WHY I LEFT. WHY I'M BACK.

a picture of gilly to get you through the texty part of this entry.

i've always said that Taylor Swift is my soul sister. in fact, when she released the song You Belong With Me, i legitimately believed that she was somehow privy to my personal, hand written journal entries. some sort of Tom Riddle's diary kind of thing, perhaps. because that song was spot on with my life and it was almost frightening how i could relate to it. and by frightening, i mean that song was my 2009 anthem and i sang it basically for 6 months straight.

one might think now that i'm married and no longer feeling the sting of heartache and breakups that accompanied my "dating years" -and since Taylor hasn't taken to writing songs about financial issues, dogs named Gilly or an unhealthy obsession with peanut butter- that i would no longer have the soul sister connection with her as i used to. you might think that we have lost common ground. 

but that's where you're wrong. because let's be honest- We Are Never Getting Back Together is pretty much the best fitting song to describe my relationship with this blog.

like, how many times have i said i was going to get better at blogging and then went 3 months before i blogged again and started that post with the same lame line?

don't actually count. i don't want to know.

the point is, i said i was going to get better back in january, but i didn't. and the reason i didn't is two fold.

1) the whole blogging community was really starting to bother me. if you're not a blogger, the concept of the blogging community might be foreign and you probably don't know what goes on within it. but just think back to high school, and you've pretty much got a good idea. for the most part.

(i will come back to point number one in a minute.)

2) i had absolutely nothing to write about. seriously. nothing. my creative juices were as dry as the Serengeti and my days were completely the same for about 3 months straight. you ever seen Groundhog Day? i stayed at home while garrett went to his last quarter of school. the weather was miserable almost the entire 10 weeks and all of our best laid plans of him taking his motorcycle to school (to save money and to provide me with a car) fell by the wayside of the polar vortex and every other horribly cold, rainy day. so i stayed home. i worked out. i took gilly on walks. i cleaned. i watched an embarrassing amount of Friends. i read. and that's about it. day in. day out.

i didn't go places, i didn't do things. i rarely talked to people. and garrett and i were living on like eight dollars.

and i don't want to sound like a total debbie downer or anything, but come on. nothing about what was going on in my life was worth documenting.

so i didn't document it. 

which brings us back to point number one. 

i don't want to dis the blogging community as a whole. i don't want to make it sound like i don't like blogging. because, on the contrary, i love blogging. and i've made good friends, met wonderful people and been on the giving and receiving end of a lot of love for and from people i've never met. and i think that's wonderful. and just recently i witness the blogging community come together to support a fellow blogger in the tragic and unexpected loss of her 3 year old son. it was heartbreaking, but it was also inspiring to see so many people rallying to raise money for funeral costs to support a woman most of them only knew through their computer screen.

i find the concept of a blog fascinating. because of blogging, every person with internet access can tell their story. and i firmly believe we all have a story to tell. 

but that's where the high school-esque aspect of blogging comes in.

i started blogging in January of 2009. (though i did have a LiveJournal -remember those bad boys?- all through high school and my freshman year of college. but it died out.) i was 21 and i just had a lot going on in my life. i didn't know much about blogging.i just knew that it was a way for me to write my feelings, to get my thoughts out of my brain in a way that wouldn't leave my hand all crampy. (i've never been awesome at hand written journals. my thoughts move too fast and my hand can't keep up and then i just stress about how ugly my handwriting gets the longer i write.) to me, blogging seemed like a perfect fit in my life.

and it was. i love writing. and i think i'm decent at it. i loved being able to write my life. and i eventually realized that i wanted other people to read it. and i think that's natural. i wasn't (and i'm still not) really in a place where i could write a book (though i would love to one day), but i could/can blog. and just as i would want people to read my book, i want people to read my blog. 

what's the point of living a life if you can't share it with others?

and that's all i've ever wanted to do. i just want to share it with others. 

i don't want to talk to no one. i want people to listen.

i've learned some really great things through other bloggers i've followed throughout the years and all i've ever wanted to do was give that back; to return the favor and help someone else learn something really great. 

and these days, there are several ways to go about getting people to read your blog. and these days, there are a lot of readers. and that's great.

and these days there is even a good amount of money that a blogger could make just by being a blogger. that's crazy cool in my opinion.

but there are politics in blogging.

there are rules and dues that must be paid.

there is gnarly competition.

and there are sell outs. 

it's a fine line to walk-blogging for yourself, writing your own, real stories and also turning it into a side job and remaining genuine all the while. 

and a while ago i found myself getting very bored and very frustrated with a lot of the blogs i had been reading. it seemed to me that every post was a sponsored post. reading those blogs felt like watching commercials. (in addition to that, my instagram feed turned into an endless stream of commercial/advertisement photos of crap i don't care about.) and after some time i got sick of the commercials. so i stopped reading.

(and lest there be anyone trying to call me out on hypocrasy,i have aboslutely done sponsored posts and product reviews. i realize there are fabulous perks to blogging and having a large number of readers. and it's exciting to think that a company trusts you enough to send you a product to review. but posts like that are not my main content. and i try really hard to still make them relatable and real.)

but this aspect is only a part of my frustration with what i felt blogging was turning into.

i guess another part of the reason i stopped blogging was because i have lived so much of my life comparing. from thigh size to car type i have compared what i have to what everyone else has. and more often than not i deem what everyone else has as better. truthfully, i think that's normal if not human.

Eloquent Graffiti was born out of necessity and a genuine need and love to write. it was so pure in its beginning and i hated that the more i read other blogs the more i began to compare. 

this person had such a fantastic design and this person had pictures that were so amazing. this girl had clothes that made me drool with envy and this girl was hilarious in every post. she has so many followers. she has so many sponsors. she is totally nailing this blogging thing. 

oh, and everyone's life is totally perfect and no one is struggling in any aspect of their life and their family and health and finances are all just a dream.

and in my mind, Eloquent Graffiti (and my life) slowly became lackluster and boring and i felt like it didn't hold a candle to the perfection of so many other blogs. 

in short, i was belittling my blog for being exactly what i had named and intended it to be.

Eloquent Graffiti. 

it wasn't supposed to be cheaply worded and riddled with shallow posts.

my feelings were far too eloquent for that.

and it wasn't supposed to depict a perfectly composed and flawless person or existence.

there is way too much graffiti in my life for that. 

and i didn't want to fall into the trap and adulterate what i had created. so i just stepped away for a while. and again, there really wasn't a whole lot to document. 

but things have been happening lately and i've been doing a lot of thinking. and i think i'm ready to come back. and if i gain a lot of new readers (and i hope that i do. because again, i hope for people to read and relate to what i have to say) then that will be wonderful. and if i have a few people want to sponsor me, then i will let them. and if i get the chance to do product reviews for companies then i will. truthfully, it would be freaking sweet to make money from blogging. but i want it to be real and i want it to be genuine. 

because if it's not real and if it's not genuine then it's not my writing. and if it's not my writing then it's not me. and if it's not me then what's the point? 

so here i go. 

i'm back to blogging. 

i hope you're back to reading. 

and i hope good things come from it all.

love,

kate.

lyrics: walking in the garden was a serpent shaped heart and he told me that what is broken cannot show and less than beautiful is worse than unholy…so when they ask why'd she go you can say 'cause life in Eden changed.