Hello my dearest! It’s papa coco.

Holy smokes it’s been a whiiiiiiile. I honestly feel as if I opened the door to Narnia and just came back to reality, mind you, there was no door to Narnia, it was more like, a pantry full of nutella and I sunk my face in it. Very sexy indeed.

Ok so, I’ll keep it short and sweet; the reason why I was a bit MIA from the blog was because A: I decided to launch my own business and B: my brain burst out in flames from overworking it.

On the launching my own business thing: So I’ve been doing styling and photography full time for over a year now but I was doing it for a company here in Vancouver as their employee (you may have seen them in my posts as Luvo), still working with them, but now as a freelance guy. I decided I wanted to have my own styling + photography studio because I felt it was the next step needed in the natural progression of my career. Not a big deal right? Just do the same thing you’re doing, but with no boss! Easy…. NOT!! Holy shit man (and I’m sure all of you small business owners understand) it is fucking INSANE! All the stuff you gotta do that has nothing to do with the creative side of things like invoicing, contracts, emailing, paying suppliers, bla bla bla, it’s just cray. I think my daily mantra went from oooommmmm to fuck fuck fuck fuck. Saying fuck about 10000 times a day? Yep. Totally doable and so therapeutic.

On top of that I had to create content for this blog and other blogs, and I tried to have a life (which mostly became watching Stranger Things while ordering Dominos). Well yah, let’s just say I was somewhat prepared but not as much as I wanted to and totally got gang banged. But hey, live and learn right!? Super happy tho and wouldn’t go back – and now I’m an ace at gang bangs! The business kind, of course ;)

On taking a creative break: So, since 90% of my brain capacity was being used to growing my business and trying to keep afloat, the other 10% was used for basic needs such as browsing grindr, and eating..and browsing grindr..HA, a boy’s gotta eat! :P All this left me a bit overwhelmed with barely any time to do stuff and didn’t have any energy or even fresh ideas to post on the blog. On one side I felt this stress from my social media not being so up to date as usual, but on the other hand I was like “ok boy, chill, you gotta pay rent, Instagram can wait”. Living under a bridge but with lots of Instagram followers is like being rich with monopoly money, so yah.

I took a little creative break and worked with a few super rad clients and gave all my energy to them. While doing this I totally got hooked with a very rad opportunity to work with a company that was all like “oohh ok cool, wanna take a creative break? We can help” and I’ll be telling you more about that this week (you may have seen my collab on Instagram). Devoting your time to clients and friends (basically making them a priority) and hitting the pause button on social media is totally OK and it actually pays off! Especially if you are building a new portfolio.

So why am I telling you all this shiz? Well, first, take it from me: do not let social media pressure you into losing precious moments when those precious moments are sparse due to your hectic schedule. It’s ok, people will understand that you have a life and you gotta take care of yourself, AND your business. And as Ru Paul says, if you don’t love yourself, how the hell you gonna love somebody else, can I get an AMEN!?

And here’s my little piece of advice: travel, take a break, go do something that will inspire you again! Get the fuck out of your house, dude!! It’s so easy to get stuck in a rut without realizing you’re in one (it’s like being in a really shitty relationship with someone that has an OK penis but you know, it’s a penis afterall so you just roll with it… yah no girl, stop, STAAP!). Just remove yourself from the routine and go do something out of the ordinary, take a little painting class, a mini trip, go meet new people (you may hate them, but hey, it was something new!). You get me!? Go refresh that idea maker of yours.

And on that note I would like to say, I AM BAAAACK!! Oh man this feels good. Just so you know there will be more stuff other than food around here, so just bear with me mmmkay?

Nice to see you all in here again, friends :D

All photos: these were some tasty recipes I made for the guys at West Elm, check out their blog for the full feature of each of these dishes