A YEAR GONE BY

It feels like the cliche statement to make as we get closer to the end of the year but my oh my has twenty eighteen flown by. It truly feels like moments ago we were in the depths of winter with crazy snow that never seemed to go away, and yet here we are headed straight for the colder months again, seemingly in the blink of an eye. I've found myself looking back this week on photos, very much giving my own take on Facebooks 'this time last year' pop up, and I can't quite believe the difference. Sure it doesn't feel like a hot minute since we were donning woolly hats and wellies, but the photos show me just how much life has changed it that time period. My boys are most definitely boys now and really shaking away the last elements of babyhood - it's bittersweet but I just love reflecting back and seeing how much they've grown.

A whole year since we were picking pumpkins at the very same patch we visited this week, the same field we've been visiting since before Pip was even in my tummy or our lives and yet it always feels like we were only just there. Noahs' begun school in that year, I quit my job and became fully self employed, Patrick is a lot less sicky and a whole lot more diva, it's really been a year of good things with pretty much nothing we can overly complain about.

It's been a full 352 days since I handed my notice into my job and chose to take my hobby into a career, a move I've not regretted once since the very day I left. Don't get me wrong, working for yourself isn't always a bunch of roses and there are a lot of seriously hard times which I've openly spoken about - but they are out-measured completely by the positives. 

The past month I had a bit of a crisis of confidence and doubted myself a lot, from that I took myself away from social media for a wee while so I could concentrate on what is important and completely refocus. Now back and raring to go, the not-so-mid-year crisis spurred me to look back through all of the photos of last year and see just how far I've come. I know social numbers, blog views, brand collaborations themselves can tell me how much better I'm doing, but I think nothing really solidifies it quite the way photographic evidence does, and when I compared the pumpkin patch photos from last to this - I felt proud. 

I always felt like my photography was my weakest point, the Achilles heel in my blogging and something I felt that I didn't have the skills to improve on. Even till viewing the photos themselves I didn't really think there was much difference, but I can see it now. Of course I've not turned into any form of professional over twelve months and my photos are probably close to the furthest away from perfect you can get, but they have improved and that's all that truly counts to me. From the camera I'm using, to the styling, shooting and editing, I can see the difference and I'm truly happy about that.

I guess there is a lot of truth in the saying the only person you should be competing with is your former self - there is something about that quote that really resonates with me. It's something I intend to keep doing going forward, whenever I'm having a wobble or questioning myself, I'm going to reflect back and see just how far I've come and especially with this little corner of mine on the internet.