#taught me like. how to do your theme. how to ACTUALLY find accounts worth following. stuff like that

[castielsupernatural]

fr fr if you are a new tumblr user and you ever have any questions about how tumblr works nor how to see the right stuff on your dash or how to make your blog not look like a bot you can dm me. i don’t care if you don’t follow me or i don’t follow you it’s not weird i just know tumblr is easier when someone shows you the ropes. it’s the last website in the universe that doesn’t play into instant gratification so you have to do a little trial and error to get the perfect experience but that’s exactly why it’s pretty much the only website left with a good experience. i am 100% serious

[foxymoxynoona]

Ashtoreth

Ok, I had told Tae_ree on ao3 that I was inspired by her story Cam Girl back in the day to barf out a little cam girl story of my own, which I then immediately abandoned. I looked and I wrote this on July 20, 2020. It's not a full story arc or anything, just a little snippet I abandoned BUT I had forgotten that actually this was a stepping stone to writing Amended and Meadow, as you'll see from some themes I repurposed. I thought I'd share even though this isn't really a complete story because I think it can be interesting to see how inspiration and ideas morph over time into something completely different.

Content warnings for this: nsfw, 18+ , cam girl, voyeurism, masturbation, I don't actually know anything about cam girls and I didn't bother to learn since this was just a little writing exercise, so there ya go...

Tattoo Artist!JK x Camgirl!Reader

He didn’t watch much. Well, he watched plenty of porn, but Jungkook didn’t follow live camgirls because seeing the show live made him feel… awkward. Nervous. It felt so intimate, to have a girl talking live to the camera, to be able to type in the chat and have her notice your comment. It made it feel too much like a living, breathing person --not that he didn’t think women in porn were real! But… it was an image he was watching. Something a woman had cultivated, edited, decided to share. A live camgirl was performing in a different way and…

Well, he just felt guiltier watching camgirls. So he didn’t watch them much. Maybe he’d tune in if there was one on, and then he’d feel too ashamed of his own… earnestness. Live cam girls were a level of intimacy that… that was cruel. That he wanted. Camgirls reminded him too clearly of what he didn’t have in real life, and that made him feel ashamed and pathetic and broken. And so he’d leave almost as soon as he started watching and go find some safe, static porn.

But there was one. Ashtoreth. He couldn’t resist her. He was pathetic, weak for this woman, and wound up making an account --which he never did-- just so he could subscribe and get alerts whenever she scheduled a show. Even just the act of getting an alert made him stiffen, made the blood start to trickle south, because he knew what was coming.

He didn’t know what Ashtoreth’s face looked like. And she often wore colored wigs, so whatever he did see wasn't identifiable She had a pretty average body, neither the fit nor voluptuous extremes that tended to dominate the suggested videos. She had a somewhat soft belly and hips and thighs. She had those stripes on the inside of her thighs, too. And a beautiful tattoo along her hip that he desperately wanted to see in closer detail. Her tits weren’t huge, but soft and squeezable and real. Sometimes she presented herself bare to the camera, other times tidy, and sometimes fully grown out. She said she felt like it was a matter of principle to create videos with natural hair growth, even if she preferred to be better kept because she often got horny and juicy throughout the day and it was easier for her to keep clean. That had fucked Jungkook up for a little while. It didn’t help that she had the prettiest pussy he had ever seen, beautifully shaped and colored, and even just tuning in to see how much he’d be able to see was worth the effort. And he liked the idea that she had principles like that.

In fact, he liked all the things she talked about. She was very personable, in a way that was horribly endearing. She played video games, which had actually been what struck him first; that was how he’d found her, because he’d seen that a camgirl was playing Overwatch with a vibrating egg in, and so he’d tuned in, and she was good, and it meant the next time he’d played, it had made him too hard to concentrate, remembering the way she’d whined and moaned and cum just after she’d won her match. Fucking dream girl.

She took suggestions of things to do from high donors, within reason. He wasn’t the only one that liked when she got sort of passionate and fixated on something interesting she’d learned and wanted to share. She spoke several languages and alternated between them --English and Spanish. She claimed to speak more Korean, but never spoke that on her cams, and Jungkook was far too shy to ask her to. It would do him in, but it was also his fucking dream. Did she really speak Korean? It seemed so unusual for a foreigner.

So he liked the things she spoke about too, he liked when she shared her interests, even though it made him feel guiltier because he knew he was looking for the wrong sorts of connections in porn. A cam girl was just performing. It was possible everything she talked about was fake. She was trying to earn money, after all. It funded the toys she bought, the pretty lingerie. People funded those things, all the men and women who tuned in to watch her tease herself into a whining mess and then cum all over the sheets. She’d taught herself to squirt on camera, even giggling at how unreliable it was. She’d just started doing some anal and admitted it made her nervous. She was just so sweet and sexy at the same time, and it all fed into this horrible, horrible fixation Jungkook had that she was his dream girl, even though he knew it wasn’t true and it wasn’t real.

And then at the end of a live, she’d curled up on her side, flushed, panting a little, hand lazily stroking her hip, and said in Korean, “By the way, I thought I’d mention here because my stats say I have a lot of viewers from Asia, but I’m looking for a tattoo artist and it’s hard to find. So if anyone knows a good one in Korea, let me know!”

Jungkook came on his hand. He hunched forward, spluttering and frozen. It had ruined his good orgasm, the shock --he always had good orgasms when he jerked himself off to watching her. He particularly loved after she came, the way she lay there and giggled sort of breathily and talked about the random things that came to mind. But he had not expected her to speak Korean for the first time. And he had not expected her to ask for tattoo artist recommendations.

He froze. He stared at the screen, grunting a little as his cock twitched. Should he-- no. He couldn’t. He shouldn’t. That would be stupid. And weird. And creepy. But like… what the fuck? Did she actually live in Korea?? Her profile didn’t give a location, but he’d always assumed the States since she spoke English primarily. Did… what… and she needed a tattoo artist…

“Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck,” he grumbled, grabbing a tissue and wiping his hand off. He couldn’t say anything. He shouldn’t.

But if he didn’t, her other followers would, right? Why was she asking for recs? She was setting herself up for harassment! She couldn’t just ask people who watched her pleasure herself for IRL recommendations!

Frantic with a need to protect her, it was perhaps the only thing that could have led him to message her.

GKtat97: hello. Are you sure it’s a good idea to ask for suggestions here? You could get bad guys answering

Ashtoreth: hello. Are you saying you’re a bad guy? ;)

GKtat97: no! I’m very serious! Be safe! But if you need a place my friend does really good tattoos in seoul. I don’t know where you are looking but I didn’t know you were in Korea

Ashtoreth: oh really? Yes I have moved a few times but I’m currently in Korea. Does your friend work in a parlor somewhere?

GKtat97: yes. Byeolbit Tattoo downtown. Whole studio of great artists

Ashtoreth: awesome, thank you! Have you had work done there?

GKtat97: yeah

Ashtoreth: cool I will definitely take a look. Thank you for the recommendation! What’s your friend’s name?

GKtat97: anyone there is good but my friend is jjk. If you ask for him, he’ll hook you up

Ashtoreth: excellent, I’ll check out his portfolio on their website. Thanks babe :*

Fuck fuck fuck, what was he doing? If anything, he should have suggested her to one of his friends there. Because what if she actually did follow up? What if she made an appointment and came in for a tattoo by him and he got to touch her… fuck, that was entirely unprofessional. He couldn’t do it. Maybe if she knew he was the one watching her, then he wouldn’t feel so morally conflicted, but there was no way he could tell this woman to her face oh yeah, that was me messaging you, I watch you finger yourself to get off. Fuck.

Well. It was highly unlikely she’d be following up, anyway. He comforted himself with that. Probably a dozen guys were messaging her now, trying to get her business so they could tattoo her body.

Ugh. She’d called him babe. He groaned and felt his cock twitch in pleasure just at that reality. She’d called him babe, this faceless woman with the beautiful voice and body. Fuck.

**

As far as he could tell, no one unusual had reached out to the tattoo parlor, though it was hard to really guess what that would mean. He’d idly flipped through the appointment calendar but of course it wasn’t like she’d make an appointment under Ashtoreth. No one had requested him out of the ordinary. And she’d done a couple more lives in the past couple weeks, so he figured that meant she’d decided to go with someone else. Which hurt a bit, sure, but he was trying to be an adult about it. After all, it was for the best.

