Thank you for coming to The Byzantine Life blog! Whether you are new here, or an old friend, I appreciate you taking the time to check out our work.
Where We Have Come From
Little Fox was 7 months old when I started blogging at The Byzantine Life.com. This was near the beginning of my journey to learn about the Byzantine Catholic faith. I remember my feeling of excitement at all these new discoveries… coupled with indignation that no one talked about the existence of other rites of the church growing up. Not even in history classes!
As a writer, I had to accept my husbands idea that I should blogging about the amazing things I was learning.
However, I wanted to spend forever preparing! I started reading books and articles about blogging, running a website, and the like. My husband was not satisfied by this. So he pushed me into the water and made me start swimming! (So to speak). He purchased the domain name and hosting for a period of two years, and set up a website theme for me. I wrote up a few articles to get started, and committed to a weekly schedule.
In January of 2018, we went live!
Since then, we have posted mainly about Byzantine topics and feast days, but also about the mom life, and a little on homeschooling. Our most popular article of all time is one I did on how many baby clothes to get for a baby. This inspired me to make our ByzLife New Baby Guide! After this, our most popular articles are on Byzantine Baby Names, and our one about the Byzantine Prayer Rope.
Where We Are Now
Our blog has come a long way in the last three years! First of all I have to give a special thanks to our Patreon supporter – we have enough through your support to cover website costs for the year! And for the first year since we started, I don’t feel any guilt for all the expenses it takes to run the website. (My husband wouldn’t want me to feel guilty – it is just hard sometimes as a stay at home mom not bringing any money in, and then spending a lot of it anyway!)
Now that the website has been up and running for three years, we also have a good number of articles! I have made a calendar of the year with feast days we have covered, plus ones that are yet to be covered. Eventually I will make a page for the church year, to make it easier for everyone to find all our feast day resources!
Right now I am also in the middle of writing a book! The working title is: The Byzantine Preschool: Living the Byzantine Life from birth to Age 6. There is no set timeline for finishing, but it is well underway!
Where We Would Like To Go
Aside from working on the book, I have some grand plans for the coming year(s).
First of all, if we can get some more support through patreon, we will invest in some video equipment and start releasing videos on The Byz Life YouTube channel. That is, I would be doing videos, rather than just my husband’s side gig of podcasting. If you are interested in supporting this ministry, consider heading to https://www.patreon.com/thebyzantinelife. You can help us out by giving as much as you are able, on a monthly basis. The lowest amount we have available is $5 a month, but you can customize the amount however you would like. (So 7 dollars a month, 23 a month, etc).
Right now Patreon mainly has special photos and family updates. But I am getting ready to add some special Byzantine and parenting content as well.
My second plan for furthering the blog is getting started on more homeschooling articles. I have a lot of information and plans stored up, so it is time I start sharing! Plus, I will be working on creating some Byzantine materials for homeschooling use. This coincides with the work I am doing on the Byzantine Preschool book.
The third idea I have for the future of the blog is to start a Byzantine Book club! This way, we can have a space to suggest books with good Byzantine content, and other great orthodox works together.
So we hope to start making video content for Living the Byzantine Life, write more homeschool articles, and promote Byzantine literature. Do you have any other ideas or hopes for the future of the blog? If so, please let us know in the comments. I am looking forward to another year of writing and sharing details about living the Byzantine Life!
