I've always been a great documenter of things, I scrapbooked, I take a billion photos, much to my families dismay and I have been a blogger since bloggers weren't even in fashion.  I've loved my blog, I've hated my blog and my writing style and photography has changed a lot over the last 13 years.

Here's the thing though, my brain doesn't work as many people's, my part autistic, part bipolar thought processes are not quite so straight forward and add some long term bipolar meds in there and wahey, you're in for a mixed-up cornucopia of nonsense on some days.

I've just come back from a (possibly life-changing but too early to tell) solo holiday to the north of Tenerife, I left my Macbook at home and took only my camera, my iPhone, oh and an overpacked suitcase filled with more than I needed.

I wanted to remember everything that I'd done and as I had no one to remind me and my thought processes are often jumbled, I started writing a kind of list every day on Facebook, not just a list, it had an added commentary as well as the collected thoughts of the random things that go on inside my head every day.  After a week I'd grown to love the new shorthand way of writing and after doing a little research I've found it also makes good accessible reading.

I've had so much great feedback from it and found a whole new love of writing in a completely different style that I've decided to start writing my thoughts on my everyday life in the same way.  The only thing is that I'm not always standing in the crater of a volcano or going on a jeep safari so I've decided to just start by doing a weekly post but it will be a collation of my daily thoughts.

My next post will be a collated post of my week in Tenerife as it was written in the moment every evening, although I might correct some of my "in the moment" grammar as writing long posts with one finger is trepidatious, to say the least.

Now, I could have just started with my "Today I Have..." posts but not all of you lovely readers are also friends with me on Facebook and I did it through my personal profile and not my page because it was intended to just be something for me. 

It may not work, it may not translate to my everyday life and that's why I'm doing a roundup post each week at first. If I can think of enough to write though, well, we see how it goes and if you are one of my Facebook friends, feel free to skip the next post and I'll see you all on the other side, probably on a Wednesday!

Why don't companies want honest reviews? Brand influencers, read this now!

Influencer marketing is on the rise with companies paying bloggers and vloggers varying amounts of money or product to gain their endorsement through reviews but I've recently become acutely aware that some in the community are only interested in having good reviews, now, I guess that might make sense but I'm talking about 3 separate situations I've encountered where my free speech was encumbered.

Situation 1, when I took my critical concerns about a product to its supplier I was asked: "will you mention this, will it affect your review?"

Situation 2, a review was changed and all of my irks were removed making it look like I was ridiculously over-enthusiastic about something which I actually didn't like.

Situation 3, a holiday cottage owner wrote to me after my honest review of his property and said he was disappointed by my review and I shouldn't have written the things I did, especially as a travel writer.

A great business mentor once told me one of her most valuable pieces of advice, that you should always be true to yourself and that's how I approach blogging, content creation and reviews.  I am one of the most positive people and so if I find issues with things, be it a product or a service, you can be sure that I'm not just doing it for the sake of it, it's like my blog, one of the things I hear from my readers is that they appreciate how honest I am about my own life, I never pretend to be living a perfect life with the most amazing children doing extraordinary things every day, that's why I don't blog every day because sometimes I'm just busy with work and nothing else is happening.

I am slightly irked and visibly cross at being asked to only provide positive reviews, I do always say good things but if there are issues then you, the reader, the consumer who might buy that product or service need to know about these things, after all, you are never going to trust a word I say again if I fail to point out a serious shortcoming and you go and part with your own hard earned cash only to get less than you expected.

As long as I share my life and my work on this thing we call the internet I will continue to write honestly, the good with the bad, the positives and the negatives, I will not only be true to myself but also to you, the readers whom I hold so dear in my heart.

If we, the writers are not allowed to give honest opinions is this not a form of dictatorship?

I've actually heard of someone giving an honest review this week and being told that she wouldn't be writing that if she were paid, that's not true actually, she would, she has integrity and is one of the most honest people I know.

I'm not sure what your opinions are on this but I feel really strongly that if anything, influencers should not just be saying positive things because they're paid for a review, isn't an honest brand endorsement far better?

With this kind of marketing technique getting bigger all of the time, we need to do something before it's too late and I for one would rather walk away from a company expecting a dishonest review just because they've paid me.

