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.

the Super Bowl is BIG but i don't know why

I can’t stop thinking about life and its reason or purpose lately. This thought of mine stemmed from watching a football game a few months ago. I can’t remember what teams were playing or exactly when, but I was watching an NFL game on TV when this it popped on my radar. It suddenly seemed crazy to me that so many humans care to watch other humans play a game. How is this so important and how is this such a big business/market and how do these players make so much freaking money? No I don’t live under a rock, I can answer these questions literally. But when you really think about it, why does all of this matter? And the Super Bowl is the holy grail of football games, obviously. But why? How is a game such a big deal? This string of questions is the root of me questioning my existence. Thanks, football.

Let’s dig in a little bit. Tell me, Google, give me answers! (Search engines make my life too easy. I should pick up a physical book soon.)

The first pro-football game was in 1892, for which player William “Pudge” Heffelfinger received $500 for playing. Today, that amount would be around $13,000. That’s really nothing today, especially considering that some professional American football players earn more than $20 million a game. What?! But my boyfriend, who I consider a living sports encyclopedia, just told me that comparing these two figures is like “comparing apples to oranges [because] nowadays [players] would get paid more because of exposure. More people come to watch the games, people buy uniforms. Stuff like that never happened in 1896 so the players didn’t bring in as much money so they wouldn’t be paid as much.” Makes total sense and seems totally obvious now. Why didn’t I think of that this way?

His excited response to my comparison makes me ask why and how did all of this exposure come to be? Why do people care so much about football? Answering how the Super Bowl became as popular as it is today will hopefully fill in some blanks.

After reading one source that seemed promising, I found that the writer didn’t provide any concrete reason or evidence explaining how or why the game’s popularity is what it is today. He references the commercials and partying that take place and attract viewers and fans. But that’s not telling me how or why!

After further research, I found that I and the Times blogger weren’t the only ones who asked this question and found little concrete explanation. A big part of why the Super Bowl is as big as it is is because it’s just big and continues to get bigger. From the beginning, the Super Bowl advertised itself as big and important to watch, so people did. I did find, after asking Google in different ways, some tangible reasons for the game’s popularity.

NBCSports writer Joe Posnanski asked my same question and broke down five events that aided in making the Super Bowl larger than life, or as he put it, “crazy and over the top, and that’s the point.” Summaries of a couple of his reasons are below:

1. The third annual world championship game (not yet called the Super Bowl) was in 1969. Competition was high between the two leagues since the Green Bay Packers from the NFL won the first two championship games. New York Jets Quarterback Joe Nameth guaranteed the public that the AFL team would beat its opponent that year. After the AFL team won, people started paying more attention to football. Football couldn’t offer any history or tradition, unlike older American sports, so it made sure to give people something to talk about.

2. In 1978, Commissioner Pete Rozelle moved the game to 6pm Eastern Time. Previously, he moved the game to mid-afternoon so that East Coast reporters would have time to write about the game in the next day’s newspapers. To have the second half of the game in prime time television to get more viewers, but still give reporters time to talk about the game the next day, Rozelle changed the official kick off time to 6:17pm that year.

Posnanski’s 3, 4 and 5 are all events or commercials that happened during different Super Bowls and can be read about here.

Since its start, the Super Bowl has made noise, and I think the first two events above show that. The Super Bowl, I’ve now realized, is so big because it made sure it got that big. American football called itself king and everyone in America shook their heads, agreed and followed their ruler. That really, I’ve found, is the best way to explain it.