Post Blogtacular...

Blogtacular stays with you pretty intensely. In my post last week where I shared what I got up to on the day, I said that I was still bobbing about in the ripples of Blogtacular and I don't want that feeling to end!

I've yet to shake the feelings it left me with - not least because I wake up every morning to the goody bag banner on my wall.

For me, the weeks after Blogtacular have been just as important as the event as it happened. After all, Blogtacular is, sadly, only one day out of the year. I know I'm not the only one that left zinging and buzzing with ideas and energy and - most importantly for me - hope. So the post-Blogtacular days and week are really important in harnessing all that good stuff and focusing its magic on your every day life.

Here's what I got up to after the event...

Get it all out

I headed back to Portsmouth Saturday evening as I wanted a lie in on Sunday! But early Sunday morning found me Sellotaping four sheets of A4 paper together and scrawling a gigantic mindmap of all the things that were spinning around in my head. Blog posts, work, future plans... I emptied everything out.

It wasn't pretty by any means, but it was intensely satisfying. I looked down at that scrawl and thought - if that is my future, if this is the life I'm working towards then yeah, I'm more than happy with that.

Follow up

One of the other things I did on Sunday was go through all the cards I'd collected at Blogtacular. I read blogs and sent emails to the lovely people I had met. I followed and messaged on Instagram and Twitter.

It was a lovely way to fill a duvet day, but it also reinforces the connections made at Blogtacular. It's all about community, connection and support at the end of the day - so it felt great to keep the dialogues going. Believe me, an email from a Blogtacular friend pinging into my inbox on a bad day really cheers you right up!

Make a plan

I think everyone after Blogtacular needs a plan of some sort. It doesn't have to be crazy detailed, but you should harness the energy that you're zinging with in the months afterwards.

For me, I left that four page mind map to stew for a couple of weeks. I added notes to it and then transferred the whole lot into its own notebook, where it took the form of a plan. I broke it down to the smallest steps I could as it's great to have the big ideas, but in order to actually get anywhere with them you need a plan with actionable steps.

Would love to hear about how you're processing and working with the post-Blogtacular energy!

The Day Itself: Blogtacular 2016

My first blog about Blogtacular was about what I had taken from the day because it it such a huge event that it took me a while to actually digest it all.

This was my first time at Blogtacular and nothing can prepare you really - the day whizzes past, you are bound to miss something, you will leave exhausted and buzzing. Well, that's how it was for me anyway.

And I wish I could do it every weekend - wouldn't that be awesome?!

I was incredibly lucky and got onto the Photo Walk in North London, wandering among the pretty houses of Primrose Hill. It was a great way to meet new people in a smaller group, before the big event. 

Confession time - I didn't actually take that many pictures on the Photo Walk. I was having such a great time talk to the women I met that I just didn't lift up my camera or my phone as much as I normally would. And here's the thing - I didn't want to!

In fact, the whole event was like that. I had the camera with me the whole time, as well as my phone and they went pretty much untouched as I was having such a great time with the people and everything going on that I wanted to be in it, not viewing it through a lens.

However, that does mean I have very few pics, which is a real shame and is a balance I'd like to get right next year.

Later that day, after the Photo Walk, I headed to the West Elm Party, where, I confess, I spent most of my evening in the queue to get a painting from Ella Masters (totally worth it!). It was a great evening - but far too short! I think next year I'll definitely be doing more mingling and might try and get there before it starts, as I was half an hour late this year. (Honestly, you leave London for a couple of months and suddenly you forget how unreliable the Bakerloo line is from Willesden Junction).

The day itself was something else. I have honestly never known anything like it - literally everyone there was so open and welcoming, so ready to include you and get to know you. There were no little cliques and even people who were there with friends were so willing to usher you in (as I discovered when I ran over to Sarah of Crafts from the Cwtch to fangirl over the fact I was wearing her Colour Block Shawl)

Lisa Congdon was the Keynote Speaker and I bought her Fortune Favors the Brave book to get it signed because she was so incredibly inspiring (and what a souvenir, right?). Her talk was all about vulnerability. We as bloggers share a lot of ourselves online and while we can often suffer a 'vulnerability hangover' when we share something personal, our vulnerability is what makes what we do special.