And then during lunch, Mina popped her head back and asked, “Hey, there’s a woman who came by to see if you can do a consult…”

“Is she in the schedule?” Jungkook asked.

Mina made a face but admitted, “No… but that’s my fault. I’ve been trying to get something scheduled for her for a couple weeks now and forgot to write it down-- I’m sorry!”

Jungkook rolled his eyes and teased, “Mina, it’s the whole point of your job to write it down…”

“I know. I feel so bad. I’ll buy your lunch tomorrow. Can you meet with her now?”

“Fine.”

He shoved one final bite of food into his mouth, then went to wash his hands and rinse his mouth out so he wouldn’t risk sauce or broccoli in his teeth for a consult. He was still hungry but maybe if this went quickly he’d have time to scarf down the rest of it.

He stepped out to the front area where a woman sat in one of the chairs, looking a little uncomfortable actually. He thought it must be her first tattoo and that she was nervous; he got a lot of young women in for their first tattoo, a little butterfly or hummingbird on their ankle or wrist. She stood when he approached and gave him a rather dubious smile.

“Are you Jeon Jungkook?” she asked. In Korean, which was unusual but not unheard of for a foreigner. A young woman had probably come here to teach or something and learned the language, but she had a good grasp of it.

“Yes. Hello.”

“I’m Y/N,” she answered, shaking his hand.

“Nice to meet you. Sorry about the mix up--”

“It’s my fault!” Mina sighed dramatically.

“I’m sorry I’m interrupting your lunch. Should I come back another day?”

“No, it’s fine. What are you looking for?”

“Well, I um, I need one covered up and I was hoping to get something custom to cover it. I saw your portfolio and it looks like you’ve done that kind of thing before.”

He nodded, “Yeah, it’s not a problem. Do you have ideas?”

“Yeah… but I’m also kind of open… I’m not an artist, so…”

“Can you show me what you’re wanting covered up?”

“Uh, yeah…”

“We can step back here,” Jungkook offered when she seemed a little shy. She followed him back to one of the pods and leaned her hip against the table as if for strength, then lifted her shirt to show him a man’s name scrawled across her ribs.

“Is it ok if I examine it?” he asked her. She nodded and he sat on a stool to lean in close and look. It was not well done; if it was the man’s copied signature, he had an ugly hand, but the tattoos itself was also uneven, too shallow in some places, too deep in others. However the scratchy and loopiness of it would be pretty easy to design a pattern over.

“I can see by your face it’s ugly. I know. It was… complicated,” she admitted. “I keep it covered with make up usually but I want it gone.”

“That’s easy to cover,” he assured her. “What do you want over it?”

“Well, I thought-- I have this tattoo,” she told him, lifting the other side of her shirt to expose the flower design crawling out of the waistband of her pants over her hip.

Jungkook froze. She was talking but he didn’t hear anything she said because he knew that tattoo. This was Ashtoreth. He looked up at her face, frozen with shock. This was Ashtoreth’s face. How had he not recognized her voice? But she was speaking Korean and he’d only heard her speak it that once and he hadn’t expected this

“Will that work?” she asked.

“Sorry… could you repeat?” Fuck.

“If it can match this?” she asked him. “Except adding in some violets.”

“Oh. Yes. That’s not a problem,” he assured her. “Um, how big are you thinking?”

She motioned with her hands, then asked, “Am I going to die? I know rib tattoos are supposed to be pretty bad… But I’ve had a baby and I got this thing so I’m not a total baby…”

“You have a kid?” he repeated, then immediately cursed himself. Why did that matter? But it was a real thing about her and it was not what he’d expected.

“Um, yeah. Do you have kids?”

“No,” he said simply. And then because apparently he couldn’t stop himself, he pointed, “I guess he wasn’t a very good father, huh?”

She gave him a small laugh and a crooked grin that made his heart actually flutter and agreed, “No, he wasn’t. But I did get something good out of it, so that’s what I want to cover his name with.”

“Flowers?”

“Violets. My daughter with him is called Violet.”

“Ah. That’s… sweet.” He looked away from her, sliding over to the counter to get his camera. “Can I take a picture? I’ll draw a design and you can leave your email with Mina. Once we get that, we’ll make an appointment.”

“Ok. Yes.” She turned to the side and held her shirt steady for him to take a picture of the names, a couple so he’d be able to recreate it flat.

“Mind if I get one of that too, so I can remember it?”

“Do you want the whole thing?”

“No, just the top is fine, if this has all the style elements you want.” So turned and posed for him to get this second one, and he tried to ignore that he was sweating a little to now have personal photos of Ashtoreth. This wasn’t ok. It wasn’t ok. It was unethical. It was ok for him to tattoo her if she knew he knew, but otherwise it was unethical, right?

But he didn’t tell her. Because he was stupid and struck a little dumb by her. He couldn’t comprehend that he was seeing her in person right now, that he was seeing the tattoo up close that had factored into how many of his solo sessions now? And this other tattoo, that never showed in her videos! He knew something now none of her other viewers did.

She thanked him for his time and he promised to get her a sketch within a week and then she left. The whole exchange had been so… normal, compared to how he might have envisioned it.

She hadn’t been anything like he’d expected, but maybe that wasn’t fair. He tuned into her next live after debating it, but he couldn’t bring himself to miss it. He wanted to see if he could see traces of her bad tattoo, but she did a good job of hiding it.

Anyway, why should he be surprised that she had been polite and sweet and a little shy? Because he didn’t expert a camgirl to be those things in real life? But that came through in her cams and it was one of the things that had even initially drawn him to her channel.

It was different now though. She slid her fingers down her panties and he knew what her face looked like. She pressed her fingers into her wet hole and he knew she’d had a child. He knew her real hair color and her real eye color and the sound of her voice in person. Soon he would spend hours hunched over her body, etching something permanent into her skin that would hopefully please her, that all her viewers would see on her. How would she unveil it? Would she give him credit? She’d already been very excited about the design he’d emailed her.

[tossawary]

How do you prepare for a writing session? I have a terrible time focusing on anything and would love some pointers

My focus has been all over the place lately, but, ahhh, here are a bunch of things that help me personally focus on getting that WIP done: 

- Deadlines. Deadlines make me focus like nothing else. If I allowed myself to officially say that my update day needed to be Thursday this week instead of Wednesday, the chapter would come late on Thursday. Having an official update day of the week helps me pace myself. 

(Having that day of the week not be a weekend day lets me actually relax and enjoy my weekend, which helps me recharge.) 

- Outlines. Having an outline to follow makes it easier to write a lot all at once or to pick up where I left off if I’m writing in bursts. My outlines are a mess of point-form notes with all the plot and character moments I think I need to hit. Sometimes they’re snippets of nice-sounding dialogue and sometimes they’re things like, “Shang Qinghua says something here that reminds the audience of the existence of X plot detail coming up shortly.” 

Or: “- Shang Qinghua does Y action. - Mobei-Jun is amused.” 

I can dig up one of my outlines for a PINTWILF chapter. I have nearly all of them still, I think. Some of them have very detailed outlines and then some of them were super vague, like, “I HAVE A VISION, LET’S GO BEFORE I LOSE IT.” 

I have a notes document with the outlines and a document that I’m actually writing in. Sometimes, I’ll have the side by side on my screen, with the notes document on my left, so I can glance between the two as I write. 

(When I do this, I keep a third window hidden, which contains my music tabs and my thesaurus tabs and my distraction tabs. If I can’t see it, it helps.) 

Sometimes, if I want one big window, I’ll copy-paste the outline into my writing document, underneath the in-progress writing, separated by a “CONTINUE HERE”. The point-form notes come up one by one, and I delete the point-form notes as I hit them until the copy-pasted outline is gone. 

- If your eyes are slipping over the words, change the font and the font size. A large, dyslexic-friendly font like Comic Sans is usually good. Switching fonts is also good for spell-checking. 

Shorter paragraphs can also make things seem snappier and catch my eyes better. They can also reveal the beats (plot, character, tension, etc.) of a scene. Once your bones are made clear, you can always go back in and rejoin paragraphs, or elaborate on the beats that need it. 

