a blogging renaissance

Blogging has been a challenge for me, but I’m thankful that it has been. In the past, as a writer, I’ve felt confident whenever taking on a new assignment. I felt the same confidence when I jumped into blogging, but found that I had less reason to be. Many writers tend to have a similar reaction when something they write doesn’t get their expected feedback to Kayne West’s when Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” music video didn’t win the VMA for best video. It’s the best thing ever, so why doesn’t everyone agree?

I think the challenges of blogging are not recognized until someone actually attempts to write a post. I’m sure that many pools of blogging challenges range in depth but are all filled with similar water.

Below are some of the challenges in my pool. I need to face them and defeat them because, if everything else fails, blogging is at least a way to put myself out into the big world of writing on my own terms.

I need to find a focus and stick with it; I don’t like posting content that isn’t my own, so posting GIFs and photos and videos that aren’t 100% mine doesn’t feel right, and having time to take photos and edit videos isn’t always possible; self promoting my work through social media seems selfish to me and frankly, I’d rather have complete strangers read my stuff and hate it than have people I know read my stuff and hate it… maybe that’s something I just need to get over. Blogging is a freaking job, I need to find a way to do this thing and do it right.

Finding a focus is step one to creating this brand of mine. What do I want my conversation with my audience to be?

No matter the day of the year, I think about health and fitness. I read about it, talk about it with friends and family, but whether or not I practice it just sort of depends. I want my blog to be positive and honest. I want to share my knowledge of fitness and healthy eating, benefits, tips and recipes, while relating to my audience because living a healthy lifestyle isn’t always easy for me and has never come to me naturally.

I plan to start creating original multimedia for my posts -- photos, short videos, infographics, etc. Part of being relatable is sharing content in a visual, easy-to-understand way. How is that done? Multimedia.

Having this conversation matters to me for a selfish reason -- if I post about healthy foods and exercising regularly, maybe I’ll actually incorporate them into my life more regularly. Along the road, if people find this blog and begin reading it regularly, then it’s a win for everybody involved.

Social media is a tool for bloggers. If we don’t use it, our readership will be much lower and our conversations will be fewer and much shorter. Being active on social media is a way for new readers to find you. Tweeting about each post and using hashtags within the tweets reaches a large audience that is constantly growing through retweeting and replying. I plan to jump back on Twitter and not only tweet when I have a new post up, but also more regularly.

Having a large number of Twitter followers is a result of having a personality on the site. My personality will only come through in tweets if a lot of them are just about me and my daily interactions and thoughts. Tweeting about posts and directly linking to them in between will then get eyeballs to my blog. It’s a process, but the end result is sweet and never ending, as a person’s Twitter following can be as big as the world wants it to be.

Instagram is another social media that will allow me to link directly to my posts while showing my personality and allowing me to create a relationship with my audience. Honestly, I just need to start posting more. For about the last year, I’ve been posting a lot less. Summer 2015: Time to get back on the horse called Instagram. I have faith.

Blogging is a job that never ends. People are posting and reading and commenting while the blogger is sleeping, eating, out with friends, etc. Falling off the face of the planet via not posting anything on a blog or social media for a few days is one of the worst things a blogger could do because it’s the best way to quickly lose the audience’s attention.

Since I’m making social media a must for my revamped blogging situation, I’m confident that this won’t happen.

I want my audience on social media to view me for my relatable, sometimes funny, normal self. I don’t feel the need to act like I know something or have something others don’t, but I do want to share what I do know with the world and learn from other people that way. I’ll reach out to my social media audience on both Twitter and Instagram about this post, tweeting a short preview of it and ‘gramming a photo that is within it.

My main concern with using social media is coming off as saying “look at this cool thing I’m doing even though these kinds of posts are annoying.” That’s a huge reason why I’m staying away from Facebook to promote the blog. I think that as long as I follow my plan to post more in general and incorporate social media posts about the blog along the way, then I won’t come off in any sort of negative way to my audience.

Let’s reflect

Going back to my first post and reading it for the first time in months was eye opening. My voice was snobby, I was cursing, my thoughts were all over the place -- my purpose and my personality were lost within this wordy, confusing, pessimistic post. Those are some adjectives that I do not want to be associated with according to my audience. My focus was originally fashion, but even over time I could not figure out exactly what I’d write about.

Focus and fighting tangents within each post was a main struggle for me. Reading On Writing Well by William Zinsser was more than just a refresher on basic story structure -- it was a great source to reference and learn from throughout the semester and helped me realize that the writing for a blog, although more conversational than other mediums, still requires careful attention to basic writing techniques.

