The future of Feed Your Skull?

I’d really like to keep FYS going, but I’ve been in this weird space for the last year where I’ve become more confused about what I want out of it. This leaves me unmotivated and disorganized.

I started with the intention to use it as a platform to sell/encourage healthier eating, create recipes, and to market any ebooks I created.

I think I’ve done well at encouraging healthier eating and creating recipes, but I’ve been really slow learning the process of writing and publishing an e-book. I want the pictures and styling to look a certain way to a point that I’ve felt ill-skilled to produce a quality book. I’ve learned so much but a lot of it’s been a practice of fear of failure and fear of success and when I’m confronted with both of those fears, I learn at a slower pace and often don’t feel like I’m moving forward at all. Of course when I look back I see a long road and tons of progress regarding my photos and site design.

Creating calendars and schedules after we moved to Washington helped and increased my motivation immensely but it seems to be an ebb flow relationship where I need time off to feel re-inspired and ready to tackle the next quarter.

When I first started FYS I was coming down from a mindset that raw food is the best most perfect diet one can eat. I was still into it but slowly realizing that if you’re not trying to heal yourself and are already healthy, a 100% raw food diet isn’t necessary to maintain health. Because of this I’ve been a little embarrassed by some of my earlier posts condemning sugar/flour and just general preachy tones.

I don’t believe either of those above ingredients are building blocks to health, but a ‘once in awhile’ treat that they are will not turn your body into ruins overnight.

Plus, half of health (or maybe more) is a healthy mindset.  Compare eating great with some junk food and are blissfully happy versus eating a 100% clean diet and constantly worrying if you are doing the right thing 200% of the time (tons of worry and stress); the latter is extremely corrosive to your body and will lead to more problems in the long run.

While I’m appreciative for all I learned from raw food—even if it came through dogma—it’s taken me a long time to appreciate that cooked foods weren’t going to kill me or cause disease. After learning about raw food I thought healthy oatmeal was poison, beans were evil and homemade bread was the devil incarnate.

There is no perfect diet that should be eaten till the end of time. Our bodies change as the seasons do and sometimes they need more comfort than they do health or however you want to interpret that. Evolution.

What I’ve learned from all of this—back to the future of FYS—is that I don’t want to be the guru or ‘expert’ telling anyone the perfect way of eating. No preaching. I don’t mind helping, advising or inspiring but I’m not here to sell you any one way of living. I’m living my way—which has been vegan whole foods with some processed foods.

Can I still make this into a business? Do I want to? Do I want to think about food the majority of my day? How it will be plated, written about, obsessed over or created? Answers I’m struggling to find.

If I keep working on this as I have been some things will have to change (to which I’m a little nervous about). I need to figure out a way to interact and meet people in my area. I’m not living in the town I grew up in and lived for 28 years and the idea of putting myself out there in that way is scary and exciting. The other alternative is that I keep FYS as a side project and get a full-time job. I would be happy to again be making an income equivalent to what I was making 4 years ago. I’d love to say that I’ve evolved or learned over the last few years that money isn’t happiness but I have not learned that lesson. I desire praise and accountability from an outside source (read: employers and paychecks). I feel like I should be able to transition that mindset to working for myself but…. I miss having co-workers that I see face-to-face. I thought I would love working at home by myself and setting my own hours and it has in many ways but I sure appreciate what I had at my previous job…camaraderie, inspiration, and friendship.

So…I’m not sure how and in what way FYS is going to grow this year. In some ways I’ve slowly evolved to less preachy (I hope) and branched out to cover reviews, DIY, and ‘go make this‘ since last September and it’s been great. It brought excitement back into the fold.

And I’ve mentioned a few times that I’ve been planning and working on my first book (about baked oatmeal). I FINALLY opened the InDesign file to begin this endeavor. A huge step past my scrawled recipes and ideas on paper.

The absolute biggest hurdle I had to get over was deciding on what dimension the book should be as I want to make it available as a traditional book as well as e-book using a service that does print on demand.

It’s definitely version 1 but I like the layout so far. The ‘x’ spots are where images will go.

In the back of my mind I’m wondering about:

• which type of color to use (RGB or CMYK or both) as it could be printed or digital
• further design details
• food styling (completely nervous but I’ve bought books to study study study)
• what size images to use for the best quality photo
• cover style
• having enough cute bowls or props i.e. becoming a hoarder
• thinking about how I’ll promote it/how my site design will evolve at that time
• getting comfortable with continuous self-promotion
• finding enough of the perfectly ripe produce to style as well as make the recipe
• wishing I had started this while I was taking my InDesign course
• what to do with all the oatmeal I’ll be making
• keeping recipes below 400 calories
• and probably a million more things

That’s about it for now. Stay tuned. XO