A Work in Progress + New RSS Feed!

If you’re a follower of this little blog, you know that my posts lately have been few and far between. While yes, I’ve been busy putting in my 40 hours a week at my day job, and yes, I’ve spent many nights doing freelance design work for Graphic Grace… there are more reasons to why I haven’t been writing.

I struggle with the need to feel that everything is “complete.” I want my blog’s style, design, and content to reflect that. When things don’t feel complete, I don’t want to invite people in. This is much like my home— I want our home to feel clean, organized, and welcoming. When it isn’t, I keep our blinds closed and don’t invite people over. This is starting to sound like one of those “Things I’m Afraid To Tell You” posts, yeah? But it is what it is. I’m private about my “work in progress” projects, and I don’t like people to see the messy path I stumble down to get to an end result I’m proud of.

Here’s the thing. Nothing in my life is ever complete. Life is a work in progress. I am finally, finally coming to the realization that this is okay.

I’m not exactly sure at what point I started taking my blog too seriously, because sometime in the past year, blogging stopped being fun for me. Instead of just being a way to make new friends, keep family updated, and get my creative fix via writing, it became work. I learned what a “niche” was, and suddenly became obsessed with figuring out where my blog “fit in.” Hello Danielle, this is not the fifth grade. Stop it with the peer pressure already.

Side note: My full name is Danielle. My nickname is Dani. I get such a kick out of it when new friends don’t know this. Joshua will call me “Danielle” whenever, and our friends will say “Danielle? Who’s Danielle?” It’s me, silly. My family & close friends call me Danielle or Dani interchangeably, but I started introducing myself as Dani when I got married (because Ploscik is so much more complicated than my maiden name). It made the whole thing shorter, easier and… well, moving on.

So it was suddenly a question of what my niche was. And like I said, I became obsessed with finding the picture perfect niche for my blog.

I started blogging as a Marine fiancée when Joshua left for the Afghanistan deployment. Military blog?

Then, when he returned home, I left my design job in New York to move down to North Carolina to be with him, and I started blogging about starting my own freelance design business. Business/design blog?

Soon enough, we were planning our wedding, and my focus centered around wedding gowns, flowers, cakes, favors, invitations, photographers, etc. Wedding blog?

After the wedding, business started dying down. Freelance became my side job when I went back to corporate work. I started sharing bits of our lives (lifestyle blog?), but that’s around when I became too focused on what my blog was supposed to be instead of just enjoying it.

And while I may or may not have stayed up until 3am every night the past 2 weeks attempting to create a new blog for that “fresh start” feeling, and I may or may not have ditched it last minute to instead focus on building upon what I already have (Hard Corps Love), like it or not— I’m going to work at being okay if things are messy.

That’s right! Hard Corps Love is staying, but moving. To Wordpress. In the next few days. I’m making some small tweaks— changing the colors and a few things in my design to make it brighter & more “me,” thanks to your comments.

The biggest issue about moving to Wordpress is that Google Friend Connect can’t be used there, so if you’d like to keep following Hard Corps Love, please add us to your RSS feed (I personally use Google Reader) and update our feed address to the following:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/hardcorpslove

Subscribe in a reader

Note this is a NEW RSS feed, and the current one will no longer be updated. What this means is, if you're already following in a Reader, you won't receive new blog posts from us anymore unless you update to the above feed address.

Another option is for readers to receive updates via email. I was skeptical about doing this at first, but it seems pretty streamlined in the blogging world. So if you'd like to receive new posts from Hard Corps Love to your email, this one is for you.

Enter your email address:


Delivered by FeedBurner

I also created accounts with both BlogLovin’ and Networked Blogs, depending on your following preferences. If I missed any that you use, please let me know & I’ll try to add it there as well.

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Last but not least, Hard Corps Love finally has a Facebook page! I’ll love you forever if you’re my first few “fans.” Let’s be Facebook buds, if we aren’t already.

So what you can expect from us? Never forced writing. Always a genuine account of what we’ve been up to. Chapters of our love story as they unfold. Photos. Maybe some vlogs. Tips and tricks in life we pick up along the way. Stories of family, friends, and people we love. Military life, since it’s a huge part of who and where we are as long as Joshua is enlisted and I’m working for the government. Perhaps a guest post or two from my sweet husband.

The biggest reason I blog is to connect. With you. I have made some incredible friends through blogging, especially in the milspouse community, but also with all kinds of—

wait for it—

niches.

Might I also add that it took me like, 6 months to figure out how to say that word? Nishay? Neesh? Finally, a dear friend told me— “Dani, just say *bitch* with an n instead of a b.”

Which really, couldn’t be more fitting. Niche, you little biche, you!

Hope to see you all on the flip side!