Embracing Uniqueness

Hubby and I have started to casually look for our next home – mainly refining and clarifying our likes and dislikes. Do we want to live in a new neighborhood or an established neighborhood? Do we want to live on the southside of town or the west side of town. So many questions to be decided. We’ve started doing subdivision drive bys. If we’re out riding around and see a subdivision that looks interesting, we’ll drive though it for a quick assessment and look up available homes and prices when we get home. We’ve done this enough that all of them are starting to look alike with very little to differentiate one subdivision from another. There’s a cookie cutter sameness in new subdivions that makes old homes with character, infinitely more attractive to me. I want our home to have unique character and not look exactly like 25 other homes in the neighborhood.

My dream home - an arts and craft style bungalow from the turn of the century.

Blogging should be like that. My little corner of the interweb should be been unique. It should have been the place where I share my true personality and the things that inspire me so we can get to know each other. That hasn’t happened because of a fear of being different. When I started blogging I really hadn’t intended it write a recipe factory. I love cooking but there were lots of other things to talk about. As I got into it more, I found more really cool food blogs and started self editing based on what I was seeing or not seeing. Post ideas would be rejected if I couldn’t remember seeing something similar on other food blogs. If no one else is talking about it must not be interesting right? I had subconsciously rejected uniqueness in favor of following the herd and fitting in with the crowd. The passion I felt for my blog has waned under the pressure of fitting into that cookie cutter.

Now I’m at a blogging cross roads. Do I continue on the path I’m on currently and split my non food related musings onto a personal blog? Do I incorporate my other interests into this blog and completely deviate from what “a Cook at Heart” implies? Do I have time to realistically maintain two blogs? It’s tricky and I’ve been giving it ALOT of thought and I’m still undecided.

What do you think? Would you rather a food blog stick to food or do you like to see diverse topics? Let me know what you think.