hew! These past few days have been a crazy whirlwind! I'm now in Texas about an hour outside of Austin sitting in a cabin at camp with a bunch of crazy awesome ladies preparing for the next few days of Texas Style Council's final event, an amazing conference/retreat! Right now it's just speakers and sponsors here prepping for tomorrow when the rest of the attendees get in. I hopped on a plan in LA last night at midnight, flew for two and a half hours to Austin and arrived at 5am, waited at the airport for a few hours and then got picked up and got to camp where I promptly took a huge nap! After my nap I took a shower and man oh man, it gave me life. I felt like I washed an entire airport off my body. So fresh and so clean clean. I can't wait for tomorrow and for the first keynote speech by Jenny of The Bloggess! I can't believe how many rad ladies I'll have spent time around this week, it's a little ridiculous. And inspiring.
I'm super excited that this event is so casual and focused on connecting with each other through stories. It's what brought me to blogging in the first place and it's felt like, over the years, things have strayed a bit from that, and even I haven't been immune to "going corporate" if you will. Blogging sort of took us all on a ride, but now feels like a time when we're all like, "Hey, I can do blogging however I want! I don't have to work with sponsors if I don't want, or aspire to have it be my full time job. I don't have to post the same DIY projects that everyone else is doing, I can do blogging MY way." It can be super easy to get swept up in it all and, I mean, it's all a part of the story, but I'm really looking forward to making blogging work for me, rather than feeling like I'm stuck in a grind working for my blog. The latter can start to feel soul sucking and uninspiring, but I'm so optimistic about the blog and blogging in general this year, which is the first time I've felt that way in quite a while.
![This print feels even more relevant today. We all joke about the dumpster fire of [insert year here], but the important message of this image to me is that *we persist* through the horrors. We stand, we fight— maybe for ourselves, maybe for oth](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/574dddd6d51cd4bc35c1609a/1730935170369-03GPKQ5NF73VAE65RHO6/image-asset.jpeg)
