This is happening.
Happy Thursday evening, friends. I want to start by saying this is a long, deeply personal post. For your face. And while I like the LOLs at the end of it a lot, it’s the story that’s the point. Ok, here we go. We’re gonna start out light. Ease into it.
Ok, SO listen. I think there are still some people out there who don’t think I have the berries, OR the balls to make the lead image on TKB a puppyface. Like, solely face, directly inside of the face. But as you can see I just wrote the word ‘balls’ on a wedding blog so this whole “I bet she doesn’t have the balls” thing should be a non-issue. Also, I feel like I’ve done this before. But just in case the remaining few who don’t believe in my utter strength to be this weird on paper are indeed reading today, well there it is. And for everyone else who sees the giant puppy face and thinks, “business as usual on TKB today,” well see? I am who you think I am.
Moving on – yesterday, I was up late finishing up some stuff for a magazine thing coming out next year (did you see what I did there? that was the zenith of braggy sounding back there) and when I looked it over, I couldn’t help but be reminded of what this blog is about, for me. Yes, it’s a wedding blog, at its core. I mean, obviously. No one’s- is anyone disputing that? Pretty sure no one’s arguing that point. But I feel like it’s so much more than that, for me personally, as the editor. It’s everything I’ve always imagined it should be, when I first started it way back when. Which boils down to it being that thing you call a dream come true.
I knew I never wanted to just straight feature weddings without also sharing commentary from my life and experiences. My dream for the blog was basically taking two sort of disparate things and mixing them together in a way that wasn’t absolutely normal, or that had been proven effective… which amounts to it being rather daunting. But more than that, it was exhilarating to move my life into that sort of project. There’s a quote I know that I’m forgetting right now, but it’s something like, right when you leave your comfort zone, is when you start living. Or something like that. That quote rings true for me because I feel like I’ve lived a vastly fuller existence, and met more interesting, creative people, and more deeply explored the outer reaches of what it is to be a creative person and to run a business, than I think ever before. All since starting TKB. Which is pretty ironic given I’ve never spent more time sitting in front of a computer screen in my entire life. But it is what it is. You take the good with the bad, right? :)
ENGAGE PUG LOL BREAK…… PUG LOL BREAK ENGAGED:
BACK TO POST OF SERIOUSNESS:
Anyway the first ingredient of the plan was to feature killer weddings + crazy, stupid, love ;) + amazeballs imagery. You know, the stuff that really inspires us. The stuff we can’t remove our eyeballs from. In that vein, I do want to give some advice. I think it’s really important to set certain personal standards with regard to the content you feature, and to stick by them. That can be hard, and rejection is never easy to give or to receive. And in the beginning you worry about the frequency of submissions, and think you might need to feature something that (gasp!) doesn’t inspire you, personally. But here’s the rub: sticking to your standards of quality, and learning to say no, those are two of the major tenets for success, if you ask me. And blogging is no exception.
Ok, the second ingredient. This is the part where I get to share my real life stories and just daily stuff with you guys. Like, real stuff. This part is really important to me. Here let me tell you a little about myself so you see where I’m coming from and why this second ingredient is so meaningful to me. My natural state of being is to love my alone time. I could probably spend three full days, straight through, without human contact, and not be unhappy about it. Just working on some project in hyperfocus, or even watching a string of great movies (though they’d have to be really amazeballs movies to keep me in for three days, I’m tellin’ ya). I am someone who loves being on my own, and exploring my world. Dancing erratically is a big part of that, as I’m sure you’ve picked up along the way. Time alone is a good thing, I think, for all of us to grab onto if we can get it. Even if it’s 20 minutes, and grandma takes the babies for a little bit into another room. I’m not a mother yet so I don’t know that life, but I’ve certainly learned A LOT about it from other mothers I know. Anyway so yeah, alone time is the s**t. But an always alarming-at-first facet of my personality is that when I do go out for whatever event I have that night, or date night, or time with friends, or whatever, I’m the same person. The same person who loves her alone time. But the difference is that I’m hurtling that person onto whatever amount of people I’m chillin’ with. And it’s the interaction that reminds me how much I live for connecting with other people. Especially people who are open to connecting. I love connecting with people like crazy. And that’s where blogging comes in. Blogging has been a ridonkulously great way to connect, for me. There’s something inexplicably beautiful and emotionally satisfying to the act of sharing personal stuff with other like-minded people, and you guys, my readers, are totally exactly the kinds of people I live for connecting with. Because you’re fun, cool and you don’t care that I just savagely violated the rules of grammar in that previous sentence.
Our back-and-forths, with each and every one of you who at whatever point decided to step out from lurking and actually converse with me, in the comments, on twitter, wherever – each of you have made me laugh out loud, or think, or reconsider a position, or feel reinforced… you’ve even helped me through difficult times. We all know that the reality of life is that it ebbs and it flows, and you’ve been more helpful than you may ever know, when it’s ebbed.