- Honestly, just having massive chunks of free time (yay, being confined to my house) is what has allowed me to write this much. When I have errands or chores or tasks, I try to get them over with before I start writing, because constantly thinking “I need to remember to pay that bill after this” is a focus-breaker. It’s easier to just do it now so I don’t forget later. 

Work is left at work! So fun writing time can be fun writing time only! 

If I’m hungry or thirsty or need to use the bathroom, I just get up and go do that. Being hungry or thirsty makes my brain uncooperative. It needs energy to do its thing! Get up, solve the body’s problem, take the opportunity to stretch, and then my focus isn’t constantly divided by thinking, “I’m hungry.” Meals and other needs shouldn’t be withheld as rewards! They’re needed for writing! 

If my feet are cold, I go get socks. One more distraction eliminated! 

On a similar note, sometimes I can’t focus because I feel like I haven’t “accomplished enough” of other things and it feels like I have other things I should be doing. Taking a walk, cooking a meal (or a treat!), or getting a task or chore out of the way can help with that. I have Accomplished Something and now I can write freely! 

- Give myself permission to just GET IT DONE and then go back and improve upon it later is a huge help. My writing doesn’t have to be pretty. I don’t have to get it right on the first try. I can go back and make it nice later. 

If it’s feeling a little flat, I can come back later and tone it up. 

If it’s feeling a little too much, I can come back later and tone it down. 

I also don’t have to go back and make it nice later. Projects can be imperfect. 

Likewise, it’s good to give myself permission to be direct when I’m writing. “Oh, damn, I need Shang Qinghua to cross the room here,” I’ll say, and it feels like I’ve hit a dead end. How do I write that transition? I write: “Shang Qinghua crossed the room.” Done! Stage directions don’t have to be fancy! 

Maybe I’ll add an adverb later on the second pass, but dialogue can convey that he crossed the room carefully (“Are you... okay?”) or angrily (“What is wrong with you?!”) well enough. 

I’m also allowed to just use “said”. Sometimes less is more! 

- I’m only “allowed” to post one WIP to AO3 at a time. That also helps. 

If you have other WIPs that feel like they’re dragged you down, you can just mark them as “incomplete” or “on hiatus”. Feeling accountable to others helps me write, but it also helps to remind myself I don’t “owe” my time or effort to any project if I’m not feeling it right now. People might be disappointed that I’m not writing what they want or that I even have to backtrack on a promise, but their disappointment isn’t really my problem. I’m allowed to change my mind. 

Sometimes ideas have limits. Some ideas can become feature-length films and some ideas can become 6-hour mini-series and some ideas are only really worth about a short film (unless you bring in more characters and themes and sub-plots, etc). Sometimes, you have to get the writing version of a seam-ripper, figure out what you’re not vibing with, and come back with more characters and themes and sub-plots to make an idea vibe with you again. 

And sometimes it’s good to follow Marie Kondo’s example and go, “You know what? This unfinished fic taught me that I do not enjoy writing fics like this.” Or: “This unfinished fic taught me that I do not vibe with this idea.” 

- Sometimes, music is more distracting than anything else, especially when I’m writing dialogue. I’ll turn music off when I need to “hear” the dialogue better. Listening to ambience mix style stuff that goes on for hours can help set the mood and also means I’m not distracted by constantly picking new music. 

- Sometimes I wear specific outfits or change into a different outfit when I want to be in a better mood for writing. Usually into a more comfortable outfit. (But sometimes there’s a scene that calls to be written by an author wearing a fancy dress! However, I find very fancy outfits are for very rare occasions.) 

Brushing my hair or brushing my teeth before a writing sessions can help me feel refreshed. Sometimes I shower before my writing sessions. I find it relaxing to feel clean. Changing bedsheets or rearranging the couch to my liking can help too. Sometimes, I channel the energy of a bird picking at my nest and fluffing my feathers, for the Best Environment and Best Look! These cleaning behaviors are important for attracting mates and all the jazz, but they’re also good for attracting personal happiness and good writing vibes. 

- Rereading comments before a writing session can help me feel pumped. 

I answer comments or asks in bunches because most often I prefer to direct my energy towards my writing sessions. I love the comments and the asks! So much that sometimes I want to hoard them forever! But sometimes I need to set them aside so that I can keep making the writing I enjoy. 

Sometimes it can be distracting, though. 

- Okay! I think that’s everything off the top of my head! Key points for me: 

Time! 

Preparation! 

Comfort! 

Environment! 

Different techniques will work differently for different people, of course. Sometimes, these techniques work very well for me and sometimes I just get more distracted. Oh, last thing is something I’m bad at, but: if it feels like I really need to sleep, I probably really need to sleep. Naps are my friend. 

So are break weeks. Recharging is good. 

[maltedmilkchocolate]

How to learn a new language? I sure wish I knew. I got lucky with Japanese. But I’ve never had that luck with anything else.

Does Duolingo actually work as a learning tool for you? What about other apps? I try and use them but... I just??? I don’t feel like I learn anything beyond how to order the words correctly to not get the obnoxious sound telling u u suck. I don’t feel like i’m taking in any information, and the word selections seem so random, and often skips a word out entirely from the group. 

Why am I learning miscellanious vocab straight away, instead of things that actually matter?? “The boy buys the bread”? Why not start with “I buy the bread/I bought the bread”, or “My mother buys the bread.” The weird cluster style of random nouns and random verbs with no real contextual use is how language classes were always structured during highschool. And I never learnt a damned thing. Even at a language school my family saved for me to go to because they didn’t want me to only know English... a school *designed* to teach european languages.... couldn’t teach me Spanish.

It seems to also be how every single language app I’ve found structures themselves too. I’ve been learning Japanese for like five years now, and the way in which we’re taught is entirely different. You get a themed group of nouns and verbs. The easy start is the alphabet and writing system, then next stage is introductions, and then it follows into everyday useable questions.  “I’m a student.” “[Name] works for company.” “Who is that person?” “Who’s bag is this?” “Where is the Place/Object/Person?” How to tell the time. Action verbs like buy, go, do, say. Important nouns like places and objects that fit the context of the particular grammar being taught for that lesson.

Every new noun, verb, adjective had relevance to a specific lesson theme centred around a specific set of grammar structures. They didn’t use the standardised testing which uses abstract sentences that no way actually reflects what’s said in real life.

Why did I just learn man, woman, girl, boy? And then immediately learn Apple, Water, Bread, Juice? With no further context.

Why does “The Girl drink the juice?” When will I say this? “Is this juice?” “No, it’s alcohol” - would be better. “What drink is this?” “It’s orange juice.” - Also good. “Who is that man?” “It’s Mr. Sanches.” - Awesome. That’d be helpful to learn from the immediate get go. Give me the ability to create a useable sentence, and gain information from the answer.

Not an abstract observation. The girl drinks juice. She sure does. Now how does that help me navigate el supermercado????

Being able to learn something that has immediate value, is so much more beneficial than an abstract introductory sentence that... only really serves to learn vocabularly. And I can do that with flash cards. I’m sure this structure servers an actual tried and true purpose... I mean millions of people have learnt via this method, so it logically has to have some value. But it doesn’t for me. I am literally incapable of learning in that unhelpful manner, but I can never find anywhere that offers something different like my Japanese course does.

I learnt spanish for.... almost 10 years as a child. You know, that age range where your brain is meant to be a language sponge, the ‘best time’ to learn??? I barely remember a sentence. I couldn’t tell you how to conjugate a verb at all. But I can tell you my birthday. Mi cumpleaños es el treinta y uno de mayo. I learnt french for three years in highschool, and I can’t even remember how to ask ‘How much is the bus to X?’, let alone say “Can I buy one ice cream, please?”

I’ve been to these countries more than I have ever been to Japan, and I needed to know these things, and I just... didn’t. And not for lack of trying. It’s really embarrassing to have your family pressure you to be the one asking all the questions when you don’t know how to ask them, just because you’re the one learning. It’s really depressing when you’re a kid, and you make a friend, and you can’t talk to her because you don’t know anything beyond como se llama? I’m will die mad about that. Her family was really kind though, bought us time on a trampoline thing, so I got her flowers to say thank you cause my tiny child brain was like ‘this is the correct way to show you’re grateful.’ It’s frustrating that so many language courses are structured to pass tests, and aren’t structured to be functional.

