Happy Birthday to The Hungry Australian! A year has flown by and I’m so happy to be here, blogging.
I started The Hungry Australian on a whim a year ago with this post — Chinese Sausage Omelette — to find the joy in writing again. One problem with being a control freak and a perfectionist is that you set yourself very high standards. This can be helpful in some ways but hugely unhelpful in others.
Now I’ve always been a writer — and been lucky enough to be paid for my writing since 1996 — but in 2011 my writing suddenly ground to a halt. I was on an extended maternity break and writing was suddenly no longer a side-line but the main event. Overnight, it became intimidating to me; I became crippled by self-doubt and paralysed by indecision.
So blogging was a way for me to find the joy in writing again. It has absolutely brought this back to me, and so much more besides. A year ago I would never have imagined that today:
- I would have food blogging friends all over Australia and across the globe;
- I would be approached daily by companies looking to promote themselves on my site;
- I would be paid to develop recipes and to visit restaurants and write about my experiences;
- I would be selling my photographs;
- I would be co-hosting a monthly, dessert-themed bloghop with my fellow Sweet Adventurers, JJ from 84th and 3rd, Nic from Dining with Stud, Jennifer from Delicieux and KC from The Capers of the Kitchen Crusader.
- I would have set up the Adelaide Food Bloggers Group on Facebook, which now has 41 members.
- I would be organising the third national Australian Food Bloggers Conference;
- I would be the Dining Down Under columnist at award-winning group blog, Honest Cooking.
- I would have a regular, paid gig as Australian and New Zealand food expert at About.com, part of the New York Times company; and
- Some of my food blogging heroes would actually know who I am and share my work with their followers.
I mention all of this with sincere gratitude to illustrate what can happen when you do something you love and you work hard at it. I didn’t have a plan when I set out on this blogging journey. All I wanted to do was to produce work that I was happy with and everything else just happened along the way.
However, there are a few things I’ve learned about life that I think apply equally well to blogging, namely:
- You get out of it what you put into it;
- If you don’t ask the answer is no; and
- Feel the fear and do it anyway. You only feel confident about something after you’ve done it.
I still have a long way to go before I feel close to being the blogger I would like to be — the other thing about being a perfectionist is that you are never, ever done — but I’m enjoying every minute of the ride.
So to all of you have been a part of my blogging journey, I want to say an enormous THANK YOU. If I could, I’d like to bake an enormous cake and send you all a slice. Your kind comments and feedback have felt like a virtual hug, your shares and re-tweets have been a virtual a high-five and your paid commissions have been a welcome a pat on the back. I’m enormously thankful and so very, very grateful to all of you.
Ultimately, blogging is about being part of a community. So thank you for welcoming me so warmly into yours and for making my stay so much fun.
Christina xx
