It’s been 365 Days. 

365 Days of perseverance, hard work, Earth shattering accomplishments (at least my Earth), long nights, beautiful moments, painful failures, partnership, creativity, and blessings. 365 Days of starting something from nothing but hoping something would stick, hoping to touch the right person with the right words, hoping to capture the essence of ourselves, our photography, and the world, hoping to make some sort of difference, and hoping to create something that we could be proud of. 365 Days ago we came up with this crazy idea to create a digital webspace to do something and knew we had the determination to see this project through for at least one year. One Year was the original end goal, to see if we had the capacity to run a blog and a project when over 90% of bloggers quit within their first three months. 

And 365 days later, I sit here with a huge smile plastered on my face and my cheeks stained with happy tears, because I have never felt more proud or accomplished. When we started this project I could not tell you the first thing of what it meant to run a website let alone a blog. On top of that, the anxiety of having to “brand” myself and my lifestyle kept me up late at night. The thought of failure, rejection, and embarrassment damn near kept me away from ever starting this project, but I can tell you that would’ve been the biggest mistake of my life. 

In the beginning, I sat down at my computer and seriously thought about myself and my life, I thought about my previous failures, and what being a twenty year old meant to me. The jobs, the education, the traveling, the moving, the heart breaking moments, the laughter filled nights. They all started from a new beginning, and in that exact moment I knew what my first blog was going to be about. “New Beginnings” was the debut moment for OnBrand’s website and the first blog we ever decided to release to the public. To be quite honest with you, it was probably one of the most anxiety filled days of my 22 years of living. I posted it, turned my phone off, and prayed for the best. I prayed someone somewhere read my words and could relate, I prayed that my family would see my new journey and was proud of me, I prayed that in my vulnerability I could seek some kind of connection to this big bad world, because that’s what all humans seek, right? Connection? 

I opened my phone the next morning and in that moment I knew my life was forever changed. The stats were in and people actually read my blog. To be frank, I was quite shocked. Family, Friends, Acquaintances, even people I didn’t know reached out to me to tell me that they read my words, felt connected, and felt inspired. That exact moment I knew that this was something I wanted to continue and grow. If one person simply read our blogs or enjoyed the content we created that was all I needed. The incorporation, the support, the vision sharing, the networking, being able to create real art; could have never been possible without every single reader, business, client, friend. 

In these past 365 days we have been able to grow from knowing absolutely nothing to running a fully functioning blog, photography business, online store, learning the importance of marketing, how to be a business owner, hell how to file a tax ID number. Anything worth achieving is scary, but I can tell you that being a year into my new beginning I have never felt more capable, equipped, confident, and ready to take my life and this world by storm. After a year of meeting the most interesting business owners, interviewing other twenty-somethings, reading blogs from special people in their own point of view, has truly shown me that we are all meant to achieve something great and that being this age is so painfully beautiful. We are all trying our best, making mistakes, and figuring it all out one day at a time. Through all of our travels and chasing this business around the world I have also learned that this place we call Earth and the souls that inhabit it are so intrinsically breath taking that life is too short to ever have a bad day. Life is worth living, life is worth loving, life is worth making it whatever the hell you want it to be.

Thank you for letting us be apart of your monumental days. Thank you for allowing us to shoot your album projects. Thank you for creating beautiful moments with us. Thank you for inspiring us. Thank you for the comments, suggestions, the clicks, the likes, truly your constant support reminds us of why we do what we do. Thank you for creating a community within us. I hope that this blog, these people, the projects, and my words continue to inspire, uplift, and at the very least entertain you in some way. I hope you have had as much fun as we had in creating something new. I have no idea where were going but I know I will never stop working for this business and I know that we will never stop growing to achieve something beautiful. 

Thank you all for joining us through our past, present, and future and I can’t wait to see where this crazy dream goes. One year down, forever to go. Love you OnBranders. 

Cheers to our Twenty-Something 

Rayna