OK real quick while my hair is drying.
HI. I'm Brit - a blunt talking writer, entrepreneur, and wedding photographer who clearly still believes in the Oxford comma. I'm your typical right brained nightmare, a wanderer at heart who can't help but keep it real. If I had to pick a theme for my social media presence it would be connection over perfection.
By the way, I don't blog for a living, I blog for you.
What's this blog about?
Everything I've learned on my extensive quest to get to the bottom of my health issues - and how to use alternative medicine and diet to feel your best. Navigating the middle life in all it's glory and disarray. Messy relationships and good ones. My passion for photography and unquenchable interest in humanity. The hope I find though my faith. This blog is about a lot of things, but it's mostly about you. In being open about my own struggles and mistakes, I hope it encourages more honesty and realness among everyone.
Some posts to get you started:
How I Fixed My Horrible Skin After 20 Years of Tanning and Acne
My 5-Year Health Journey- Every Doctor Every Test, What Worked + What Hasn’t
Free Yourself From The Prison Of Approval
When All Your Beautiful Plans Go To Shit
There Will Always Be Ice Cream (and other lessons learned from dating a heroin addict)
CLIFFs NOTES VERSION
I can't even with cigarette smokers. Former TV dinner-aholic turned health nazi. Uncoordinated doesn't EVEN describe it. Love Jesus, and America too. Hate seafood. And yes, that includes shrimp. SINCE WHEN is shrimp not from the sea? Big fan of bluntness — it saves us all time. Used to have a blog called Blunt Delivery, where despite popular perception I did not deliver blunts, rather bluntness. Used to write for money, now I write only for myself. Not a fan of diamonds—they clash with my clunky, cheap, gypsy rings. Book collector who hates to read. 1000% right brained —numbers make me twitch. Obsessed with Italy. Hate to fly. Studied abroad in London. Trying to be more "glass half full." Except not really trying. Former owner of a retail store. Spent my entire twenties an emotional wreck who feared settling down and broke out into cold sweats upon hearing the word commitment. And by "twenties" I mean, right up until that 30th candle was lit, I was off the rocker. No kids -more on that here. Hands perpetually smell like onions. Haven't been bored since the summer of '88.
And now For a more detailed version than you ever thought possible
I'm gonna take you from teens to twenties, from madness to happiness, from sickness and depression and along my current path to healing from a slew of health issues. Despite the fact that I once worked as an editor, I know not the meaning of edit. So it's not necessarily that I like to talk about myself. Necessarily. It's more of an inability to not be detailed.
You know those people who say, "I wouldn't change a thing about my past because it made me who I am... blah blah." Yea. I'm not one of those people. They are idiots. And here's the thing, I'd change a whole lotta crap. There's nothing wrong with that - it's just a fact. I'm not sure who started the contest about who should be the most satisfied with their past. We grow. We evolve. We learn. And we change, hopefully. And with hindsight we can see things we couldn't before.
We should want to be better. That's the beauty and the ugliness of life - you only get one chance at your twenties. And thirties. And the record just keeps on spinning. So if there's one positive to draw (now don't get freaked out because I've reached for the silver paint here) it would be: motivation. That even if you carry around one regret - don't let it turn into six hundred. If there was anything that you could have done, should have done, or ways that you treated someone or allowed yourself to be treated - remember the weight of that regret. And let it motivate you to do right, love well, and live up to everything you're capable of.
There. Slap that on one of those motivational posters with a photoshopped mountain in the background. See if I care. Here, you can even use a photo I took.
Keys View, Joshua Tree Park
Alright, this was supposed to be more about me and the blog and less of a commencement speech. But before we get started on what is sure to be a huge waste of your time - let's take a moment of silence for MySpace. Because that's where my blogging career started.
If you don't know what MySpace is, I feel a bit of congratulations are in order. You have yet to discover your first gray hair or the horror that is having to pat on an eye cream nightly. If you do remember, just be glad you didn't stumble across my "blog" back then. What an inexplicable disaster of thought vomit.
WhY DO I WRITE?