Looking Back on 11 Years of Blogging

Today my blog is 11 years old, 11 years, it's a quarter of my life and I can't really put into words just what an achievement it feels like to have gotten to today.  When I tentatively wrote my first post there's no way I could have possibly imagined that I would still be sitting here today typing in anger with my noisy, heavy fingers, I type quickly and I almost punch the keyboard with my digits as I tell my stories of love, life, travel, adventures, parenting, mental health and the rest of the giant cornucopia I have created and curated over the years.

In this, my daily documentation of sometimes everything that I am, I have laughed with you all, I have wept in the darker moments as I pounded my keyboard wanting to get the words out so they didn't hurt anymore.  I have written at 3 am when tipsy and at 5 am when my teenagers were toddlers and loved nothing better than to get up at quite frankly unreasonable hours of the day!

I remember writing with joy when Paul and I renewed our vows after 10 happy years of marriage and I also recall the sadness of the day when I had to write that he had left.  This weblog really is the story of my life, but not just my life, the life of a family, the life and death of a marriage and the rebirth of a woman dealing with her own mental health issues on a day to day basis.  There have been times when I censored myself and only wrote about the good things but it feels so much better now to be real all of the time, luckily even in the dark times I can usually manage a little humour and this is me in my actual life, I can still find humour in darkness, I think it's possibly that which gets you through the bad days and tough times.

Just lately, or at least for the last 6 months as I've seen my readership rise and rise it's become clear that I have found my niche, I'd love my niche to be travel because I love writing about travel and I do when I can but it's obvious now, what I excel at writing about is dating and relationships, it's not even necessarily mine, it's just a topic I seem to be able to write about with ease.  It's the perfect subject and there's no end of stories to write about, I'm certainly thankful for dating sites and for friends who are happy to share their stories and not mind at all that I write about them.  They all think it's hilarious that it's only now, nearly 20 years after Sex and the City that I'm watching it thinking "ooh, that Carrie, she's writing about the same kinds of things that I do" and then realising she wrote it first!

I'm not sure if I shall always write about dating, the great thing about not having one set theme on my blog is that you can write about whatever I want and for the most part I genuinely sit down each night and the words come out, I think whilst I adore photography, writing is perhaps what I was meant to do, it's in my heart and my soul and if I have one goal I want to achieve in the next 5-10 years it's to become a successful writer.  Don't worry though I shall not be giving up photography anytime soon, I feel there's a natural synergy between the two and when they are aligned correctly you have the ability to create something magical and as my friends all call me Magical Mandy it was obviously meant to be!

Taking a moment

I hope you'll forgive me for having a moment, I know, it's my age, right?  Not one of those moments though but I just want to take a moment to say thank you, my blog is continuing to grow every day, on mostly every day I get over 1k hits now and according to my stats I have 5k more readers than I did 6 months ago, this makes me happy, I've really found my writing style over the last couple of years and next week on the 28th my blog will officially be 11 years old!

This place where I come to collect my thoughts and make sense of the world, this place where I share the best and the worst of my life, mostly though I just ramble, it's somewhat of a talent of mine you know!  I'm not someone who is constantly thinking about the future, I try to live each day like it might be my last, a life of no regrets, lots of mistakes but no regrets because everything I am now is a result of the journey it took to get me here.

In January I made more income from writing than I did from photography for the first time ever and that in itself is a huge achievement because there's a big difference between the photography and writing industries and I'm really just at the start of my writing career despite doing it for longer than photography!!

Today we, that's Harriet, Looby, Abigail and I are off to the Scarborough Sealife Centre for an exclusive event, look out for news about that next week, I also have so much writing to catch up on, places I've been, events I've experienced and some fab new products to share too.   Tonight my best girls, Harriet, Laura and Li are all going to be with me and we are going to have a long overdue catch up followed by dancing at Madame Koo, I have a newfound love of the real world, I suspect because we're on the slow rise into spring and my zest for life is returning after the long dark winter, in this last week, I've seen 2 musicals, 2 comedy shows, went dancing and even kissed a boy, here's to more weeks like last week rather than the week before.

Ooh, I went back to Twitter this week, I know I said a month but I just need it for my business, however, it's now taking approximately 20 minutes a day rather than 20 hours a day, I don't have a lot of chats but I have so many goals to achieve I can't really afford to sit chatting on there, I'm choosing real life over online life (I know, I'm a blogger, that's an oxymoron at the very least) every single day of the week.  I've also been thinking about what happens when I do meet someone, do I go into hiding and never speak about it on my blog or do I just continue to be me and write about it, well I'm not exactly sure what the answer is but if I meet someone who doesn't already know about my blog I figure I'll just not tell them, I'll keep them off social media and then maybe a couple of years in I'll tell them, haha!  Maybe it's just safer if I meet someone who already knows about my blog?  Obviously, we have to find each other first and that's an adventure I'll definitely keep writing about!