I learnt japanese for five+ years as an adult, and I can hold a conversation. It’s not a great conversation, but I can hold one. I can write essays, and terrible fictional stories too. I can write blog journals and cringe at my bad grammar, but there IS grammar.  The only reason I got that far is because the method of teaching valued context and immediate real life useability, over generic word acquisition. The text books had an entirely different structure and focus on how they introduced grammar, and vocabulary within the context of that grammar. And that wasn’t even the mark of five years studying. That was Lessons 1 through to 10. Not even half way through the beginners text book, and it gave me enough to talk about my hobbies, gave me enough to request to do something, gave me enough to ask where to go, what to buy, and whether or not I was able to do something. A childs level conversation. “Let’s get lunch together.” 一緒に昼ご���を食べましょう。(Lesson 6 - Elementary 1)

Nearly 10 years of Spanish and I never knew how to make that suggestion. 5 days of Japanese and I could. The way in which language courses are taught MATTERS. Structure matters. Context, and usability matters.

I love learning languages. I really do. I keep trying to find a text book that functions the same way as Minna no Nihongo does, and I haven’t found one yet, or maybe i just really suck at googling... If you actually read this rant, and know a good text book/course for learning Spanish, let me know.

But for so, so long, I vehemently hated spanish. I hated it because I spent years learning, and never learnt a damned thing despite trying so hard. To the point I quit because I couldn’t handle failing again and again, and I felt so bad about my family flushing money we didn’t actually have to waste down the drain. But I’d like to try again. If i can find somewhere or something that doesn’t use the standard methods, I want to try again. Why should a failed decade worth of education amount to nothing? I’ll learn it out of spite if I have to for the sake of my childhood self. I’d like to learn a few other languages too. But I don’t want to waste money on courses that churn out the same old shitty methods that don’t work. “Why don’t you teach yourself, and make your own method?” You might ask. Because i’m ADHD and i need the accountability of a teacher, or deadline, or expense to keep me moving forward.

I need a structure that actually works.

[decdroscs]

The five Most Lucrative Electronic Products and solutions

To Promote On the internetDon't forget on the initial Star Trek when individuals just pressed a button and a meals replicator would promptly make whatsoever you required. You didn’t must go to a shop and try to look for components and after that make the meal. No hunting up a recipe or getting your palms soiled. Push a button and Voila, a sundae appeared.

Or maybe you don’t remember because you aren’t a complete nerd like me. In any case, you receive The thought, push button and food stuff seems.  Like “the foods replicator”, digital downloads are almost instantaneous. You pay, push a button to download, and right away get what you want. Easy.

Currently We've a lot of information and facts readily available to us. With the press of the button, We've usage of publications, songs, classes, tutorials, graphics, photography, weblogs, themes and a lot more. Practically just about anything you desire can be bought digitally.

Consumers are embracing the entrepreneurial spirit. Einstein after claimed, “Everybody is usually a genius. But if you choose a fish by its power to climb a tree it is going to Dwell its entire daily life believing it's stupid.” Not everyone seems to be eliminate for or is greatest fitted to a nine-5 career.Most are turning to promoting their know-how on the web. Whether or not it be composing an e book or instructing guitar classes. The condition many people face will not be knowing if their product or service are going to be successful. We have been below to assist you out. Listed here are the five most financially rewarding digital products that you can promote yourself eCommerce shop.1. eBooksThe most popular electronic download goes to the e book and with very good rationale. As a result of emergence of equipment such as Kindle and Kobo, the recognition of eBooks has skyrocketed. Due to this new period of ebooks, self-released authors are now receiving the recognition they deserve. Authors, when they decide to go this route, no longer really have to go from the inconvenience of finding a publisher.

Check out these impressive stats from publishers weekly:

The Big Five regular publishers now account For under 16% from the e-books on Amazon’s bestseller lists.Self-released textbooks now characterize 31% of e-reserve income on Amazon’s Kindle Retail store.Indie authors are earning just about forty% in the e-guide pounds planning to authors.Self-released authors are “dominating usually revealed authors” in sci-fi/fantasy, mystery/thriller and romance genres, and therefore are having major marketplace share in all genres.Self-published books are dominating as They can be starting to gather a cult-like pursuing. Many people are tired of viewing the same textbooks revealed by exactly the same authors and are seeking some variety.

Pictures

70 million. The volume of images, vectors, and illustrations presently becoming offered on Shutterstock. In addition to over 750,000 Lively customers in around a hundred and fifty international locations. There have been 58 million downloads of Shutterstock visuals in 2011, which produced $a hundred and twenty.3 million in income. Which’s just Shutterstock. There’s also Photocrati, SmugMug, Zenfolio, DigiLabs, Shutterfly, Zazzle, iStock.

All of this most likely Appears very good, correct? There’s a bunch of seriously large figures, but the fact is, In order for you your images to stand out, they received’t. They turn into a needle inside a haystack along with the Competitiveness is fierce. You could possibly Imagine your Picture is worth a particular amount of money, but funds talks and you simply’ll will need to cost your images competitively to be able to stay pertinent. Aritc -> [Treinamento Negócio Mobile]

A photograph is really worth a thousand terms. Over and over photographers have a compelling storyto go with their photo. Like a merchant advertising a product, the description within your Image gives you an opportunity to seriously provide a person on it.

Then there’s The point that these third events are likely to acquire A serious cut of the revenue. Not amazing. With your own store, you keep All your revenue and make sure your photos get the eye they are worthy of.

 Songs

iTunes, as we all know, is massive. Like billions-of-pounds-in-revenue-each-yr massive. But Do you realize that iTunes usually takes thirty% within your audio product sales? Positive, you can get publicity on it, but Until your Taylor Swift, chances are high you aren’t likely to be producing a ton of money. The circumstance is even worse after you evaluate other companies like Spotify. Aritc -> [Treinamento Negócio Mobile]

With your personal eCommerce store, you have to maintain each and every cent of your hard earned money anytime anyone downloads your tunes. You are able to develop your individual customized Web-site, build a worldwide lover following, and distribute new music to them ideal out of your internet site.

You may also market what ever you wish to go together with your music together with t-shirts, hoodies and even more, and bundle them with all your new music.

 Video clips and Classes

With every thing currently being so readily available and absolutely free, it would seem that video clips and on the web classes would be obsolete. Not the situation.

On line movie and class marketplaces like Udemy became very well-liked. Udemy shared that it now has in excess of 8,000 courses becoming taught to 800,000 pupils. The condition is, Udemy along with other very similar Internet websites just take 50% of one's income! Along with that, they often operate price reduction promotions that further diminish your revenue.

From healthier living to Mastering the way to code, you name it, persons are looking to find out and actually purchase the data!

The problem with promoting on third party sites is it’s hard to stand out. Obtaining your individual web-site will assist you to notify your story and definitely placement yourself as a professional in your industry. This gives you a leg up in your Competitiveness.

World wide web Aspects

For those who’re a graphic designer, you’re in luck. Men and women are having to pay a lot of income for themes, styles, brushes, wallpapers, logos, practically nearly anything World wide web similar you may think of.

Themes are incredibly well-liked. A number of the themes on Theme Forest are now being downloaded A huge number of moments with the cost selection amongst 14-thirty dollars. You can find above a thousand WordPress themes by itself. Another incredible figures from Concept Forest incorporate:

Maximum offering concept: $two hundred,000 product sales to this point

Quickest promoting concept of all time: $one hundred sixty,000 in seven months, and counting

Greatest creator earning in one month: $40,000 (take house earnings)

Then you will discover websites like Graphic River that sell just about anything you could consider, from social media marketing packs to banners advertisements to textures. There are over a hundred and fifty,000 vectors by itself to choose from. The probabilities of Website things that a graphic designer could promote on the net are unlimited.

making them good digital products to sell onlineCLICK TO TWEET

Aritc -> [Treinamento Negócio Mobile]

Start out Advertising

Digital downloads is usually a billion dollar marketplace. Standing out and making genuine income can be done nevertheless it gained’t be finished promoting on 3rd party Sites. Guaranteed, there are the Fortunate several that do find yourself creating some first rate coin, Nevertheless they continue to have to give up a percent of their earnings.

