Little Miss Joey

Little Miss Joey the blog started as a place of nothingness soon to be filled with rambles of my photographic adventures and inspiring mondays, just because I like Mondays! My friend Nicky and I wanted to improve our photography and that gave me the focus I had been lacking; we would post to match each other, always with a photo, never more than two posts difference. This was our 2011, an amazing year for us both, I dare say. Our photography did improve and we took great joy in it and the world was our oyster.

When 2012 arrived, I thought it would be more of the same, but what things stay the same, really? Change is not necessarily bad, it just is. Things change and the world keeps spinning as they say, and for one to enjoy it fully, much as we did in 2011, one has to adapt and go with the flow a little bit. When I look back, 2011 was a year of change too. Oxford became more of my home then; I realised fully how lucky I am to have the friends I have, friends for life, the ones I'll truly endeavour to keep come what may; LMJ appeared on the scene and gave me space to be the funny me (yep, I've accepted I'm funny, occasionally!); I improved on my running and on my photography. No dream was too big and I was happy, because I let myself be happy. 

Why am I going on about what was back when? Because I had a little think about things and I realised LMJ wasn't making me happy anymore. She had become this little piece of me that tried to amuse me when all I wanted was to curl up on the sofa and be miserable about all the dreams that hadn't come true in 2012. Or 2011, for that matter! LMJ was eating into my precious time and the time of my projects and that was annoying, really! I thought the best thing would be to end it and stop attempting world domination through cuteness even before it had been achieved (I have been running low on my world domination attempts, but LMJ never sleeps!). And then I had a hot shower after a run... and with it an epiphany!

Do you know how amazing hot showers after good runs are for the brain? If not, I'd recommend you give it a go, you may really crack the next big thing in your line of business. Anyway... Photo editing was the real problem. See, when Nicky and I started, we barely did any editing. Interestingly, as we improved our skills and technique and explored other creative angles, our thirst for editing increased as well. We became more demanding with the quality of our images, rightly so, but at a huge cost for me... it was now a burden to always have to have decent images for the blog, beautifully composed and edited. This was the single most time consuming aspect of the blog, the one truly preventing me from concentrating on my life's projects (more of that at some point). The writing was easy, for LMJ is an expert in rambling on (as you can tell), it was the photo editing all along, that little bugger. 

Insert a mega smile in said hot shower and I no longer have to feel pressured nor say bye bye to this mini me that is LMJ. I'll just live without the perfect image! I'll give LMJ more creative freedom to share more of her take on things, I'll speak in the third person whenever I feel like, I'll make use of my iPhone and Instagram and whatever gives me a way in without taking over the rest of my life. Don't get me wrong, photography is still a huge passion, but sometimes love needs a little bit of distance and a little bit of its own pace and I shall be photographing away as now, just without the blog pressure.

All of this to say that things change and being happy is knowing when to embrace it. LMJ evolved to no longer being about LMJ's photography; LMJ has evolved to being about LMJ, whatever LMJ is at the time of writing.