By now, we hope you’ve read the post that I wrote earlier in the week, about how to dress your guy, exclusively from a ladies POV. I admit, dressing CJ was something that I used to be apprehensive doing, as men’s fashion had been so out of my comfort zone. Sure, I appreciated well-dressed men and knew what looked good and what didn’t, but it wasn’t up until recently that I could actually offer advice on how to style men.
This is the second part of our collaboration with Robert of Odudu Photography, and my second chance to dress CJ. For the both of us, I was going for a more casual look this time around. And again, I wanted to coordinate our outfits with yellows and blues in a way that didn’t scream cheesiness. Nailed it? I’d like to think so!
To be honest, we were struggling about what to write for this post. An “outfit of the day” post didn’t seem to do Robert’s photos justice, nor did we want to come up with another “how to style this or that” post. This brainstorming got us talking about where we stand at the moment – blog, school, life, us.
The reason why I’ve been taking charge of the past few posts is because CJ has been knees-deep in exam study. I decided to take a school-cation this summer, and took the chance to work in a (hopefully) more temporary than not, retail position. I admit, the mental break was nice, but looking forward, CJ and I will be studying for our LSATs and MCATs, respectively, so that we can get started on real life. So where does ourMode tie into all of this?
We’ve been asked countless times, where do see ourMode going? Or, do we hope our “brand” grows? This is something that we’ve sat down and discussed a number of times (and has even spurred some mini fights), and still can’t really answer. Initially we started off almost directionless, then we began taking it maybe too seriously.
Our schedules started becoming defined by a list of blog-related tasks that we absolutely had to do. When to get out the next post, blog networking, social media upkeep – and it kind of sucked the fun out of something that was created because we loved it. We even got to the point where it was putting a bit of stress on our relationship. We didn’t have date nights – they became blogging nights. And everything we talked about was ourMode related. We would come home from school or work and jump right into blogging.
This was also the point at which we began to get super frustrated, as we were putting in so much work into (what we think) is original and high-quality content, but not getting the recognition we felt we deserved.
Then we realized that blogging had become something that we felt forced to do, which took the fun out of it. Its like when I was younger, and I always wanted to play piano, but as soon as my mom signed me up for weekly piano lessons and I was obligated to practice, I no longer had the same infatuation with the instrument.
So this is the point where we are now – putting the fun back into blogging, balancing it with school and our relationship, and letting things grow organically. Since we’ve started, we’ve learned so much about SEO, editing, photography, and have made improvement in all these areas (SEO still has our number though). All this adds up to us learning to work smarter not harder towards where we want ourMode to go, but while enjoying the journey there.
So we’re by no means blogging experts, but if there’s one piece of advice we can offer aspiring bloggers, its be patient. Have fun with it and don’t lose sight of what made you start in the first place.
Also, remember like Robert on Facebook and follow him on Twitter!
What she’s wearing Forever21 shorts | Forever21 shirt | Le Chateau heels | Le Chateau necklace
What he’s wearing Joe Fresh cardigan | Mexx collared shirt | Thrifted tie | Zara pants | Pegabo wingtips
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