Starting your own online store permits you to model your self, current market your self and sell your digital downloads with your conditions, devoid of paying out Those people significant marketplace expenses.

The better part is, it’s actually very simple to get rolling. You don’t will need makers, suppliers, packagers, shippers and all another operational pains that include Bodily solutions. Decide among the list of previously mentioned electronic product kinds, set up your eCommerce store, and begin promoting!

[Treinamento Negócio Mobile]

[cpdevos]

7/21/20 Fleeing Temptation/Living in Freedom From Sin pt. 2 (Margarette, Maria, and Lili)

Hi everyone!

Today's devo is part 2 of our discussion on fleeing from temptation and living in freedom from sin. If you haven't checked out part 1 of this series, definitely go read that one as well! Maria, Margarette, and I will each be providing our input, advice, and experiences with these issues.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Maria:

Romans 6:1-2

1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

God is perfect and holy. This verse touches on something we’ve probably thought about at some point: that if we sin, it’s okay since God will always forgive us and give us grace. Isn’t the whole point of Jesus that He takes our sin away? Paul raises this question as something logical to wonder. BUT, our hearts are not in the right place when we think this. Why would we choose to continue to sin, knowing it hurts us and takes us further from God, who is perfect and loves us? Paul rebukes this way of thinking, saying that we have died to sin by choosing to follow Jesus.

We are naturally prone to sin as human beings. But God redeems us from our life of sin! However, we cannot continue to live as we had before knowing God. If God is our priority, our lives will change to reflect Him better. We all struggle with sinning, but going to God through prayer and his Word, and having a community of believers for accountability are some ways I think can help us turn from it. We aren’t perfect and God does give us grace! But we should realize that taking advantage of that grace and refusing to repent isn’t the way to live as Christians. Grace and truth go hand in hand -- I’ll leave you with this quote by Randy Alcorn: “Any concept of grace that makes us feel more comfortable about sinning is not biblical grace. God’s grace never encourages us to live in sin; on the contrary, it empowers us to say no to sin and yes to truth.”

Margarette:

When we decided to write about the topic of sin + temptation, I felt unqualified...and I kind of still do. But, I just hope that I can at least share my perspective and a few things I’ve learned / realized over time.

We all fall prey to sins and temptations, and furthermore, we all struggle with being free from sin and temptation. Sin is usually a topic that we try to stay away from, at least when it comes to diving deeper and admitting your sins to other people or to God. In fact, we sometimes even push off admitting it to ourselves. I think part of my struggles stem from growing up in such a conservative environment (church, family, friends, etc.). I usually put up a front because I’m embarrassed that I don’t have my life together when it seems like everyone else is thriving. Of course, society also encourages a lot of these temptations--everyday, we consume so much media and often, our forms of online entertainment (movies, Youtube, TV shows, social apps) have bad themes (violence, romance, anti-religion, etc.).

I think being honest with yourself is a very important first step to freeing yourself from all the burdens of sin. We all need to take time and actually think about why we make certain choices and where our beliefs lie. Is God not so much greater than any of these earthly temptations? Like Maria wrote in her response: Why would we choose to continue to sin, knowing it hurts us and takes us further from God, who is perfect and loves us?

1 Peter 2:24 -- “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”

This verse is pretty powerful, and it made me really rethink the implications of our sins. Jesus saved us from sin with his death on the cross and if we believe in Jesus Christ, we need to start acting like it. We are called to follow in Jesus' footsteps in living a more pure and holy life.

I’ll always remember the ABC acronym that Paster To taught: Admit, Believe, Confess. This might also sound familiar because we sang about it in the “Ride of your Life” VBS song:

A: Admit to God that you’re a sinner and repent

B: Believe that Jesus is God’s own son

C: Confess your faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord

When we talk about repenting from our sins, it seems like such an easy task...but what about when we try to actively turn away from sin? I encourage you to reflect on something you're struggling with and just take the time to bring it to God (maybe remember your ABCs while you're at it).

Lili:

Hello! This topic of temptation and being enslaved to sin is familiar in both an unpleasant and good way for me. It's good because it is a reminder of God's mercy to me, but it also a reminder of how I was consumed by my sin. I've experienced temptations of many kinds, but today I'm just gonna be giving you a shorter version of my hardest and most significant battle with temptation and sin. There was a pretty long period when I struggled with having impure and lustful thoughts. This went on pretty much everyday for about 3 or 4 years, so you can imagine how much I clung on to this sin and how it just became harder to want to let go of it. Every time I'd fall into that sin, I'd tell God I was sorry and asked Him to forgive me, knowing full well that I was going to do it again anyways. I was stuck, and I felt so much shame and guilt from this hidden sin that I couldn't tell anyone about because I couldn't and didn't want to explain what I was going through. I hate keeping things to myself, and this weighed heavily on me because I was dealing with this problem alone. I would pray for God to help me to control my thoughts, but at the same time, I wasn't willing to give up my sin because it gave me pleasure and temporary satisfaction. It was also relatively easy to hide it because it was all going on inside my head, while it was really destroying me on the inside. It really felt like a battle was going on in my head because while I felt the Holy Spirit nudging me to let go of my sin, my own will fought against those nudges because I didn't want to let it go.

After a few years of this and also after feeling convicted from hearing a number of sermons, Bible passages, and other resources talking about fleeing from sin and temptation, I knew I wanted this to end, but I didn't know how to tell anyone about my problem. I was scared of being so vulnerable, and that was part of the reason it took so long to admit it. Thankfully, I was truly convicted when I read a Christian article about temptation and how we must expose our sin. I believe it was the Holy Spirit pushing me to tell someone I trusted about it because I still can't believe I had the guts to expose my sin. Once I told that person, I felt SO free! It was one of the most wonderful feelings I've experienced because I felt like my burden had been lifted when I came out of hiding. I've heard the analogy of how sin prospers in the dark, but once it's brought into the light, it loses its power, and I felt like that was what happened when I confessed my sin. Of course, it still wasn't and isn't easy to fight off that temptation, but I am happy to say that for the most part, I've moved on from that sad and broken season in my life. It is by the grace of God that I have been freed from that life.

A couple of things that I found helpful in fighting my temptation was reciting verses and praying. When I was tempted to have those impure thoughts, I would sometimes instead fill my mind with God's truth. One verse that I would often remind myself of was 1 Corinthians 10:13 - "No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humanity. God is faithful, and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation He will also provide a way of escape so that you are able to bear it." It reminded me that I didn't have to be controlled by my temptation and that God could help me control myself from giving into temptation. Prayer is another thing that was helpful for me, because I was asking God to keep my mind from anything impure, and I have experienced Him truly working in me and taking my mind from what was impure to something better. And as I mentioned earlier, talking with someone about it also helps because you have someone to shoulder that burden with you and to keep you accountable. It's definitely scary, but so worth it if you talk with someone you trust who will be understanding and safe to talk to about it. From my own experience, it truly was a huge step for me to find freedom from my habitual sin. But as I was going through that time, I feel like God was slowly planting seeds in my mind which eventually led me to want to let my sin go. With help from the Holy Spirit and hearing from God through a number of different sources (messages, Bible passages, etc.), I was eventually ready to let go of the sin and experience His grace and forgiveness.  

To wrap this all up, I'd just like to say that if you are experiencing temptation or are struggling with sin, I'd highly recommend memorizing scripture, praying for God's strength to overcome the temptation, and talking with other Christian brothers and sisters (if you need someone to confide in, feel free to message me! I'd be happy to provide a listening ear and support). As Moses mentioned in the last devo, we’re going to be dealing with temptation our entire lives through all of the different stages of life we’re in. Just because I got out of that one phase of temptation in my life (which I still struggle with from time to time) doesn’t mean that I’m going to be temptation-free for the rest of my life. It will be an ongoing struggle for us, but I hope we all remember that God is faithful and that He has provided us with so much to help us combat sin and temptation. Our temptations are strong, but our God is even stronger. If you have any other tips/suggestions on how you fight against sin/temptation, feel free to respond to this email with your thoughts!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for reading, and we hope you found both parts of this devo encouraging :)

Pray to end, Maria, Margarette, Lili

[johnmuffus]

eCom Domination 4.0 Review

eCom Domination 4.0 Review (James Beattie Course)

James Beattie’s eCom Domination 4.0 is a course that claims to be the way for you to learn how to start your (here it comes) 6-figure stores, with 200 sales in your first month. It’ll give you an inside perspective of the eCommerce world throughout its 9 weeks, and it’ll help you build your venture with weekly coaching and a thriving community for $1,997.

