I clearly remember how difficult it was in the beginning. Making food look good on photos – learning ingredient names in English and writing a text like this. Every little step took me hours and hours to make. But it was fun and I have learned a lot. As you might know, English is not my first language. So writing a lot of recipes in English feels a tad frightening.
But first a little bit about me, my education and career – something I really haven’t shared with you before.
Career choices back then.
Finishing my high school back in 2012, I didn’t know what I wanted to study. Actually, I did not wanted to study! But I knew I wanted to work with my creativity, being innovative and pursue opportunities. I applied for a job at minimum wage at a big Danish newspaper. I was very dedicated to learn all about business organizations and make a career. This became my main goal – to learn from some of the best.
In 6 educative years I worked with digital content and email marketing full time at the newspaper. Meanwhile, I finally decided to study.. And today I have a diploma in business studies. Nothing fancy – just a wide education where I learned a lot about fundamental business.
The last 3 years I’ve made a lot of food and photography. It just started as a hobby, but my passion just got bigger and bigger. I invested in a good and expensive camera and started making photography on my travels and in the kitchen. I shared my pictures on Instagram (like almost everyone else..) but suddenly, companies start to hire me for jobs. I started Micadeli in 2016 and have been working as a recipe developer for a few years now.
I loved my career. But then I quit my full time job.
Quitting my job was a hard decision. I’d always though I should make a career, wearing suit and high heels. But I suddenly found out that it wasn’t me. I wanted to focus more on my food projects and start my own business.
So I did. I still work part time with ecommerce and gets an extra income. But today I have the possibility to make my hobby every week which makes me enormously happy.
Good recipes takes time and I often put a lot more effort into every recipe, so they take days to develop.. I still struggle to find the right words in English, because writing recipes doesn’t come easy for me. But looking from where I started there have definitely been some improvements.
I also found out that a food blog is really hard work. Many bloggers wants to take the interest they have and turn it into a passionate source of income. But blogging and photography isn’t easy. Even the most rapid successes I’ve seen, took many years before the author could claim blogging as more than a hobby. But the bridge from passion to money-maker can’t be made hastily. That’s why when people previous asked me, what I’m doing or going to be doing in 5 or 10 years, I just said “I’m working at a newspaper”. Because I couldn’t immediately relay my hobby projects into a source of income and I felt it was too complicated to talk about.
Today I get paid to develop recipes and make photography. But as an unskilled worker I would lie if I said that it has been easy. Sometimes I work 30 hours per week – sometimes 75. But it doesn’t matter for me. I do not count. I can not distinguish work from hobby – and hobby from work. And it fits me very well. I would properly do actually the same even if I didn’t got any financial out of it.
I hope to inspire you with this post – thank you for making this a pleasant plant based community. I love when you text me with kind greetings and comments, follows me here on Instagram @michalakramer – and share your recipes with me. ♥