MANY have been asking what happened to Bright and Beautiful... Today while visiting Hidden in France... the ANSWER was found via a posting by Felicity herself...
Dear Corine and friends,
I send you hugs and I send you smiles - I write this with little tears in my eyes - tears that I have made you sad and sadness that ATBAB is no more that I cannot bring sunshine to your days as I used to.
Why delete a blog and tell no one?
Because if I had - I would have not had the courage to go ahead - my sadness and your sadness and collective voices would have stopped me.
Sometimes when we ponder a thing for a long time and the circumstance finally arrives in a sliver of a window of opportunity - the impetus is so strong that you know if you don't do it now you just wont do it.
And so I jumped in and took it.
And I took down my email as I couldn't face the magnitude of taking down a blog that I had worked on for the year and also the collective sadness it could possibly bring.
Some thoughts and reasons......
Blogging is addictive - sometimes you cant just stop and leave it there - because you just cant help but come back to it - ayah!! I'm an all or nothing girl - unfortunately
The whole copyright thing was weighing heavily on me.
I struggled with bringing beauty all the time when there is so much suffering.
My back was killing me!! :-)
Initially I started blogging because I wanted to share the beautiful things I found - then it became about community then finding original material and then technorati ratings and reader numbers and ayah - it all got skewed.
Getting new material means you've always got the blog in the back of your mind - be it when you're on the bus, reading the paper or talking with friends... for me it got a bit ridiculous seriously !! when your 3 year old sees you on the computer and goes MUMMY STOP BLOGGING you know there's something a bit awry.
Also I personally wouldn't want my children to spend the amount of time on the computer that I was spending - so I didn't want to give them that as an example for life.
I think I've seen more nudity/obscenity in the past 12 months than I have in my entire life times 10 from trawling through photographers sites and my heart doesn't want to see any more.....
Opening up yourself on the internet also opens you up for fair game to whoever is out there, no matter what your intentions.
When you spend enough time on something you end up becoming it, and it is not what I want to become.
My cherubs are all the more happier for it. And in the strangest of ways it is amazingly liberating - not that I'm advocating a mass blog deletion!:-) :-) :-). Just wanted to let you know what its like from "the other side"
Its not that I have left you I am still here - just not up front bamboozling you with techni - colours and spelling mistakes:-)
Hugs and love and I'm still here - just recovering from the "loss" - in a good and bad way and working on my photography and printing up a family album with iphoto :-), working on the family blog, pondering the effects of the stock market fallout & wondering what the future will hold, taking my boy out for adventures, reconnecting with God, loving DY Blog consultant extrordinaire ( who I didn't tell for 2 days about the blog deletion bit as he'd bemoan the hours wasted! :-) and trying to get my back back into working order!!
I'll leave the mystery as to who I am as a mystery:-)
PS - hugs especially to you Corine and LOVE THE accompanying images :-) :-) :-) Fear not - I'll be back visiting - I'm still nursing those twinlettes - yes still!! :-)
Hugs bug and take care
Love Felicity XOX
Posted by: all things bright and beautiful October 01, 2008 at 05:15 AM
I send you hugs and I send you smiles - I write this with little tears in my eyes - tears that I have made you sad and sadness that ATBAB is no more that I cannot bring sunshine to your days as I used to.
Why delete a blog and tell no one?
Because if I had - I would have not had the courage to go ahead - my sadness and your sadness and collective voices would have stopped me.
Sometimes when we ponder a thing for a long time and the circumstance finally arrives in a sliver of a window of opportunity - the impetus is so strong that you know if you don't do it now you just wont do it.
And so I jumped in and took it.
And I took down my email as I couldn't face the magnitude of taking down a blog that I had worked on for the year and also the collective sadness it could possibly bring.
Some thoughts and reasons......
Blogging is addictive - sometimes you cant just stop and leave it there - because you just cant help but come back to it - ayah!! I'm an all or nothing girl - unfortunately
The whole copyright thing was weighing heavily on me.
I struggled with bringing beauty all the time when there is so much suffering.
My back was killing me!! :-)
Initially I started blogging because I wanted to share the beautiful things I found - then it became about community then finding original material and then technorati ratings and reader numbers and ayah - it all got skewed.
Getting new material means you've always got the blog in the back of your mind - be it when you're on the bus, reading the paper or talking with friends... for me it got a bit ridiculous seriously !! when your 3 year old sees you on the computer and goes MUMMY STOP BLOGGING you know there's something a bit awry.
Also I personally wouldn't want my children to spend the amount of time on the computer that I was spending - so I didn't want to give them that as an example for life.
I think I've seen more nudity/obscenity in the past 12 months than I have in my entire life times 10 from trawling through photographers sites and my heart doesn't want to see any more.....
Opening up yourself on the internet also opens you up for fair game to whoever is out there, no matter what your intentions.
When you spend enough time on something you end up becoming it, and it is not what I want to become.
My cherubs are all the more happier for it. And in the strangest of ways it is amazingly liberating - not that I'm advocating a mass blog deletion!:-) :-) :-). Just wanted to let you know what its like from "the other side"
Its not that I have left you I am still here - just not up front bamboozling you with techni - colours and spelling mistakes:-)
Hugs and love and I'm still here - just recovering from the "loss" - in a good and bad way and working on my photography and printing up a family album with iphoto :-), working on the family blog, pondering the effects of the stock market fallout & wondering what the future will hold, taking my boy out for adventures, reconnecting with God, loving DY Blog consultant extrordinaire ( who I didn't tell for 2 days about the blog deletion bit as he'd bemoan the hours wasted! :-) and trying to get my back back into working order!!
I'll leave the mystery as to who I am as a mystery:-)
PS - hugs especially to you Corine and LOVE THE accompanying images :-) :-) :-) Fear not - I'll be back visiting - I'm still nursing those twinlettes - yes still!! :-)
Hugs bug and take care
Love Felicity XOX
Posted by: all things bright and beautiful October 01, 2008 at 05:15 AM