With that price tag, I can see why you’re hesitant, so let’s dive into its content and see if you should spend that.

Who’s the author?

James is a dropshipper from Ireland, who also has a YouTube channel. He’s not new to the eCommerce industry, and he released his first course many years ago, called eCom Insiders. His most recent instalment is eCom Domination, currently sitting on its 4th version.

He says he’s the owner of several online dropshipping stores, all making 6 and 7 figures, and he shares his revenue on both YouTube and Facebook.

He has several courses under his belt: a free program, a subscription-based academy for $49 every month with live training every 2 weeks to provide additional support, and a course on Facebook Ads specifically for eCommerce that’s priced at $500, but I haven’t heard about any updates since 2017.

His YouTube is one of the largest channels, circling the 40,000 subscribers mark, and he frequently uploads new videos. His content is fairly standard, all the way to the clickbait on his thumbnails. However, I do like watching his content just because he’s charismatic and shows he knows his stuff.

However, he doesn’t leave out the annoying flashing of luxuries on Instagram, but I’ll let it slide since I feel he’s legit enough.

About eCom Domination 4.0

This course promotes through ClickFunnels, with both the landing and checkout pages hosted there.

The course itself hosts on Teachables, which is always great news since that means the videos are HD and the sound is excellent. It also works on all devices, and you can adapt the video quality to your internet.

The cost for this course is $1,997, but there’s a 5-payment plan that I definitely don’t recommend. It’s $597 each payment, that adds up to almost an extra $1,000 ($2,985). If you can pay in 5 parts, then just wait a bit and pay the full price.

The course seemingly provides a 30-day refund guarantee without much of a hassle, but if you read carefully, you’ll quickly see the 10 steps procedure to claim it didn’t work for you. Paying in 5 parts also makes you not-eligible for a refund.

That’s rude.

Reviewing eCom Domination 4.0

The course is divided into 9 modules according to James, but it’s actually 8 modules. It starts with the usual store creation tutorial and closes with how to develop your brand and scaling your success.

The 9th video is just a motivational module that’s more annoying than anything else, and there’s a 10th bonus module with some case studies.

This course centers around Facebook Ads, and while there’s nothing really wrong with that approach, there are dozens of strategies you can use which are also great for both beginners and intermediate entrepreneurs.

If you’ve see the author’s videos or his free course, some of the content in this course will probably go to waste. That means that you’re paying almost $2,000 for about 6 modules’ worth of actually-useful content.

I also hope James updates this course soon with all the Facebook changes going on.

Let’s dive into the modules below. I’ve grouped them based on their topics instead of the individual weeks since some of them are complementary.

Store creation

This is just your standard module explaining how to create your store. Actually, you’ll notice that, with each section called “week”, James called each lesson “module”. So it’s actually a week containing modules (videos).

The first videos are just your usual introduction about the journey you’re about to start, but he eventually goes into actually teaching you something. There’s a video spanning an hour with an over-the-shoulder angle showing you how to create a store from zero.

He goes over installing premium themes, playing with the colors, and placing your logo. He also explains how to add the pages you’ll need for your business.

Some videos go into taking a look at the payment processors you can use and configuring your shipping. Then, there’s a video on installing fulfillment plugins for automating your orders.

Near the end, the videos change their focus and go into increasing the average order and customer lifetime values as well as implementing customer support.  Each one comes with an app recommended by James.

Product research

The 2nd week goes into methods for researching products, starting with an unnecessarily long introduction about choosing good products. Then, there’s a shorter module about research automation. James also shows you how you can validate the products you find and whether or not they’d be good for promoting.

The 3rd video goes into how you can find the best quality in AliExpress suppliers, filtering scammers. Once you have your product and supplier, you’re taught how you can write attractive descriptions.

There’s also a video with some spying tools to use for finding winning ads and products. After that, the week closes with how you can sell licensed products legally.

Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads takes the 3rd and 4th week. The first one glances at the basics and setup, and the second one goes into the more advanced content. However, both weeks are too short, with just 14 videos between the two while other courses take 50.

The first part of wee 3 goes into what is Facebook Ads and why it’s necessary, so that’s a couple of videos gone to waste. It finally goes into setting up your account and details the different types of ads before going into the targeting options and creating your ads and copy.

This week closes by launching your first ad, with James then analyzing the data provided by Facebook.

The 4th week goes into audiences, retargeting, scaling, and manual bidding both locally and internationally. Most videos in this module are actually very good and detailed, and they offer a lot of insight into great methods.

You can definitely see some success from the instructions here despite the length.

Email marketing

The 5th week provides 4 brief videos about starting out with the different email marketing platforms available. You’ll see lessons about setting up your standard card abandonment sequence, which helps you recover potentially lost sales, and boosting your front-end selling without having to remarket.

Finally, there are some email series you can use for new customers and a few advanced tips.

Alternative sources of traffic

This is mostly a Facebook Ads course, again, so this week briefly covers a bunch of methods that aren’t Facebook Ads. You’ll see some videos on Instagram influencers, YouTube, and SEO.

The issue is how limited the information is, and you may leave this week more confused than when you started it.

There’s a 20-minute video explaining how to create your Instagram account, finding, and reaching influencers, yet the process has a lot of intricacies with which you’ll definitely crash if you just follow this content.

At least there are a few interesting tips about SEO and using YouTube for your marketing.

Operation management

Week 7 has 4 videos about building your team and how to handle bulk fulfillment.

However, there’s not really any depth here, and you can probably find more value on James’ own YouTube Channel.

Branding

This week is actually called “Moving to Next Level”, however, it’s just a 23-minute video explaining you how to build your brand and turning your store into it.

At least he’s not recommending you to start out with building your brand like many other gurus.

Mindset + case studies

As I said, the 9th week feels more like a bonus, so I’ll group it with the case studies.

I find it really obnoxious when gurus provide unnecessarily long videos about mindset. I usually like motivational videos, and mindset is definitely important, but 4-5 minutes on the introduction module is more than enough.

Well, not to James, he’s dedicating an entire week and its 4 videos just to the “right” mindset. I’m sure that someone who paid almost $2,000 (or $3,000) is committed enough to being successful.

The 10th module has 4 case studies showing techniques for scaling your FB Ads. They’re real-life demonstrations from the author’s experiences. I actually have no problems with this week; I always enjoy case studies.

Final Verdict

Is It Worth It? Final Verdict

Overall, eCom Domination 4.0 is disappointing. It has a lot of gems here and there, hidden in the basic content, but there’s simply not enough to justify such an absurdly high price. There are courses out there that cost a lot less and give you a lot more content.

If James reduces the price significantly, well over $1,000 less, I’d recommend this course to beginners. However, give his price, the basic content in most weeks, and the ridiculous 5-part pricing and refund policy, I can’t really recommend this course to anyone else.

Now, I like James, and I enjoy his YouTube content precisely because he knows what’s he’s talking about. That’s what baffles me about the amount of content in this course and the sole focus on Facebook Ads.

As I mentioned earlier in this review, you can even find more content and depth for free on his YouTube Channel instead of paying $2,000 for this course. It’d be nice to see him adding that content into the next version, expand upon it, and maybe adding 5 or 6 more weeks to make up for the new content.

As is, I can’t recommend the course despite the good things it had here and there.

Compare it to eCom Elites, for example. The course is 10 times cheaper, and it offers over 200 different videos with more depth and approaches explained. You also have the same access to a Facebook group, support, and coaching, so there’s no way I can recommend eCom Domination 4.0 over it.

If I see James pricing his course in less than $300, then I’d think about recommending it, but it’s just not enough right now.

I hope you found this review useful and if you have any questions, please comment down below. I’ll be more than happy to assist you.

Once again, thanks for reading my eCom Domination 4.0 Review and I wish you the best of luck.

