A moment. That’s all it took: a moment. After three plus years of moderating a modeling education forum on Facebook, I found myself heading into the group to take care of some moderatorly business and the moment my eyes scanned the screen I thought, “I don’t want to do this anymore”. I no longer was enjoying myself as a moderator. I’d been there from when it consisted of a couple dozen people in the modeling industry to now almost 2,800 members. The spark was gone and it was time to make a change.
Thankfully, having already gone through one “the change” and probably at least a decade from the other “the change”, any changes that happen now are usually by my choice instead of biology. I told my other moderators that at the end of June, I was done. I’d worked the job, thankless at that, for a long time in terms of internet groups and when I was working part-time, I was putting in between 40-60 hours of time per week moderating the group. That’s a lot of unpaid hours and grief which I had to tolerate.
So what changed to bring about the change? Writing. Well, the lack of writing. The lack of time to write for this blog let alone other places asking me to submit pieces to them. Did modeling change for me you may be asking? Nope, I am still enjoying that. Modeling has been good to me, taking me to exotic locations in countries outside of the United States. I don’t want to thumb my nose at it, but I did have to ask myself if my heart was in moderating a group for which I’d lost that lovin’ feeling. I spent time chatting with a photographer who has become a dear friend and they told me it was okay to “walk away” – and they understood why I couldn’t just drop the mic and yell “Peace out” – that hasn’t ever been my style. So, I gave notice.
The time not spent moderating can now be focused on those things that I really want to work on, like learning Spanish (nine days in Costa Rica later this year… I better learn some Spanish), writing for my blog, writing for groups that have asked for me to submit pieces to them and bettering my photography. I’ll still be modeling, but that will take a back seat to the writing.
There are other changes coming as well – namely that this blog will get an updated look. I charmed one of my favorite people on the planet into creating a new header image for the blog as well as Twitter. I’m excited to make the changes here and I know they will be awesome. Change is something that makes me hesitant, but in the long run, I know that these changes which I’m making will truly benefit me. I shouldn’t be viewing change as something scary, but as an adventure.
Musings of the Amusing Muse 
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