Creativity and the importance of inhalation

I didn't really anticipate waiting till I was over halfway done with this pregnancy to let it out into the "wild," but I'm really glad I chose to just let this time be for me.  I always knew that being pregnant would be something somewhat difficult for my brain to wrap itself around.  Years ago, when I was style blogging daily, I figured I'd announce pretty early on, that way I'd get to blog through the whole thing.  But the timing of this actually ended up being during a time when I was taking a creative "inhale," stepping back from sharing so much of my life.  If you guys have read Amanda Palmer's The Art of Asking (which I highly recommend), you're familiar with her concept of creative inhale and exhale periods.  Basically, in order to keep creating externally (like, stuff that other people can see and experience), you have to take periods of creative inhalation.  Times when you are letting yourself be quiet and recuperate.  Let your creative juices build back up.  Constantly creating can completely drain your ability to keep creating and letting yourself take a step back for some self care time is so necessary.  I didn't realize that constantly running my blog, solo, for almost 7 years was probably unsustainable.  I would feel bad about myself for not being able to keep up the pace of posting and creating that I had in the early days, and I also couldn't figure out the focus of the blog once I started doing more than just outfit posts.  "Lifestyle" was what it fell under but I could never quite get a grasp on my focus, and as I continued, it felt more and more scattered.

It's important to me now, knowing that constant creative exhalation unsustainable, to build in creative inhalation time more consistently in my life.  No one likes feeling burned out, especially when you're burned out on something you actually love.  As I head back into a season of re-entering a creative exhale, I'm staying super mindful of giving myself the inhalation time that I need to recharge my creativity.  Especially with having a kid in the near future, this will be even more important.  

There's a lot of talk in the blogosphere about balance.  Finding it, trying to figure out if balance is even possible, keeping it.  When I think about balance, I think it is possible, but I also keep in mind that balance is never something easy or something that can happen without intention.  If you're walking a tightrope you have to focus on balance constantly, especially at first.  I can't imagine trying to walk a tightrope and being able to do anything else.  Balance takes a lot of focus and intention.  Eventually, like actual tightrope walkers, being able to balance comes more easily.  You've taught your mind and body what balance looks and feels like and it's easier for it to do it second nature.  I sure don't have this balance thing figured out, and as soon as this bebe is born a whole new wrench will be thrown into my balance which I'll have to factor in.  I'm trying to approach balance as more of one of those things that is a practice, not something you find and keep (or lose).  

Delightfully Tacky has been many things over the years. It's changed and evolved, waxed and waned.  It has always been important to me that this space be focused on something I'm passionate about.  With this re-launch, my focus is living a creative and joyful life.  And more importantly, being joyful and creative, not just looking like it on social media.  I want this space to answer the question, "how can I be more creative and joyful today?" not just for me but for you guys too!

So, longwinded as that may be (you guys know how I can get), welcome to the new Delightfully Tacky!  I'm excited for this space to be inspiring and fun, empowering and lighthearted.  I feel like  a bit of a dinosaur in the blogging world these days, but I'm happy to be a part of this community and can't wait to be an active contributor again!

We're moving to...

As if launching a blog, and announcing I'm pregnant wasn't enough big news for one day, I've got one more.  We're moving to Alaska!

A few months ago when I was still on the road in the Brave the plan was to come back home and move into the Brave with Dan.  Well, turns out things didn't quite work out that way, and while I still have dreams and plans of some day being a full time RV family, for now Alaska is the best choice for us for a variety of reasons. 

My parents live in Anchorage and since Dan's family no longer lives in the Tacoma area, we don't have any family support down in Washington any more.  Coupled with some health care reasons, moving to Alaska made the most sense for us, at least for my pre-natal care, birth, and newborn months.  We don't know if this will be a permanent move, for all we know we'll be back in the Seattle area some time next year, or maybe somewhere completely different.  Our living situation beyond a year from today is pretty up in the air, but for now being close to my family and having that support is most important.  It's hard to move, especially with so many unknowns, but we're taking this leap and seeing where it takes us.  I have no clue where we'll be one year from today!