As a teen, I had no guts. If I wanted to express my feelings, I would most likely have written a long letter, left it on your doorstep and then ran off into the night. Actually, I still might. An eternal non-confrontationalist, I write the things I cannot bring myself to say. Writing helps me make sense of life - sentiments of sadness and joy come much more easily on paper. And after all these years, my cure for almost anything is still a journal, a pen and a sappy playlist. Add a rainy day into the mix and all those problems just evaporate into that thick, foggy air.
In my early twenties, I just found myself lost. But weren't we all. And guts? Nope. Still missing. And they remained missing right up until the second I decided to hop on a plane to Europe for school. As a girl who was deathly afraid of flying, who could barely drive through her own "downtown" without getting pulled over, who had never lived anywhere but her parent's home, whose mom raised her in a bubble - that was a gutsy move.
That trip was good for me, but the course my life took in the aftermath and as a result of that trip was anything but desirable. In hindsight, I would still have gone, but that's about the only thing I wouldn't change.
After I returned from Europe...
After gleaming some inspiration from Camden Market in London - I decided to open a store in my local mall. And no, I had zero business experience OR retail experience - I was an English major for goodness sakes. But, hey, #yolo.
It was successful and I did enjoy certain aspects of it, but ultimately hated the hours and the retail world as a whole. I discovered what I loved most about it was just the freedom and creativity. So, I closed that puppy after three years, walking away with more knowledge that I ever could have learned from a book or professor. During this time, I started my first real blog. Sorry Myspace, but you absolutely do not count as a real blog. You might not even be a real website considering the amount of fake profiles circulating around on there. I might have contributed to that roundabout 2005.
Anyway, I used the blog as therapy for all of the madness that would overtake my life throughout the coming decade. I quietly observed all of my friends grow up, get big girl jobs and move into two story houses with just enough room for their growing families. I, however, found myself on quite a nonconventional journey with nothing checked off. No wedding photo on my mantle, no kids, no steady 9-5 - yet that didn't seem to bother me as much it did everyone else.
Finding My Voice
I was caught in a tangled web of discontentment, a never ending search for more. More passion. More fulfillment. More life. I had no clue what I wanted - except to not settle. I blogged about all these things with only one rule: that it was completely honest. No hiding. No pretending. No collage of constantly happy pictures. And I got a lot of flack for that blog. A lot of pissed off exes. Internet libel threats. Old girlfriends who tried to ruin my life, yet somehow thought I should protect them on my piece of internet space. Thanks for the email, but naw.
I no longer wanted words to be a safety device, but the thing that would set me free from years spent trying to be perfect. Trying to live up to everyone's expectations. I named the blog Blunt Delivery. And again, no, it never crossed my mind that people would think it was a drug delivery service.
Amid a few pissed off targets of my blogs, readers seemed to find some sort of odd comfort in my late night musings. I was taken aback by the comments and emails of people who said I made them feel less alone. Well, most of them just said they felt better knowing there was someone out there more messed up than they were, but whatever. I started developing real friendships with people all over the world because of my worried, scattered internet thoughts. It became addicting.
These people were like-minded. They got me in a way that was refreshing and relieving. At the time, I paid the bills as a self employed freelance writer doing columns about relationships and doling out love advice. Sadly, you cannot see the irony in that since you know not of my murky past sprinkled with tumultuous relationships and broken engagements — and I know we're not quite bros yet, but trust me on that.
The happy ending... sort of.
I've since moved on from that life. I got married. And as I left that part of myself behind, I left my blog as well. Those years were tough. And they formed me and taught me and stretched me in every way. I'm surprised I even survived half of my experiences— the ones I chose not to discuss.
It's not that I didn't miss blogging — I did. But life, took an interesting turn. Literally every free moment after I got married was been dedicated to medical research, doctor appointments, and radically changing my life to resolve a whole slew of health issues. I know —eew, David. In 2015, I was finally ready to talk about it. Celery and the City (Instagram, Facebook group, and website) was born out of a desire to help people on a broader level who probably feel like they are the only one on the planet with an invisible illness or set of symptoms that baffle the crap out of the medical community. I hope to raise awareness for people struggling with chronic illness and provide a place where they feel heard and less alone.
UPdate as of 2022:
Who the hell knows what this blog is about anymore. We’re all just trying to survive, amiright.