My Last Blog Post The Magic of Blogging

My Last Blog Post: The Magic of Blogging.

Gavin Wren Blogging

Hello my dear friends.

Two months have passed since I last published a recipe on my blog and I want to explain why. There are no excuses about being busy, or despair over increased demands of life making blogging hard. I’m going to tell you the exact reason why I started blogging, why I’m going to stop and some words about the exciting and fulfilling project that I’m refocussing my time upon.

I nervously began Le Petit Oeuf in July 2014, utterly petrified of pressing ‘publish’ on my first, highly inoffensive blog post. I was a hobby photographer, with threadbare experience of taking food photos and mortally terrified of putting a profile picture online, for fear of judgement. That’s why the header image for this post is a self-portrait, because I genuinely no longer care what you think, and it’s bliss.

Over three and a half years, I’ve written…come and read more…

Ganesha God of New Beginnings

Finding the Heart of my Blog

Gavin Wren Blogging

Why do I blog?

I’m surely not the first to ponder this and I doubt I’ll ever be the last. It seems a rite of passage for bloggers to go through an existential crisis around their future, at some point in their blogging career.

Today, I blog for the same reason that I began blogging, to give me an independent outlet for my creative urges, free of clients and briefs. A place where I can explore my ideas, unleashed from the shackles of outcomes and expectation.

Unwittingly, I may have created shackles of my own.

The Blogging Treadmill

The dreaded treadmill, when blogging shifts from a joyous, carefree path of self-expression into a burden of routine and schedules. The weekly post deadlines, the content planning, the social media scheduling (although I keep this to a bare minimum of three tweets a week, only advertising my…come and read more…

Bullied Bloggers

Bullied Bloggers

Gavin Wren Blogging

The State of the Blogosphere.

Bloggers are a funny bunch. There are nepotistic posses, crews and gangs who give each other props, RTs and likes. There are mavericks, out there to speak their truth and to hell with what anyone else thinks. There’s love & hate, lies & truth. We represent an unregulated, free to enter world, where anyone with access to the internet can add their junk to the pile, or put the icing on the cake.

The low barrier to entry of blogging makes it seem like the Wild West at times. There’s no regulation or official body and many of the blogger groups, collectives or award organisers are heavily sponsored by industry, or highly partisan towards a certain niche, meaning their message is ethically dubious and should be heeded with caution. I’m struggling to think of organisations in the blogosphere that are genuinely impartial.

However, there is… come and read more…

Ice cold and ready for summer, this dairy free banana milkshake with peanut butter is also vegan, perfect for a hot day and anyone's diet, it's a summer drink that will keep you cool and your tastebuds tantalised. Made with any non-dairy milk, frozen banana, a smattering of peanut butter and topped with crushed pecans, it's even more delicious than it looks.

Dairy Free Banana Milkshake with Peanut Butter, Shame and Sharing Life Experiences

Gavin Wren Dairy free baking, Drinks, Vegan

What’s more important in life? Honest, open connection to other people or a dairy free banana milkshake recipe mixed with peanut butter and topped with pecans? The answer lies in their similarities, as you’ll see…

I’m lost. Really, I don’t know what I’m doing. I hit two hundred blog posts just over a month ago, I’m about to hit three years of blogging and I’m reaching a creative hiatus. I promised myself at the beginning that blogging will be what I want it to be. I swore never to cling to a certain subject or style, simply because that’s what I did last week; it’s the creative freedom which brought me to blogging, so creative freedom is what I must defend if I’m to continue to thrive in my blogging.

To be frank, I enjoy writing about life the most. Food may feature, because there is something utterly compelling about… come and read more…

Bloggers are self seeking idiots and people taking photos of art, rather than looking.

Bloggers Are a Bunch of Self Seeking Idiots

Gavin Wren Food Blogging, Writing

But first, let me clarify something – I love blogging.

I think it’s one of the most fulfilling, engaging and self-nurturing things that I’ve ever done in my life. I’ve found the process of creatively developing my own ideas, designs, words and photographs, without any client briefs, deadlines or meetings utterly liberating on a creative level. Having the freedom to write whatever the hell I want, whenever I want, has been beautifully empowering.

During two and a half years of blogging, I’ve written thoughts and feelings that I didn’t realise were inside me. I’ve transcended the world of keen amateur photography to become a professional food photographer. Through attending events and meeting people, I’ve gone back to university, to study a Masters degree in Food Policy. My personal and professional world has changed unreservedly, purely as a result of pursuing blogging.

Therefore, I believe that blogging as a personal indulgence… come and read more…

Teaching Photography at Blogger Skills Academy

Find Your Future in Blogging – Two Years & a Career in Blogging VI

Gavin Wren Food Blogging, Writing

Welcome to the final part of my super special two year anniversary post, the end of the journey! This is all about following your heart and finding the things that matter to you. It’s all in there, you just need to look. If you haven’t read Part 5 you can catch up with it here. Give it Away. I’ve always felt an urge to help people. perhaps that’s why I started a blog, because there’s …