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Growing in to 2016 {One Word} | Life


2015 has been a pretty unbelievable year. I started off the year with the decision to head to Tafe and study photography, in the hopes that it would help me pursue my passion of being a professional photographer. Little did I know when I signed up for that first 9 week course that I would go on to complete my Diploma and learn so much along the way.

At the start of the year I decided that my one word for 2015 would be Capture. My reasoning was two-fold. The first reason was pretty self-explanatory. I wanted to capture as many images as I could, and learn as much as I could about the art of photography. I have definitely captured what I wanted in that regard, and was thrilled to complete my course with Distinctions for every subject.

The second component of Capture has been a little less successful. Having said that, I have learnt a lot about myself, and I have definitely finished the year more organised than I stared it. Studying full-time meant that I had to be super-organised in order to keep on top of my Tafe work and my responsibilities as a wife, mother, daughter, sister.

I managed to overcome my high school habit of leaving assessments to the very last minute, and had things completed well ahead of time (most of the time!). Dave was a massive help when it came to keeping on top of the house and the girls, making lunches and finding clothes for preschool most weeks.

It's been an incredible year, one of the best in a long time with not a lot of sad or bad news to deal with. The girls have grown and changed so much, and it was with a heavy heart that we farewelled their preschool last week. Moving the girls to the Tafe preschool was hands down one of the two best decisions I made this year and seeing the way they have flourished in the new environment made leaving them there that little bit easier.

Punky has been enrolled in the local community preschool kindergarten for next year, and I'm praying that she loves it as much as she loved WSI Kids. My hope is that she will make some new friends who will then go on to primary school with her in 2017. The only thing left to sort is whether or not I send Zee back to the daycare across the road or find somewhere new for her to go until she is 3 and old enough to join Punky at the community kindy.

Looking forward to 2016, I've decided that my word for the year is going to be Grow. I want to grow my family portraits business, grow my portrait photography and documentary photography skills, grow my organisational skills, grow my daughters in to beautiful young girls, and grow my relationship with Dave. I'm also really looking forward to watching my nephew Bear grow, and seeing the relationship blossom between the girls and their cousin.

There are lots of things to think about, and I'm planning on spending the coming weeks setting goals, and thinking seriously about what kind of a business I want to grow in 2016.

I'm also thinking hard about what direction I want the blog to take. I have a website set up for my photography business, but I've been thinking seriously about merging the two, and making this blog just one aspect of the website and steering it's focus towards more of a visual story-telling platform. Not having the tech know-how I'm going to have to do a lot of research on how exactly to do this without losing the google rankings I've built up for KyliePurtell.com and making that work for my photography business. It makes sense to leverage the domain authority this website has built up over the past 5 years, but how I go about doing that is yet to be seen.

One thing I do know, is that no matter how I work it, there will definitely be a shift to more image-focused blogging, as I think this is where my strength lies (thank you Hugzy for making me realise this with your kind words on my last post).

This will be my last "wordy" post for the year, and of course the final IBOT post. There are still three weeks left of 52 week project images to post and I'll get those up, but aside from that I'm going to concentrate on enjoying the magic of Christmas my girls and family for the rest of 2015.

Thank you for reading my words and rambles, looking at my pictures and, most of all, being so damn supportive of my dream chasing. Each and every comment and kind word has been received with a grateful heart and they have helped me find confidence when it's been lacking. If it wasn't for the support I've received from you lovely people in my blogosphere I don't know if I would have had the balls to do what I've done this year.

I hope you all have an absolutely fabulous Christmas, and I hope that the last few weeks of 2015 are filled with good food, fun times and not too much shit from the kids!

How has 2015 been for you, did it pan out the way you thought it would back in January? Are you planning anything big or exciting for 2016?



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