Regardless of the medium, a piece of writing has an audience. When writing all of my previous posts, I had trouble focusing on just one thing. I saw blogging as a free-for-all; I thought that since I was writing on my own and, you could say, for fun, that I could ramble on and digress multiple times within a 500-word post. The hard part is that I can write about anything I want on this thing, so when my mind jumps from one idea to another, I allow that jump to happen, sometimes without building a bridge between.

On Writing Well reminded me that whatever I write on my blog should be for me and should be about what I want it to be about and say what I want it to say. But my unguided posts are proof that a little bit of structure goes a long way. I’m working on it.

A pair of guests who visited my Blogging and Journalistic Branding class at Temple was Tom and Lorenzo, a Philly-based couple who run a self-titled blog. They inspired me a lot during their talk with us because they have been blogging for over a decade and haven’t lost originality or their voice. They talked about how a lot of what they’ve written about was an original way to talk about something. They were the first blog that was focused on Project Runway when the show first gained mainstream popularity. Now, they do something on their blog called “Mad Style.” It’s a breakdown of different characters’ hairstyles, makeup and costumes and how all those elements help tell the story, something that goes unnoticed by many viewers. Tom has a film background, so he’s able to recognize the significance of these things.

Tom and Lorenzo take things and talk about them in a way that no one already is. They credited a lot of their success to this, and it’s inspired me to try to think differently to remain fresh and original.

The couple blog about fashion but are in Philly. They have a big enough presence in the fashion world to live in New York and are regularly invited to Fashion Week, launch parties and other fashion events, but they choose to stay out of the spotlight and keep their home in Philadelphia. It’s comforting to know that it’s possible to blog from a place that isn’t as immersed as others in the topic at hand and still be successful at it.

Not so cringe-worthy content

Like I said earlier, my first post was an embarrassment. But after going back to each post, I’ve found little excerpts that made me smile and embody the voice I want to keep and evolve further.

“This is a space where I’ll share things that make my life a little bit better, more enjoyable -- whether that be through something I learned, ate, did, saw or heard about. But again, not specific enough.”

“I can’t really explain why I waited to so long to try one, except that I was probably afraid of its texture, which happens with me and food a lot. But I will say that my enjoyment of eating avocados made it worth the wait.”

“Am I a certified nutritionist? Absolutely not. But between the calories, fat and fiber, I’d say that’s a solid snack or mini-meal (if you add some protein).”

“Plus, Philly’s got more to offer. I want to talk about or hear about something new that we’re known for, I want to hear an updated version of what Philly’s got.”

“I've watched movies and TV shows that have characters that are either are against it or wear it and don't talk about it or wear it and get shamed (an episode from Sex and the City where a PETA-like advocate throws either red paint or blood onto Samantha's real fur comes to mind).”

A main issue for me with these excerpts is that in some way, they all contain the word “I.” This post has a lot of them itself. I want to make sure I balance talking about me and talking about what I know -- to me, those two things are different. These posts are from me in the first person, using “I” is inevitable. But I want to make sure that this blog starts a conversation and isn’t just all one-sided.

I’m looking forward to revamping this blog and creating a space to share my thoughts, knowledge and curiosities about health and fitness. I hope that I do so in a way that makes you want to stick around.

branding bits

Pick one thing about yourself and run with it. One trait, one interest or lack of one interest, one quirk, one theme… that’s now your new persona or voice. That’s essentially what blogging is, or seems to be -- that’s not easy.

I take that back. It’s not what blogging is, it’s what branding is. But the two happen together or branding comes however shortly after you start blogging. If you read on, you’ll see I’ve touched on multiple topics - choosing one isn’t easy. But my topic and content within that topic need to be focused, or else some may not read on.

Tom and Lorenzo, married couple who own and run a fashion, celebrity lifestyle and TV review blog, have a clear voice throughout. A bit sassy, but smart too, as Tom has a film background and gives detailed insight on camera composition, costume design and other aspects within a show.

But I’ve met Tom and Lorenzo, and together they are funny but sweet and dish out punchy one-liners in their normal tone. Maybe their voice is the same on their blog than in real life, but they’ve said otherwise.

After making blogging a full-time gig and bringing on advertisers, the content changes a bit. It’s the same ideas, but it’s more focused on what the audience likes to read and writing things that will give your site hits. It’s a business now. And with that, comes the need for branding your site and branding yourself and sticking with it, running with it.

Your readership can only know you for so many things. Writing about your love for fly fish and fashion on the same blog could work, but your audience would be completely split, there would rarely be overlap from a reader coming to the blog for both topics. It would be weird, no?