When You Wish Upon A Star

Today, I was delighted to receive confirmation that I'd been accepted as a writer by Huffington Post UK, if you don't know of Huff Post, well, you must have been living in a cave, in the mountains somewhere near the Himalayas, Huffington Post is massive and now I get to write for them, I might have jumped up and down, I may have even squealed a little! 😉  The main question on people's lips is what I'm going to write about, well, to be honest, I don't have a brief and I can write as often or as little as I'd like, I'm going to aim for once a month and will no doubt concentrate on my current speciality subjects, the parenting of teens and dating, I had wondered about writing anonymously so that I could say some things I can't say on here but I have no doubt that someone somewhere would find it and also what's the point of writing anonymously when the main point is to grow your readership and further your career.

For some time now I've set my career goals on writing, it's not that I don't want to continue to be a professional photographer, I mean that's not exactly a title that can be withdrawn but with a houseful of teenagers and animals I need to work extra hard and there are only so many portrait sessions you can shoot every weekend without becoming physically and mentally exhausted and I know because this happened to me in the year when I was shooting 10 sessions on a Saturday, 10 on a Sunday and having all of the images edited and the galleries live by a Monday.  The joy of writing is that you can do it from anywhere and as I've said in the past, when the kids don't need me to be here any longer, my goal is to be a digital nomad, I'd love to have met someone by then that I can share that adventure with, maybe in a cute little VW campervan?

Anyway, I digress, my current situation is that winter is once again coming and this year my plan is to write, write with all of my heart, my passion and my life, I want to tell the world my story but as my story changes and evolves from week to week I find that I sometimes can't keep up!  I have several unfinished posts and just lately I've also started to write some posts I've written just for me so they're just going to lay in my drafts until such a day when I can share them, maybe I won't ever be able to but they're part of a journey I'm on and should everything work out in the long term it would be amazing to be able to publish them in retrospect.  Sorry if I'm being vague, bear with me as it's all I have right now.

You know, I have always loved social media because of its immediacy and I being an immediate sort of girl who lives in the moment and always wears her heart on her sleeve find it's such a brilliant way to get instant feedback, it's also easier to delete a post if I suddenly realise I've essentially just said something completely stupid or ridiculous, what, me, say something ridiculous? I hear you ask, why yes, I know it's hard to believe...

So, here's the current plan, I know what I want in my future and every night I stand outside and I wish on a star - 

Starlight, Star bright, 

I wish I may, I wish I might,

have this wish I wish tonight

yes, I, Mandy Charlton, aged 42 years really do that but you should never underestimate the power of a wish to the stars or the universe, they've been around for millions of years after all!  I do tend to wish for the same thing every night for a little consistency and no, I'm not going to tell you what it is because that would be a wish breaker.  What I will say is that I've been asking the stars for many years and always been terribly grateful to get the things I've asked for, I do of course always say thank you!

So what's around the corner I just can't say but I know the stars are listening and it's just a matter of time and patience, now out you go, if it's a clear and twinkly night tonight, just stand outside and make your wish and you just never know what might happen, you just have to promise though that if your wishes truly do come true you'll come right back here and tell me all about it.

10 Years of Blogging, A Celebration

On the 28th of February 2006 I made my first tentative post on this very blog, I didn't for one moment think that I would still be blogging 10 years later.

My blog is like a potted history of my life, it's there in all it's glory for anyone and everyone to read but just like me in real life I don't hide things, I'm not the keeper of any great skeletons in my cupboard, believe me, my house is so cluttered I could not fit skeletons in!

Several times over the years the tone of my blog changed, at first it was a diary, I covered my mental health, my sons Aspergers and our daily lives at home during my battle with agoraphobia.  Then it became a place to share photographs as my business started to veer it's photographic nose into the light for the very first time.  Shortly after I would decide to stop blogging but luckily it didn't last for too long before I returned although at that point I decided to focus my blog about my work posting hundreds of photographs, an archive of portraits, weddings, commercial expeditions all interspersed with just one or two personal posts.  Then a couple of years ago I came back to blogging as it is now, I share a mix of life, work, travel and everything in between and it seems to work so well, I regularly get 300-700 readers a day and in a good month I'll have 20,000 people who all come back to read my words each week.  My only wish currently is that I get back to blogging every day instead of my inconsistent once or twice a week and sometimes not even that but blogging is like my mind I guess and sometimes it's busier than others and sometimes it just can't come up with anything valid to say.  

