TheRomanticWay

Just over a year ago, Holly and I launched our site, The Romantic Way. We were looking for something to do in our spare time, a creative outlet and an opportunity for me to write and post my photography in a forum other than just another photo album. So, we signed up with SiteSell, a wonderful and inexpensive way for newbies like us to learn about running a web site with relatively little pain. At first it was mechanical, but after we learned the concepts, it became creative. Thus, TheRomanticWay.com was born!

When working with the SiteSell system, you choose your best site concept — a topic you love and know about which has good demand on the web. Those couple of weeks were a great adventure for us. We could hardly wait to get to our time to work on the website, brainstorming all kinds of different topics that tugged at our hearts. One theme kept emerging, however. That’s right — romance.

While guy and gal lovey-dovy romance was pretty high in our minds, we discovered that there was another side to romance that empassioned us even more. We realized that we’d discovered in the years of our marriage — a wild maze of twists and turns and wild rides — that we have a romantic view of life which others admire. And, to be honest, a few criticize. People said things like, “Wow, you guys are willing to take risks in life.” “You do such fun things.” “I could never do that.” “You see things differently than most people don’t you?” There were the other comments as well which included phrases like “rose-colored glasses” or “unrealistic view of life” or “head in the clouds”.

It was this collection of reactions of our friends and colleagues and quite a lot of stirrings in our hearts, that convinced us that we were on to something. We were on to not only a great theme for a website, but more importantly, a more lively and fulfilling way of life.

As we shared our concept with our friends, we discovered that people really are interested in what makes life more beautiful, how they can realize their dreams, how they can use their gifts and talents to help others, how they can reconcile the struggle between fulfillment and success and how they can find more time and energy to express who God made them.

People are really interested in such things. The problem is that they are afraid to do it. We’re not.

Well, OK we are. Everybody’s afraid to make changes. No sooner did we get our website up and running and began adding content and started seeing more and more visitors to the site, our life began to spin out of control. We would be moving back to the States after seven years in Russia and dealing with some really hard issues of our future and the corresponding financial and emotional issues that go with all of it. In short, our romantic views on life would be put to the test!

We’d built about fifty pages in our site, had e-cards, a lot of my photos in with the articles, poetry and of course the favorites of our readers, romantic dinner recipes. I think that’s among my favorite part as well because you have to admit, food is romantic and just plain sensual.

Once we began wrapping things up in Moscow, the site had to go on hold and on hold it would remain for several months while we moved back to the States and crept along the path of our future. While we didn’t build new web pages of romantic poems, romantic living articles or romantic dinner recipes, we did learn a lot about living the romantic way. We endured a lot of pain, questioned ourselves and even questioned our faith in God.

We’re by no means flying out of the chute proclaiming, “I’ve found the way! Follow me!” The reality is we’re meeting others along the way saying, “You know, there are choices you can make in life and in faith that are honest. You can connect with yourself, your spouse, your world and your God in a far more meaningful way.” Others are telling us the same thing. We struggle together and enjoy life’s ride.

I’m plunging back into the website again because I want the creative outlet. And I want to share our journey with fellow romance seekers. The Romantic Way site doesn’t much resemble the original SiteSell site any longer. It’s endured several transformations with the latest being the integration of the blog. The Romantic Way blog allows me to write much more freely than the articles. I’ll continue to add romantic articles, photographs, romantic ideas, romantic gifts and other artistic resources, but it’s my blogs you’ll want to follow. I’ll turn you on to what’s new on the site. Turn on your RSS feed and stay tuned.

If you found this site helpful, please leave a gift for Rod & Holly. You'll enjoy giving in the spirit of The Romantic Way.