'The things that you make cringe - that you are not a younger, prettier, glossier version of yourself, that's what makes you real to other people.'

This. This spoke to me so hard. I was asked so often what I blog about and the first time I said 'making and lifestyle', but after that I amended it to 'making and life'. Lifestyle is great, but I am far to lazy to create beautiful glimpses of my life - it's actually much easier for me to offer up the truth, the good the bad and the ugly. I hope that is what people like on this blog. Something else Lisa said struck me - be vulnerable, you owe it to yourself and your readers.

A great follow up to this talk was Community, by Kate of A Playful Day. One of the things that I really want from this blog is to find my people, online, especially now that I am far away from the majority of my friends and Kate reminded us all that what we create are not glossy magazines, what we create are communities. 

This is why we can wait for the story to be ready. While I am fairly open on this blog, there are things I keep back because they are too private or to raw to be shared just yet. That is the beauty of blogging - there is no deadline here. A story doesn't grow old. You can wait for the right time instead of rushing it out half baked.

Kate echoed Lisa beautifully when she said:

'When you show your imperfections - you are allowing your community to be imperfect.'

I know I wasn't the only one giving all the 'yes!!' to that.

I didn't actually attend the second session. After Community, I had a chat with some of the lovely ladies I'd met so far and then dived into the vacant chair opposite Alison Sadler. Despite not knowing me at all, Alison greeted me with a big hug and we got so into our chat that I totally missed bagging myself a seat in Phoneography - oops! Worth it though, ended up having a cup of tea with a fellow blogger, which was a welcome oasis of calm.

Lastly, I attended Laura Jane Williams' Writing Workshop (who I had never read before, but my god, this woman speaks my language). It reminded me of old Creative Writing seminars and, while I didn't write anything in that session that I think worthy of sharing, I had a lightbulb moment - this is my blog. I don't have to write like a blogger. I can write like a fiction writer, I can write a haiku (I can write a mother-loving crazy long post) if I want to!

There is so much that I took away from Blogtacular. I'm still bobbing in the ripples even now. I'll be writing about that later, but for now - Kat, Kelly, all the amazing people who volunteered on the day and made Blogtacular happen - I salute you. You have built and continue to build something awesome and I cannot wait to do it all again next year!

With thanks to Will Ireland and Mollie Makes for the pics.

Current Obsessions...

I've been diving into the good stuff in light of recent events. In the wake of bad news, I am prone to take advantage of that infinite scroll on my phone and to tap every hashtag even vaguely associated. But I've reached peak-Brexit and it was time for me to top up my batteries with some good stuff and it's always fun to share the good stuff :)

First up, podcasts!

Well, these are actually mostly all video, so I don't know that you'd actually call them podcasts (vod-casts? Vlog-casts?), but hey-ho!

Sew Over It is brilliant. Lisa is funny and sweet and if there's a cute dog, I'm always in. I've never been to one of the Sew Over It shops, though I have browsed their online store, but now I really wish I had gone before I left London.

I really enjoy Lisa's fabric hauls because they always turn up in a later What I Made This month video. She also does great pattern reviews and talks about running the business, something that I always find fascinating

Another one I've been idling through the back catalogue of is The Dyer's Notebook, which I had, embarrassingly, never heard of before Lara turned up on the Yarngasm podcast. It's full of her process, which, again I find really interesting. I have a week of coming up and I want to try a few new and different things, including yarn-dyeing, so this is one I go back to regularly.

(I've also been listening to Untold: The Daniel Morgan Murder, which is fascinating, but in no way cheerful).

As you'll hear on my upcoming What I've Been Reading This Month post, I've been reading the Harry Potter series. I'm halfway through Goblet of Fire at this point so it's all about to get quite dark. I've said before that I find Potter comforting, so I'm glad I'm reading it at the moment. Shame we don't all have time-turners though, right?

