Welcome back to Part 4 of my special two-year anniversary series. In this installment I explore how to recognise your true nature, how to focus on what genuinely matters, and how to let go of what doesn’t.
Sometimes it’s hard to see the big picture when you’re surrounded by so many details, but if you keep moving you’ll eventually gain perspective. The photo above was taken in Cannock Chase Forest during a 600-mile drive to Inverness, a trip when I spent a week touring and camping in the Scottish Highlands in winter.
If you haven’t read Part 3 you can catch up with it here.
Fact 7. The most likes I’ve ever had on social media is 8,041 for a photo of a caramelised onion dip I made which Bon Appetit magazine re-Instagrammed.
The Pain…
Blogging has helped me discover my true nature and has steered the course of my life. It’s brought out moments of frustration—technical failures, lost posts and the occasional meltdown after entering a competition only to have things go wrong. There have been flying vegetables, fists thumping desks and colourful language muttered, shouted or kept simmering under the surface, ready to explode at inopportune moments.
…and the Joy.
But blogging isn’t only about struggle. I get enormous joy from many aspects of the work, especially food writing and photography. I had a reasonable grounding in photography before I began, but focusing on food made my skills and enthusiasm soar. There’s a thrill in the chase and a deep satisfaction when a sentence clicks into place or a scene is captured exactly as I imagined.
I was surprised by how much I enjoy writing. Crafting words gives me great fulfilment; it’s a pure pursuit that requires very little equipment. Words feel malleable, like dough you can shape into something nourishing—then glaze and bake into a finished piece that feeds others intellectually and emotionally.
Fact 8. The posts I enjoy writing the most generally get the least pageviews. Blogs are visual mediums first and foremost.
Which Path to Follow?
At one point my life reached a crossroads: either commit to my blog and related projects with greater intensity or walk away. Since I wasn’t enjoying my job, I chose to leave and take some freelance work. That decision gave me room to develop the blog and grow a new career direction.
The first big change I made was personal: I got a puppy. Bernard, a black miniature poodle, arrived and consumed a lot of my time and attention, but quickly became someone I adore.
Fact 9. Miniature poodles are the second most intelligent dog and one of the longest living breeds.
I started publishing consistently, producing two recipe posts a week while testing other ideas—designing a range of greetings cards, trying to organise a regatta on the Long Water at Hampton Court Palace, even planning a house build. Many of these projects never progressed, but they were important experiments. If a project repeatedly hit barriers, it signalled that it wasn’t the right path, so I archived it and moved on to what flowed more naturally.
One of my bigger disappointments was a proposal to the Lottery Heritage Fund and talks with the Royal British Legion about creating a field of poppies to commemorate the fallen of WWI. The bid in 2013 was declined, and shortly afterwards a different poppies project was announced at the Tower of London. It was a humbling lesson in timing and recognition.
True Nature, or Flow.
I realised blogging mattered deeply because it created moments of flow—times when work felt effortless and completely absorbing. Initially I struggled to see how blogging fit into a sustainable income model. Making significant money from blogging is hard, and the idea of cluttering my site with ads didn’t appeal. I’m not drawn to technical work either; code makes me frustrated, and ‘monetisation’ clashes with the intrinsic pleasure I take from the creative process.
Fact 10. I hate the technical stuff. If I could have a partner in blogging, they would need to be a techie web coding type person.
In late 2015 I replied to a PR request for a photographer and was met with unexpected enthusiasm for my images. That response surprised me—I’m English and inclined toward modesty—yet it was the nudge I needed. I began advertising myself as a freelance food photographer and work started appearing. Opportunities came without unnecessary resistance; the path opened up organically. Photography and freelance commissions found me rather than the other way around, and that was the first clear sign of how a career could grow out of blogging.