My voice here is a positive one, not unrealistically positive, but this is a space where I’ll share things that make my life a little bit better, more enjoyable -- whether that be through something I learned, ate, did, saw or heard about. But again, not specific enough. Give the people what they want, dammit!

Being myself is key here. No one wants to read something if it’s obvious I didn’t want to write it, but did so to keep up with the brand that is myself. Here you’ll find things that make me happy because I’m making healthy choices for myself. I do mean physically healthy, but they also make me mentally and emotionally healthier because science, man.

I’ve wrote and will continue to write about little things that are a smarter choice, almost an easier choice when all said and done… more on those little things later. 

don't hold the avo

Everyone -- really I think everyone -- is eating avocados. They’ve always had the same nutritional value, but this time around they’re getting much more attention and affection. I was late jumping on the avocado band wagon. I didn’t really even try a piece of avocado until about a year ago.

I can’t really explain why I waited to so long to try one, except that I was probably afraid of its texture, which happens with me and food a lot. But I will say that my enjoyment of eating avocados made it worth the wait.

Expanding on why and how these fruits (and yes it’s a fruit; the avocado is the fruit from an avocado tree) got so popular is a post upon itself, so today I’ll focus on how I utilize these green guys.

Avocado is pretty much amazing with anything: on toast, in salads, on sandwiches, by the spoon with some salt and pepper, in wraps and burritos, the list continues and doesn’t end. I don’t always make avocado-including meals and snacks at home, which makes eating out more expensive because adding avocado to something = $$$ but sometimes… most times… actually, all the time, it’s worth it to splurge.

At home, I typically eat avocados on rice cakes. Sounds boring, but it’s so delicious and the possibilities practically go on forever.

I slice the avocado in half, deseed and cut into chunks that I mash onto each rice cake (one half per cake). Sprinkle some salt and pepper on top, and game over -- you have your snack/mini-meal.

Mini-meal, you ask? One avocado has 29 grams of fat (44% of the recommended daily value), and by fat I mean the “good-for-you-fat.” It also has four grams of protein (8%), 14 grams of fiber (56%) and 322 calories.

Am I a certified nutritionist? Absolutely not. But between the calories, fat and fiber, I’d say that’s a solid snack or mini-meal (if you add some protein).

shops, FNO, URBN and more

Philly is known for the same things it’s always been known for: cheesesteaks, Rocky, history, loud and proud sports fans – the list could continue. I’m sick of hearing these words. Unless I want to eat a cheesesteak or am about to or am currently eating a cheesesteak, I don’t want to say or hear the word “cheesesteak.” Call me a pessimist, but I’m just tired of hearing about them and how we have them. (I do love cheesesteaks, but I’ve never understood the people who’re crazed over them. While delicious, they’re not the only food in the world, or the city, that’s delicious.) Plus, Philly’s got more to offer. I want to talk about or hear about something new that we’re known for, I want to hear an updated version of what Philly’s got.

From my perspective, we have opportunity here. The cost of living is low, we have two major industries (medicine and education), plenty of high education establishments to attend, a kickin’ food and beer scene, an expanding mileage of running and biking trails and greenspace. There’s so much that’s booming or about to boom here, why not talk about it with people not from our city to give them a little taste of what Philly has up its sleeve?

Something I didn’t include in the list above is the growing retail and fashion scene here. Philly has been named the ugliest city multiple years in a row, but that doesn’t mean ugly people can’t dress themselves. Philadelphia’s main retail corridor has been Walnut and Chestnut streets west of Broad Street. Four-block stretches of both streets are getting makeovers, between renovating stores who have called Rittenhouse “home” for years, and bringing in big names like Michael Kors, Nordstrom (Rack) and the increasingly popular Japanese brand, Uniqlo.

What does this mean for Philly and its people? Money and growth – two things a place needs to thrive longer and harder than before. And maybe these ugly people can mask their faces with fashionable Phantom of the Opera-esque masks to make us look a little better.

Philly also has its own Fashion Week and Fashion’s Night Out, two staple events in the fashion capitals of the world. (Philly’s not one of them.) Philly Fashion Week happens in February, when all the other major weeks happen in New York City, London, Paris and Milan. Philly’s Fashion Week showcases small and large designers based here in traditional and non venues around town. Fashion’s Night Out started in 2009 and came to Philly in 2012. It’s an event celebrated around the city, not just in Rittenhouse Square at the stores on Walnut and Chestnut, but in other spots south, east and west of City Hall.

I think that having both of these events in Philly annually shows that Philly’s got style and people are starting to notice it. It’s also the home of URBN, the massive company that’s the parent to Urban Outfitters, Free People, Terrain, Anthropologie and its bridal brand BLDG.

