This week I had to take my dad into the city for some routine check up appointments. I had just received a deadline with a company I’m doing a collaboration with and my photographer was completely booked. I went on Instagram and a fellow fashion blogger who I follow that always has the best pictures lives in NYC so I contacted her photographer.
We met at my old building because my old doorman said I could store my stuff there and change in the bathroom. So I met my new photographer and ironically her name is Kathleen O’Neill which was my husband’s grandmother and mother’s exact name (so random) and we shot in my old neighborhood.
I always get nostalgic when I’m in my old neighborhood. It’s funny how you always remember all the good times you had there and seem to forget all the bad. This is where I lived with my boyfriend who then became my husband, it is the first home I brought my first baby back to, where I met friends who became like family and it is where my beloved dog Doris who I miss so much, used to walk the streets like she owned them (all 15lbs of her).
The one thing I noticed most was how much I’ve changed these past 10 years. When I started my first blog Joey and the Owl after my son was born, I could never really relax taking pictures or show the real me. I was always nervous of what people would think, posting pictures of myself and I would get so embarrassed when people walked by me on the street. I was always so consumed with the fact that people would judge me for putting myself out there.
So this time around, I could really see and feel how much I’ve grown and how confident I’ve become in my own skin and it was really good to feel that. I walked through Central Park on the way back to my dad’s doctors office and walked down the same paths I would walk my dog and newborn and wondered what I could have accomplished if I had believed in myself this much twenty years ago. I’m not one to have regrets so instead I’m just going to focus on working hard and see how much I can accomplish in the next 20 years. Here’s to remembering the good from the past and focusing on what is to come.
