I'm Looking for My Niche, Have You Seen It?

^^^yay for old school photos and little brothers who use oversized tshirts to play ninjas with friends.^^^^

Can you remember what it was like to be 6? To spend your days riding your bike down the street to your best friends house? To run around outside with whoever was out? To have your biggest worries be whether or not you were going to be able to convince your mom to make you easy mac for lunch... again?

Little kids always seem to know exactly who they are. They know what they like to do and they aren't ashamed to do it. In fact, they plan on doing exactly what they love every second of every day. They make friends faster than you can blink, and who cares if one likes trucks and the other likes ninjas? They'll just end up playing truck driving ninjas who only eat pizza. School is fun, homework is cool, and every kid and their older brother has had at least one piano lesson.

I've spent a lot of the past few years trying to figure out who I was. That had never been something I wondered about. As a little kid, when someone asked me who I was, it was easy. I was the oldest of five kids, I played the piano, I played tennis, I liked to read, I played pokemon and super mario with my cousins, I loved going to church. My entire life was defined in one sentence, easy as can be. Now, it's not that simple. I've grown up and gotten a whole lot more complicated, and I've let the world influence me, and now I'm working on getting it to un-influence me. I just want to be Mallory, plain and simple, whoever that may be.

My mom has told me before that this blog has turned into a coming of age story of sorts. Thinking about it, she's right. Blogging is helping me find, not only my voice, but myself. I know I know, stop the cheese fest. But seriously. There are so many different things to be out there. There's different kinds of writers, different styles of photographers, different senses of fashion, the list goes on and on. I've tried to imitate writing styles or recreate pictures or make outfits based off of what I see others wearing, but I'm tired of pretending to be all of these different people when none of them feel completely right. So, I'm trying to take parts of what I admire in others and make it my own, add my own spin on some of my favorite things. I'm still looking long and hard for what kind of category I fall under, if any. I think I've spent so long looking for a category that I'd fit in to that it's just now starting to occur to me that maybe I should just make my own. I know, you think I would have caught onto that idea sooner, huh? Better late than never though. I'm off to create a spot where a fashion loving English dreaming word nerd like myself feels unabashedly herself. Now who's with me?

Sincerely, mad