You know that some of my days are genuinely without any exciting events!  (Sheesh)

I wonder where I would be without my blog, it's been my place to cry and rant and muse and even amuse from time to time, it's been my place to share my love of travel, my passion of travel photography and venturing to places far and wide.  The thing is, I could show friends or my children every single photo that I take but honestly, they'd be bored to tears so I collect them here, I curate blog posts and galleries of images which lift my own spirits and hopefully make other people smile too but I also know that if a particular post just isn't your thing then you'll skip it or miss it but hopefully return to the next one.

I've had some turbulent times over the last 10 years and so have many of my readers and this place has served as therapy for all of us, I have had messages and comments and conversations with people and some posts have genuinely helped other people as much as they have helped me.

You may have noticed over the last 18 months that my blog has mainly been the happiest place on earth, don't get me wrong, turbulent times still happen, strong emotions and occasional mental health hiccups are still there to be battled but mostly my blog has always reflected the place I am in my life and for the last year at least I can honestly say I have had the best time ever.  I have the most brilliant and wonderful friends, I've come to really love and appreciate the friendships of other women, something I'd perhaps missed in the past or maybe I just found the best group of friends anyone could ask for, friends who laugh with me, cry with me, hug me, understand me but also never judge me even when we all know I could take better paths, you know who you are if you are reading this now.

I cannot say with all certainty that I will still be blogging in 10 years time, no one knows what the future holds but for me, I don't see any end in sight, as long as there are adventures to be had, travel destinations to visit, either alone or with Holly Bobbins, as long as there are experiences and emotions to share then I will very much always remain a writer and a recorder of history.

I want to say a huge thank you to all of the people who read my blog, who do send me messages and leave little comments, sometimes just a few words can make a huge difference to my day and bring a smile on my face, I always try to reply to comments where possible and that feedback makes me realise just how many real life people do actually read my ramblings.

My blog is going to continue as it is now for as long as I can envision, I have trips planned, travel writing and photography assignments in the offing and this blog has lead to many of those amazing experiences so I hope you'll keep stopping by to read the next great chapter of my big adventure we like to call life.

Writing the book, I've begun

Yesterday I started to write the actual book for Uk Cityscapes, at the moment the working title is "Postcards from the City" it may change of course depending on popularity and publishers but it's a
good working title.

One of my favourite images from the top of the radio tower in Liverpool, spot the travelling ants down below!

I have an enormous decision to make as well, do I publish a photo book full of the UK cityscapes and then another book "Postcards from the City" which tells the adventures of the whole project?  Which one would you buy?

At the moment I'm keeping a folder of images separate to the actual text in case it actually does become 2 books.  Thinking of book buying, if you end up with a book which has 300 pages and then another 300 images it just doesn't seem a good idea to publish a tome like "War and Peace"

The story of the adventure and the crowd funding certainly make for a great and sometimes humorous read, I've been immersing myself in lots of travel books for research trying to learn the art of painting a picture of a city without actually plonking a photograph in between paragraphs but I think I'm getting there and I am truly excited about the book.  If the first 2 chapters and the introduction are anything to go by I'm pretty sure that you dear reader are going to love it.

I'm pleased to say that my blog now gets up to 600 views a day which is amazing, and I have readers from all over the globe, particularly the UK, Australia and the USA, this of course is one of the reasons that becoming a business investor for my project would be great for your business, you can find out more about becoming a business investor HERE

This week is all about securing the remaining investment I need for the first part of the project and that's where you dear reader come in, if you haven't ordered your book yet or you'd like to own a piece of art from the project then click HERE

I'll be back tomorrow, hopefully with news of next weeks travel schedule, I'm taking advantage of half term and intend to visit at least 3 or 4 cities next week, possibly Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield and Wakefield.  I did ask the girls,  but one said Inverness and one said Cardiff so I took the middle ground and they'll both be joining me for 2 days each.  This of course means negotiation and bargaining about how much photography I am allowed to do before we have to visit the nearest museum, big wheel or attraction but that dear reader is all part of the adventure.