The post eCom Domination 4.0 Review appeared first on Only Genuine Reviews.

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[brieflynervousnacho-blog]

Social Media Projects, a Rope of Sand

Coming at you from an irrelevant social media site, best known for the proliferation of soft-core porn and outdated Reddit memes. I will deliver in a sub-optimal fashion, the results of what can only be described as a woefully inadequate survey with only 7 participants. But I digress, this is an Arts degree, it’s basically what I signed up for. This brings us to the the actual meat of this assignment. I went to the /r/India subreddit late one night and asked a series of questions (available here if you want to verify that I did the bare minimum of social interaction), the actual questions are available below if clicking on a hyperlink bores you... But also to bolster my word count, mind you I’m planning on ignoring it anyway as Tumblr doesn’t have a convenient word count button and if it was intended that I first produce this in Word, I’d like to know why it couldn’t just be submitted as a word document in a first place. Instead you get to be showered in bad memes and terrible rambling sentences that go on for far too long and don’t end where they should.

Consider this my protest segment. Multimedia and Social Media projects do not have a place in every single goddamn subject even if it is current year. Technology is the future, but that isn’t the same as social media. Going to social media to source some (albeit limited) data from some statistically 15-35 year old men on Reddit was a good and interesting part of this assignment. Then telling us to go to Storify (shut down as of the 10th May 2018 and therefore irrelevant for an assignment due on the 13th), Tumblr (where I’ve chosen to not post porn to the disappointment of the wider userbase should they somehow stumble upon this), or Wordpress (which would require far effort than I’m prepared to give) is a waste of time when a perfectly serviceable report can be produced in a word doc. It’d also come with far less snark from me.

If I have to make an excuse, I’m embracing the medium. If you wanted a proper academic paper, you’d have asked for one.

On /r/India I asked the following questions

(1) Do you practice a religion (if yes, which one)?

(2) How important is religion to you?

(3) How does this vary between generations?

(4) How is religion treated within your community?

(5) Is there anything else you think I might find interesting but didn't ask?

(6) do you want your name blurred out in the final report (only 2 or 3 people will see it, but thought I'd ask)

before the 126,387 readers knocked me off the front page of /new and condemned my page to obscurity I had no chance of trending on the subreddit when there are teenage girls being raped and set ablaze. No levity, that's disgusting.

The first response I received came from an Atheist (or so I assume). weeping_peacock does not practice any religion, however they claimed that it was important to understand why religion exists and compared it to a virus (hence my assumption of atheism). I also got the impression that they were the black sheep of the family in that regard as  the majority of their family are Brahmins, and their community considers religion important (especially when it comes to marriage). Within his interesting tidbits to (lets be honest) educate my ignorant arse, they mentioned the conflict between religious and national identity which, when you consider that his family is from the dominant religious group comprising of roughly 80% of the population (as of 2011) feels a little odd, their national identity and religious identity are basically one and the same. Perhaps more interesting is the question of whether globalization has led to a tendency towards religion as a reactionary embracing of the familiar (that feels like some super awkward wording). I find this interesting because if it is the case, it would draw a parallel to China where religion is growing in opposition to a recent (here meaning a good 70 years) of government control.

The second response came from someone who deleted their account in the 10 or so days since, this is either a coincidence or they created (and subsequently deleted) an account just to respond. [deleted] is a Muslim, and considers religion to be very important. They kept their answers very short and to the point so there isn’t much to analyze, it’s more a less what I expected from Islamic teachings, however they do point out that Muslims do not see the majority Hindu population as “others” despite what I may have been led to believe. This is interesting in that if anything I have been led to believe that the Hindu population sees the Muslims as being “others”

The third response (that didn’t request I make a google survey form, a trend worth investigating in it’s own rright) took the quick and nasty yes/no format was not religious, was less religious than the older generation, didn’t really care about religion and observed conflict between different religious groups. A trend almost as old as time where religion is concerned.

Response four wanted you to know his name, so here it is... lonerwithaboner is another non-religious youth, he notes that his mother’s generation is significantly more religious than him (as he doesn’t care). He did however bring up the distinction between religion as religion, and religion as philosophy. While according to the 2011 census,�� 99.12% of the population are religious, it ignores the portion of the population that may identify as Hindu, but view its teachings as more of a philosophy than a religion and thus ticked the box on the census but don’t really follow Hinduism in the religious sense.

I’ve run out of meme motivation...

Response five!

Another Muslim respondent (using the handle owaman), and in keeping with the vague theme provided by the aforementioned limited response rate, highly religious.  They note that between generations there isn’t a huge difference, sometimes the younger generation is more conservative, sometimes the older generation is, however they claim that the younger generation is more likely to research religion instead of blindly following what has been taught to them. owaman also says that in their experience, there is some Muslim/Hindu tensions, however in their experience, the most volatile comments are coming from the Hindu population.

In the sixth response we find another non-religious person. They believe that while their parents and grandparents are highly religious, it is not necessarily a generational shift. This is a sentiment I agree with to an extent, it is entirely possible that (as bigfatasura says) “people were always irreligious same as how religious they are.“ The difference now being that it is more socially acceptable to openly not follow a religion, while in the past people may have gone through with the motions in order to avoid being ostracized. Much like weeping_peacock, bigfatsura believes that religion plays an important role when it comes to marriage, either from a community perspective or purely for religious reasons is unclear as they did not elaborate.

In the seventh and final response I received before falling off the front page, Boob_Preski is spiritual but not religious which is similar to lonerwithaboner’s views as a philosophical Hindu rather than a religious one. On that same note, a portion of their family has embraced Buddhism, a religion known for its spiritual and philosophical emphasis. They also believe that religion is detrimental to society echoing weeping_peacocks sentiments.

Closing thoughts.

With very limited data, it would seem that the Indian Reddit population is likely to be either Muslim or a non-practicing Hindu. My survey basically confirmed my suspicions, religion is still somewhat important, especially for the Muslim population and older generations, however the younger generation is increasingly turning away from religion, or selectively following aspects that they deem important or worth keeping. This post will self destruct along with this Tumblr account and the Reddit post on the 1st of August 2018.

[oovitus]

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

  The post My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign appeared first on The Full Helping.

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign published first on

[gardencityvegans]

My Five Recovery Affirmations + NEDA Week Campaign

https://www.thefullhelping.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Stocksy_txp1f563e41Syq100_Medium_20737.jpg

Happy Monday, everyone, and happy first day of NEDA week. For the last couple of years I’ve used NEDA week as an opportunity to celebrate the recovery process. This year gives me special reason to do it: I spent much of 2017 navigating loss, and as I did, I called upon the patience and sense of resilience that anorexia recovery has taught me.

The theme of NEDA week this year is “Let’s Get Real,” and the goal is to expand our collective dialog about eating disorders and how they show up in real life. This means challenging preconceived ideas about how eating disorders might look or whom they impact, breaking through stigma, and being more radically honest than ever about the complexities of recovery. You can read more here.

I love this theme. I love any effort to create a more open, accommodating, reality-based dialog about disordered eating. Because the topic this year resonates so strongly, and because I’m celebrating the lessons of recovery in such a personal way right now, I’ve made the choice to gather a little support for NEDA—the National Eating Disorders Association—this week. More about that in a bit. First, I want to honor the start of this week by sharing some of the affirmations that have guided me through recovery.

What becomes clear to me as I move deeper into recovery is that the struggle with food can recede, but the old demons might continue to show up in other, sneaky ways. In my life, they tend to emerge as arbitrary rules and deadlines, unnecessarily strict boundaries, binary thinking, and other means of resisting and avoiding uncertainty. They urge me to remain guarded when I could be generous, to withhold my creativity when I could express myself, to dwell where it’s safe instead of allowing myself to take risks.

This is one of the realities of recovery that I didn’t expect. Redefining my relationship with food set me free, but I’ve learned that I need to protect that freedom by remaining mindful of the many and varied ways in which I tend to keep myself contained.

I’ve written a lot about affirmations this year and the ways in which they’ve helped me to cope with depression and anxiety. I haven’t said much about my recovery affirmations, but they’re worth sharing, especially today:

Keep it real

Take up space

Break your rules

Be love

Keep faith

I’ll elaborate on each one as the week continues. “Keep it real” aligns with NEDA’s “Let’s Get Real” theme, and it seems like the right place to start.

