’m passionate about.Ā Just because many of my peers have figured out where theyā€™re going with their careers and are charging full speed ahead doesnā€™t make me any less-than. They are so lucky to have figured things out already. But of course, no matter how people appear on their resumes or their social media profiles, no one actually has it all figured out.

Not everyoneā€™s life paths are as straight and narrow as they may seem. I think mineā€™s just got a few more curves at the start. But at least Iā€™ve got a driverā€™s license and a great co-pilot to help me navigate.Ā 

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Tip-toeing out of my comfort zone

I’ve been a little bit MIA from my blog lately, partly becauseĀ I’ve been under the weather and feeling very bleh, and partly because I’ve just had a lot going on at the moment that’s been taking up my mental energy. I’ve been more in the mindset to make endless mental to-do lists than I have been to come up with blog posts that I’m comfortable sharing.

But on that note about comfort…

With tiny baby steps, I’ve been trying to to tip-toe out of my comfort zone, ever so slightly.

How, you may ask?

Processed with VSCO with g3 presetI’m doing this by being active on the board of my local AirĀ Force spouses group, which included helping to put on a holiday ball for ~250 people. Oh, and at that ball, I ended up wearing a dress that highlighted my very un-toned arms & shoulders, which I was sure people would judge me on – guess what, things got so busy that I ended up not caring about it and just enjoying myself. Wild, right?

I’m doing this byĀ applying to jobs that I might not be 100% qualified for, but that could help put me in the right direction for a career that I would really like to explore. And I got an interview!

I’m doing this by posting pictures of myself, not just lattes, on my Instagram.

I’m doing this by doing a Christmas photoshoot for my friends & their families, which is something I’ve never done before. I had to confront feelings of possible inadequacy & majorĀ self-doubt around the photoshoot, which had been taking up a lot of mental space in the past few weeks. Taking pictures for a friend might not seem like a big deal to others, but to me, I could’ve ruined their Christmas cards with blurry, mediocre photos and wasted their time/money. The end result was even better than I had hoped for, and the photos will be cherished by these families for years to come.

 

I’m doing this by entertaining the idea of taking my photography hobby to the next level, which is scary & exhilarating & nerve-wracking & bringing back all those beautiful feelings of self-doubt… right now it’s just an idea, being spurred on by sweet friends & a supportive husband, so we’ll see where I end up with this.

I find that I’m a person with a lot of dreams that put butterflies in my stomach but that I don’t often make the leap out of my comfort zone to put these plans into action. I know that I won’t get very far staying in the confines of that zone, but I also know that forcing myself far out all at once is way tooĀ overwhelming for me. So for right now, I’m sticking with tip-toed,Ā clinging-to-the-handrailĀ baby steps. I’m working on letting go.

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