Being home to URBN’s HQ brings people here to work and having this growing corridor and fashion scene brings others here to play.

anti-fur

I've always been a fan of fur. It's soft and luxurious looking, it's fun and cozy. But before recently, I never really gave thought of real vs. faux fur. I've watched movies and TV shows that have characters that are either are against it or wear it and don't talk about it or wear it and get shamed (an episode from Sex and the City where a PETA-like advocate throws either red paint or blood onto Samantha's real fur comes to mind). But not until around a year ago did I give this issue any thought.

Animals are living things. That's really what it comes down to, for me. Killing, skinning and wearing a beautiful living thing only for the purpose of aesthetic and style does not make sense. We aren't cavemen, we aren't living in a society that requires us to wear the skin of others for warmth and survival. So why wear fur? Why support it?

Some headline's on the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA's, website force me to look away.

little things: a blog is (re)born

My first post has been an embarrassment of rambles since I clicked “Publish.” I had no concrete idea of my blog’s focus or direction. Where did I want this thing to go? I find that it has changed with each post, although few. Talking about fashion was the game at first, but I found little momentum from myself, a college senior in her last semester, who can barely make it out of the house in anything but cropped yoga pants. I’m quite guilty of cropped yoga pants.

My first post was a pool of digressions, things that zip through my mind as I type. I thought that since this was my blog, why not just write and post them as they come? (Cue the next few posts.) Now is the time, as a graduating college student and as a girl with a blog, that I need to figure out my direction. Where should I go? For the the sake of my personal writing, where should my blog go? I need a purpose.

Away with longer pieces, here to stay are short “little things.” I’m finding it impossible to write anything but randomness. My days move too fast so I can’t catch enough of these little things to examine them. Alas, the varying subject matter remains.
 

Writing the posts previous to this one allowed me to learn things about topics and subjects that I was curious about, but never curious enough to do something about. This blog will be a compilation of “little things” that I want to know more about. It’ll be a daily (weekly, for now) destination for a little piece of something. Not the whole cake, but just a bite. Maybe I should practice this in my physical consumption of cake, too. Both I will work on.

grey vs gray

Mid-post of what was originally going to be my second official blog post, I came across the word gray. Then I thought, grey or gray? It’s something I’ve wondered most of my life, but never at a time that seemed convenient to look into it further. It’s my favorite color, all 50 shades and more of it. (That joke seems to pop up a lot when I say that grey/gray is my favorite color.)

So I thought that tonight would be a great opportunity to finally look into a question that has been burning my grey/gray-loving, “I’m a writer I should know this one” soul. How the hell is gray/grey spelt? To answer my question, I turned to the ever-available Google. “Grey vs gray” is typed into the search bar, and no I wasn’t Feeling Lucky, so my page reloads to show the first handful out of what Google said was around 112,000,000 results for my search.

My first choice is to visit greyorgray.com. It gets my inner struggle. Apparently, according to the site, the pair of fraternal word twins are interchangeable, however “gray” is more commonly used in America and “grey” in England. A noticeable difference the site points out is the actual hex codes for each color. Grey is a lighter shade, while gray is much darker. Cloford.com provides a long, long list of over 500 colors and includes a swatch of the color, its name and hex code. As you can see below, Cloford calls all but one of the hues gray. The one lonely grey is a much lighter shade.

It’s 100 percent cliche to reference Merriam-Webster when defining something in longer-form, whether it’s during a graduation speech or on a blog post like this one. But I also feel like it’s necessary. Sorry. MW defines gray as “of the color gray,” “tending toward gray [as in blue-gray eyes],” and “dull in color.” Okay, those make sense, seem reasonable. When MW defines grey, it references multiple names of people and that it’s a “variant of gray.” That, in a way, explains why Fifty Shades of Grey uses “Grey” and not “Gray.” I’m not sure why I’ve already referenced this book twice already...I’ve never even read it and I don’t plan to pay a $12 to see it in theaters. $12 is a lot these days, I could buy a whole pizza with that kind of money. I digress, for neither the first nor last time on this blog.

I’m confident in saying that after looking at these few sources, I can comfortably settle on using “gray” over “grey.” Unless I move to the UK, I’ll stick to this notion and not feel self conscious and unsure next time I have to write the name of the hue down on paper.

I’m thinking that this blog may become a compilation of posts like this one. Thinks that I wonder about in the everyday, but never think to spend time looking into it. I’m hoping this will make me generally more inquisitive. That wouldn’t be a bad thing.