So I just want to say thank you, even though saying thank you doesn’t seem like enough. Please do come in for the hug. (I wish you could come in for the real thing, but we do what we can with what we’re given.)
Ok now. Here’s the last thing before I SHUT. THEEFFUP. A lot of people ask me for insight with regard to blogging and business ownership and making it profitable and this and that and the other. I used to give detailed assessments of blogs and try to guide the blogger, but that was ages ago, when I had that elusive thing called *free time.* And so I just figured I’d share it here on the blog real quick so it can reach more people than just those who reach out and ask. Because I have like zero time these days to respond directly and personally to every person who asks. I hate that, since I’m committed in maybe an unhealthy way to remain very personal in all of my correspondence, no matter what. I don’t ever want to get to a point where I’m not reachable, like, on a human level. Punch me through the face if that ever happens, k? As a wake-up call.
Wait, am I making any sense right now? Because I’m weirdly still sick in the face and the body. I can’t get over this cold, it’s a bit disconcerting. So- making sense?
Ok ANYWAY, as I was saying – here it is, my best insight: I knew, from the get-go, that the key to success…… ‘real’ success; the kind that’s not just monetary, but emotionally fulfilling as well…… was a) the awareness and effective use of what I recognized as my own inherent talents (we’re all born with our own, you just have to figure them out), and b) the willingness to work hard as F**K to make my dream of The Knotty Bride a reality. Like, full immersion in the field. Like, embedded in the infantry kind of immersion. Like, you will not sleep for weeks, months even, and things will go wrong along the way, I guarantee it, but you must persevere, if this is truly what you want, what you’re good at, and you feel you have something to offer the world. Because you do that with your dreams, right? You work hard at them, you shed blood, sweat, tears, you bang a few suits to break through that glass ceiling, maybe some handjobs along the way, hooking helps – you know, the usual stuff people do to make things happen. What’s that? They don’t? Wait, WHUUUUUUUUUUUT?
Now, a quick unrelated comment. ”Wake up and smell the p***y” is not creative writing, Lil Wayne. It’s not called “being an artist” anymore when there’s a line like that in your song. I’d love to see you try a little bit harder in the new year, ok. You have it in you. I think? Actually I guess you don’t, you don’t seem to have it in you.
Ok I’m wrapping it up here, now. As you know it’s Thursday evening here and I’ve been listening to a Pandora station based entirely off of Rihanna for the entire day, which does something to your brain. And your feets. And I’m convinced at this point that I missed my calling as a Fly Girl after all this dancing today. But when I wasn’t dancing I was searching for funnies for your faces, for this post. What better stuff to blog about on the Thursday before the New Year? AMIRITE? Anyway so I’m coming off of five full (nonconsecutive) hours of looking at puppehs and kittehs on the world wide web, and I think I found the meaning of life somewhere in that time. I feel transcendent, floating on a cloud of love and funny puppy kitty faces and this has to be what love and happiness is, right? Unfortunately I think I used up an unfair share of the world’s ration of good times so I’m fully anticipating a disproportionately unfulfilling evening as appropriate punishment.
Anyway, here’s what I found. Maybe because the lol searching was for the blog/your eyes, and therefore, entirely charitable in nature, I won’t have a shittay evening? Here’s hoping.
K, enjoyificate!
By the way, I finally caught Bambino sniffing his own fart. I’ve always wanted to capture hard proof of this, and I feel pretty validated right now. Behold:
Ok last but not least…
Oh wait, THIS is the last but not least thing – a peek at the New Year’s Eve Party we’re going to drop onto the internet’s face around New Year’s time.
See? I keep with my themes. ;)
Are you psyched for that party inspiration? BECAUSE I AM.
Ok, friends. I sincerely hope you enjoyed the random diarrhea that fell out of my mouth today. ’cause holy mother. Seriously WTF?
If you were worried, I’m blogging a wedding of amazingness tomizzle. Ok it looks like “-izzle” doesn’t work in every scenario. I meant ‘tomorrow’ by that. I’m going to talk to Snoop about a proper-use manual. But yeah, so I saved a perfect wedding for last. Front and center tomorrow, my loves. Apologies in advance if your face melts when you see it.
Tomorrow I’ll also be sharing some of the stuff I’m climaxing over for 2012.
Do let me know your thoughts, on any of this crazy s**t, will you? I live for your feedback, however lengthy or brief. But you already knew that.
xoxo! - Alison
{Image credits} Frenchie at top: Perou / LOLs: i can has cheezburger / F**k Yeah Frenchies / F**k Yeah Pugs