Hello, hello! I’m baaaack! In the states! To blogging! With Fish! I had a wonderful trip abroad to celebrate the New Year and just take some time to myself. Have you ever noticed that most full-time bloggers rarely EVER take time off, like most people would from their jobs? They never put their blogs on hold or put up an away message, per se.

I remember, one time, a friend of a friend was getting to know me a little bit. She started asking me some questions, mostly about what I did for a living because she was intrigued, she said, and her last question was what days I took ‘off’ from work. Took off? Ha, when you own your own business, there are really no days off, I thought. So, I honestly just looked at her and kind of laugh as I thought that in my head. Eventually I spit it out, that everyday, I’m happy to share little snippets of my life with you all on each of my social platforms, whether it’s a thought on Twitter, my outfit on Instagram, or my blog post of the day on Facebook, etc while also curating content for upcoming posts, pulling old clothes out of my closet to re-sell or donate, negotiating partnerships & the terms that go along with them, responding to readers’ emails, sifting through and making sense of business analytics, setting up and going to life appointments with my accountant, eye doctor, etc. It’s all never-ending. And, if you think about social media … well, it’s the same. There’s always a new post. There’s always something to engage in. It doesn’t stop. We are the ones that need to put our own limits on it.

I love sharing my life and style with y’all, and I love the back end of what I do, as well. What a wonderful thing it is to do what you love for a living, as I said in my New Year’s post, but her question did create a bit of an unrest in me. I thought maybe she was on to something. Just like, our bodies need to sleep to function in a healthy, appropriately responsive and well-adjusted way … I think we need rest and time away from our work to be refueled, reinspired, and reenergized, as well. So … my time abroad with two of my girlfriends was that for me. I chose to continue to share on Instagram and take photo’s from my travels to incorporate in to some upcoming travel posts but, taking time away from posting content to the blog was what I think I really needed, even after I got home. And, honestly, I’m so glad I did. It was the perfect way to end an incredible year fully present and engaged in a trip I had been looking forward to for months, and the perfect way to start a new year fully refreshed and ready to get after another!

For the record … this is just a realization I had over the last year. I’m not hating on anyone for not doing what I did or for never taking a break. I think, because blogging is still such a new industry that there just some things that haven’t come to be within it. This may be one of those things. And, maybe no other blogger agrees that they need time away from it and that’s cool … to each their own. This is just my insight and reaction to an experience that I think God put me in on purpose.

I hope you’ve had a great start to 2016 so far, and that you enjoy this sophisticated winter outfit as inspiration for a cozy day out and about with family or shopping around town with your girlfriends. I adore this coat so much! I’ve got lots of fun things coming your way including what to wear on an upcoming ski trip, a huge Instagram Roundup, a packing guide for anyone heading abroad this winter, and some mini travel guides for London and Paris. Let me now what you’d like to see and I’ll be sure to work it into a post!

Thanks for stopping by today, y’all! Really appreciate it! xo.