It’s time to get back to old school blogging.

This month, So Fawned turned eleven years old.

Yup. August 1, 2008 was the day I starting sharing my story, while pregnant with my daughter, over on Blogspot, as so many of us did. I wanted to create a journal of my pregnancy, connect with other moms, and just write, and post photos, and maybe feel a little less alone.

Blogging was barely a thing back then. It wasn’t an industry like it is now. No one was really using the word influencer or any of that jazz. You couldn’t even share a business on Facebook. Instagram didn’t exist.

It was the wild west of blogging.

Worldless Wednesday.

Mister Linky.

Photos with rounded edges.

I blogged for years before it became my “job” and So Fawned morphed into So Fawned Lifestyle, an online magazine style site, back to So Fawned. I lost MANY years of my archive in a domain screw up that was totally my fault when I was taking a bit of a hiatus from blogging.

But this place has always been somewhere I come back to and I think it’s time for a change.

I’m calling for a return to old school blogging. Not for whoever happens to be reading this, for myself. I started this space as somewhere that I could share my story. My ideas. My thoughts. The good and sometimes the shitty.

I know there are still some of you out there who I’ve met through blogging and who have been around since Gretchen, who is going into grade five this year, was still in my belly.

And to be honest, some parts of the blog world have felt to sterile, too impersonal, and I’ve decided that’s not what I want this space to be anymore. I followed a lot of “shoulds” instead of “wants” over my blogging career and it’s time to change that.

I’m coming back to So Fawned like it began.

Not giving a crap about SEO and keywords and alt tags. No more “niching down”. I’m going to write and share my life and loves like I used to because that’s what feels right and I’m following my gut.

I’m going to blog and my plants and my pets again. My daughter and my partner. My business and my life. I’m going to share my thrift finds again and tell you about good food I’ve eaten.

I’m going to share the damn Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte love and swoon about the fact that it’s almost fall.

I’m going to talk about the shit that’s important to me and the stuff that makes me HAPPY because that’s what I used to do and I miss it like whoa.

So, you’ll probably see this space change a bit over the next little while. No more overthinking what I’m going to share. More from the heart. More from my reality.

Just more me.

A movement back to connecting with the people who helped put me on the path to what I do every single day.

If I hadn’t started blogging, I wouldn’t have met so many of the incredible humans that I call friends to this day and I’ll always be grateful for that.

The blog universe was there for me when my daughter was born, when I struggled with breastfeeding, while I navigated crunchy motherhood, babywearing, becoming a single mother, nearly dying from sepsis, closing my retail store, moving away from my hometown and then back again, and becoming the person I am today… blogging has been the consistent thread of my life in one way or another for eleven years, which is longer than most other things in my life.

I thought about starting a new site… maybe just my name… but I’ve been So Fawned for a long time and it’s a part of me. So it can morph and change and become something new too.

And so, because I’m writing this in the midst of editing an eBook for one of my favourite people, I’m going to say adios and put this back out into the world.

It feels like coming home.