Lastly, Blogtacular. Oh Blogtacular, you just keep on giving don't you? I've got a post coming up about the day itself because it was wonderful outside of what it did for me and how it made me feel. But it has been really good to think back to that day, to reach out to the wonderful women I met and remind myself that community is what we need right now, not more division.

It's also been really lovely to write up my Blogtacular notes in pretty colours and then sieve them down further into an action plans. I found this great notebook from Oh No Rachio! when we were moving (I'd forgotten I had it!) so this is where all that is living at the moment. I was actually sad not to get the chance to say hi to Rachel at Blogtacular, so consider this a wave!

What are your current favourites?

Small Victories: Blogtacular 2016

There will be a fair few posts about Blogtacular coming up over the next few weeks, but I feel like some of what I took from the weekend needs some time to percolate before I share it. It was an intense weekend and one that, at this moment in time, feels like it was life-changing.

When I say 'life-changing' I do mean big changes - I came to a lot of big conclusions about my life and my future over the weekend that have resulted in pages and pages of notes, long chats with Rich and lots of plans. But, as Kate said in her Community talk, you have to wait until the story is ready.

The big story isn't ready yet.

So here are the little stories.

I have been lonely. 

Portsmouth is a new place for me. I have never lived outside of North London and I've blogged before about leaving a place that is so much a part of who I am. I was lucky in coming here that we already have friends here, that I am not so far from London that I can't pop up to visit friends and family (and attend a blogging conference!).

But I am now in a 9 - 5 job that does not allow me the time I once had to spend time with the people I love. My evenings are truncated and my weekends often sleepy. I have been lonely.

You cannot be lonely with the women of Blogtacular around you. I have never before attended an event at which every single person there was ready with a smile. Spaces in groups are opened up, you are ushered in instead of shouldered out. I've been chatting to the women I met there since and realised that I don't have to be lonely here - there are so many great women on my doorstep with open hearts and arms that the sending of an email, a gentle 'I'd like to hang out with you again' feels safe and good.

I didn't take care of myself.

In struggling with finding time in this newly conformist lifestyle, I have let so very much go. I didn't knit as much, I often found myself rushing to catch up with writing this blog and, most destructively, I didn't work out.

The last couple of days, I have got back on my yoga mat. Every evening, I would have preferred to collapse on the sofa with a cup of tea and Harry Potter, but instead I rolled out my mat and showed the hell up for myself.

It hasn't been pretty.

My suppleness has abandoned me. My strong 10 push ups are down to a meagre shaking and feeble one. My limbs feel rigid and my spine like a lampost - there is just no give in me anymore. Perhaps this physical stiffness has contributed to a recent brittleness of mind. I cannot bend, so when the pressure piles on, I break instead.

But no more of that. I roll out my mat and afterwards I reward myself with lots of water and a salt scrub in a hot shower. Every day I'll bend a little more and that's good too.

I lost sight of myself.

In trying to make sense of whether what I'm doing right now is right for me, I lost sight of the bigger picture. I was so focused on the minutiae of income and savings and career ladders, that I didn't stop to think of how many of those things are concerns of mine and how many are things that the world thinks ought to concern me.

Goodness and kindness, curiosity and adventure and play, creativity and wellbeing. These are the things that matter to me, that I consider the building blocks of a successful life for me.

The sending of an email, the daily rolling out of my yoga mat, the salt scrubs, the stitch here and there on a project, the scrawled pages of the thoughts in my head that are no longer just dreams but plans, real emerging step-by-step honest-to-goodness plans. All of these are small victories, but each is a stepping stone back to myself and forward into something better for me.

I'll blog later about the day itself. The bigger story will come later still, when it is ready. Right now, despite the plan, it is very much a beautiful dream that isn't quite ready for public scrutiny.

For now, I'm just grateful for the small victories.

With thanks to Will Ireland and Mollie Makes for the pics.