Happy Thanksgiving!
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fellow Canadians celebrating today!
I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you how thankful I am for your continuous readership, encouragement and for just being there - even if as silent audience.
In many ways, blogging has changed my life. It gives me inspiration, dedication and a way of reflecting on what I do and a motivator for doing more in-depth research on topics of interest. In many ways, SmellyBlog is my (not-so-secret) diary, and the only one I have ever been able to keep consistently without feeling self-conscious about. Somehow, writing through the portal of scents feels completely natural to me.
This blogs also brings new customers to my business, which is how I'm able to pay my rent and bills and put food on the table.
In the almost 4 years of blogging I have made new friends, learned many new things and I think also have become a better person over all. Although, admittedly, I have become a little too attached to the little device I use for writing up these columns. Blogging each requires much effort and dedication and unfortunately, recently a lot of my attention has shifted from in-depth blogging and articles to constant pressure to constantly communicate and narrate my olfactory adventures on virtual social netowrks whose names I'm too tired to mention... As much as I find these networks valuable for making new connections with people around the world (some of which I have met in person only thanks to their existence) - I find that they take a lot of energy and don't nearly give back as much satisfaction as researching a topic and writing about it and finding illustrations or taking photos for it as I do here on SmellyBlog. So I feel focusing again on the blog and less on the social networks is going to be my key for sanity this year in the social media front!
In conclusion, I hope that in this day and age we will all be able to find the balance between our virtual lives, friendships and interests, and our real lives, where friends meet face to face and stop together to smell the roses, both literally and figuratively.