And on top of that all, we're actually moving today.  Yeah.  Our little Honda CRV and our 5x8 Uhaul trailer are all packed up and later today we are driving away from our cute little Tacoma house and heading up the AlCan.  Of course it'll take us 5 or 6 days to actually get to Alaska, but if you've been following on snapchat and instagram you've been getting some behind the scenes teasers about what's going on.  Packing up, cleaning the house for our renters who are moving in right after we leave, and loading the Uhaul!  We're hitting the road!

We will be living with my parents (#lifegoals).  They have a small apartment over their garage, so we'll have our own space, which is nice, so over the next few months I'll be working hard to make it our own, get it feeling like a home, and creating a little den for our little one!  I'll share some before photos of the space soon, I'm super excited to give it a fresh look!

Guess what!

I'm growing a human!  Yup!  I'm 23 weeks along and we are super stoked.  I didn't really intend on waiting this long to publicly announce it, but time flew by and I was waiting for the blog to be live again to make the announcement, so here we are well over halfway through with this pregnancy!  I'm actually 21 weeks along in the photo about and 15 in the photos below.  I've been taking weekly progress/outfit photos ever since week 8 so I'll be putting those up a couple times a week until we catch up to where I am currently.  I didn't want to dump a ton of maternity photos on you guys at once.

If you're wondering, no Delightfully Tacky isn't going to become all things pregnancy/mom.  Obviously it will show up in some ways, like maternity outfits and putting together the baby's new room, but I really want to keep the focus of this space more on creativity.  Honestly, I want Delightfully Tacky to be less personal, in some ways.  I still love writing about life and thoughts but all that stuff that doesn't really fit here.  My solution was to start a different blog where I can feel free to write about more personal stuff, more lengthy, word-vomit posts, and stuff about becoming a parent and anything related to that part of my life.  Having a fresh place for just that stuff feels so great and I'm excited to be able to blog about life without feeling the pressure of having to look a certain way to bring in sponsors or new readers.  It'll be way more casual and journal-like.  If you want to head over there and read along, the new blog is called The Brave Life.

But anyway, Dan and I are excited and have many thoughts and feelings about the whole thing.  We won't be announcing the sex online (at least that's the plan for now), mostly because I'd like to keep some things for myself.  Sharing life publicly on the blog for so many years has made me appreciate having some special secrets for myself.

We have some (sort of) baby related news that I'll be sharing later today.  Lots of big life changes!  

Welcome to the new Delightfully Tacky!

Woo!  It's been a long time coming!  I'm excited to have this place freshened up and live once again.  All my archives should be intact, but let me know if there are any broken links or errors! I've got more news and fun stuff to share in the next couple hours, but in the mean time, go ahead and click around!  If you're new and want to add Delightfully Tacky to your reader, you can follow on Bloglovin' here! 

Sacred Secrets

17 weeks pregnant and no one knows except those friends and family we've told verbally.  To be honest, it's refreshing.  For someone who has had her life broadcast online for years, keeping this to myself has been really nice.  Not dealing with droves of unwanted advice or attention, being able to feel normal, and feeling like this isn't a big deal has been incredibly nice.  I know I will announce online at some point, at least when I'm so big it's not possible to deny the fact that I'm carrying around an extra human inside me, but for now, just letting my life be mine is a luxury I haven't let myself have in 8 years.  

That being said, I am looking forward to talking about it online, since it does affect a lot that will be happening soon.  I want to share baby den decor ideas, get advice from other moms (ah, that word is still weird to think about applying to myself) on various things, talk about us moving to Alaska and why.

My friend was saying that I'm probably documenting this whole process because I'm a blogger, but actually, I haven't been.  Maybe I'll regret that later, but for now, I don't have to blog about it, and that's nice.  And honestly there hasn't been much to blog about "it."  I haven't felt sick, I'm not really showing very much (just feeling chubby-ish), and feel pretty normal all around.  I think I may have felt the first flutters of "it" moving inside me a few days ago, but other than that, not a lot that is noteworthy has happened.  I had my first prenatal appointment when I was up in Anchorage 2 weeks ago and got an ultrasound where I saw the baby, which was bizzare.  But most of my thought energy has been consumed with editing and taking wedding photos for my clients and trying to make a final decision on whether or not we're moving to Alaska.  Boring stuff, really.  No profound thoughts on being a mother or carrying a child.  No solid answers to the endless, "how do you feel?" queries, and I'm never sure whether they're referring to my mental or physical state, and either way the answer is pretty boring.