Keeping it real, for me, means doing the opposite of what I did when I was sick, which was lie to myself and to everyone around me, all the time. I lied about my motivations for the food choices I made. I lied and said I was OK. I lied to myself in thinking that I was better than everyone, that I had a special claim to self-control. I lied and said I’d eaten when I hadn’t; I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, then ate in secret. I lied about my rituals, my habits, my compulsions.

It’s easy to look back on all of the dishonesty and denial and feel ashamed, and sometimes I still do. But shame doesn’t get me anywhere. What moves me forward is to hold myself to a different standard now—one of radical honesty. I examine my motivations with food carefully, I check in when I feel distanced from my appetite, and I don’t eat furtively or deny when I’m hungry. I openly talk about the food anxieties that have stuck around (and I’ve still got plenty: anxiety when mealtimes get delayed, anxiety about sharing my food, anxiety about travel and limited food options—I could go on.)

I don’t succeed all the time, which is OK. I still strive to stay real with myself and the people who love me. That intention is what matters most.

“Keeping it real” also means not glossing over how confusing and complicated recovery can be. Recovery is so good, and sometimes it’s so baffling. I said a moment ago that I didn’t anticipate the ways in which ED compulsions would show up outside of the actual disease. Here are some of the other recovery realities that have taken me by surprise:

● Physical recovery is often the first step. Maybe it feels like a blessed restoration; for me, it felt like disfigurement. It was a battle that waged for a long time, and watching my body change was a continual affront to my sense of identity. I’m not sure it was the hardest part of recovery, but it’s the part of the process that most often made me want to quit.

If this is where you are, try not to quit. It doesn’t last forever. At some point, maybe when you least expect it, you’ll start to feel at home in your body again.

● As you move through the journey, people who care about you might express how grateful and glad they are that you’re healing. Maybe you’ll see these comments as the expression of love that they are.

If you’re like me, you’ll greet them with rage and shame; you’ll be angry to be given reminders that the disorder no longer distinguishes you. Peoples’ support may even sometimes make you want to dig in your heels and stay sick, as if healing is a concession to something or someone you’d rather not please.

This is a lonely experience. Part of you wants to bask in peoples’ support, while another part of you wants to reject it and stay where you are, or where you used to be. Don’t force things. If you continue to do the work of loving yourself, it will become easier and easier to accept love and well wishes from other people.

● There will be days when it seems as if food will always be a big, bad deal. You fear that you’ll never figure it out, and you wonder why the business of eating seems to be so much harder for you than it is for other people. Instead of feeling struggle or pain, you’ll just feel tired—tired of the process and tired of yourself. At these moments all of the recovery talk about self-love and self-acceptance will ring particularly empty.

Then some time will pass—maybe a day, maybe two, maybe a whole week—when food isn’t such a big deal. Maybe you’re still a little preoccupied with it, but suddenly there’s something else you’d rather be thinking about. It’s hard to put into words how sweet these days will feel. Cherish them. Celebrate them. They’re a big deal.

● At some point you might go weeks or months or even years feeling that sweet sense of freedom. And then there might come a day when something or someone triggers you and you find yourself restricting, bingeing, purging, chewing and spitting, or eating in secret. Or maybe you think seriously about one or all of these behaviors.

This is a good moment for an accountability check: a phone call to a friend, some real talk in therapy, using an app that supports mental health, journaling. But please, don’t let these moments talk you into thinking that you’ve failed at recovery.

Being recovered doesn’t mean that you never again struggle with an ED impulse or do something strange around food. It means living by the intention to nourish yourself and treat your body with respect. That intention sometimes lives alongside old tendencies and impulses. It can be confusing, and it’s reason to be vigilant, but it’s OK. It really is. Just be sure you have a toolkit for dealing with these moments and supporting yourself through them.

● You might sometimes run across someone who seems to be wearing the signs of an ED or disordered behavior, and in spite of yourself, you kind of envy him or her. You don’t want to admit that you feel this way, but you do. You envy the semblance of control, or you envy something about having a single, all-encompassing preoccupation, a pursuit that seems to give life purpose and shape.

Forgive yourself. It’s OK to miss the memory of the illness and who you were within it. If you’re like me, pondering this very issue might make you realize that there were many years of your life in which your ED was your closest friend, the best company you had, and isn’t it normal to miss the presence of someone we’ve lost?

I miss “her”—a word I sometimes use in therapy to denote my ED itself, sometimes to denote my anorexic self—sometimes. I missed her a lot last year, when I was feeling blinded by anger and heartache and didn’t have a coping mechanism that felt even remotely satisfying to deal with it. Therapy gave me a safe space in which to admit that I was longing for my ED the way I’d miss a now-absent friend or lover, and to acknowledge that the ache was OK. It’s a part of my growth.

If you find yourself feeling this way, you might spend some time thinking about what you’ve gained in recovery. Maybe you’re more social. Maybe you get out and explore the world more than you used to. Maybe you’re more open, less secretive; maybe you’re braver. Perhaps you’ve found a sense of spontaneity and adventure you never thought you had, or you’re quicker to laugh. Perhaps you’ve relaxed some of your critical thinking, let some judgment go.

All of the above is true of my recovered self. She’s got a lot of imperfections; as I said yesterday, she’s messy in ways that my anorexic self wasn’t. She makes judgment calls she regrets, plans she’s not able to follow-through on, decisions she sometimes wishes she could take back. But she’s loving and engaged and interested and curious, and if I had to choose, I’d much rather spend time in her company than in the company of the frightened and painfully self-contained person I used to be.

The whole point of the “let’s get real” theme is to acknowledge that there is no defining ED narrative. The experience is bound to be different for each person who’s been through it. Maybe none of the above realities resonate with you, but if you’ve been through recovery, you no doubt have your own realities to consider. Perhaps NEDA week can be an invitation for you to reflect upon them and what they’ve taught you.

Back to the gathering of support I mentioned at the top of this post. It feels like the right year for me to show my appreciation of organizations and people who are working to raise awareness about eating disorders and the toll they take. So, I’m gathering contributions for NEDA, which is the organization that makes NEDA week a reality. NEDA supports individuals and families affected by eating disorders, serving as a catalyst for prevention, screening, and facilitating access to quality care.

If you’d like to join me in showing a little support for NEDA and the work it does, I welcome you to check out my GoFundMe page—I even made a little video to help explain the campaign and why it matters to me (speaking of stepping outside of my comfort zone!). If the message resonates , perhaps you’ll consider a contribution. Anything you give will help to keep NEDA’s hotlines, referral system, public resources, and legislative advocacy going.

And of course, if this type of support doesn’t work for you, there are so many other ways to give back this week. Maybe you can let a person who’s struggling with an ED—or other mental health challenges—know that you care. It might feel like the right time to volunteer with a local organization that does mental health or food-related work. Perhaps you find a way—gently and intuitively—to speak up about your experience. The more we share our stories, the more able we are to create a vibrant, dynamic, stigma-free conversation about recovery and all of its gloriously messy realities.

Perhaps at some point this week you’ll do something especially kind for yourself. That’s a great way to honor the spirit of NEDA week, too.

I’ll be back tomorrow with another one of my affirmations on offer. For today, sending out love and strength—along with my tremendous gratitude—to you.

xo

    [Read More ...] https://www.thefullhelping.com/my-five-recovery-affirmations-neda-week-campaign/

[lenaglittleus]

Is Blogging Dead? And A Few Other Nuggets of Wisdom For New Bloggers

How’s that for a dramatic title? Enough years in the blogging space and you’ll learn the very definition of “click-bait” but truthfully, I do want to answer the question “Is Blogging Dead?” since I’ve been hearing it so often lately.

5 years ago today (well actually 2 days ago but I don’t post on Saturdays, so close enough!) I started a little blog called The Healthy Maven. I sat down at the desk in my bedroom in my parents basement and after months of trying to get the perfect name, perfect theme, perfect logo I hit “publish” on my first post. From there I’d begin a love affair with this space that would grow from a deep passion project to my career.

Many of you would join me as I celebrated my 100th post, quit my full-time job, moved across the country and got engaged. I’d talk about my struggles with body image, exercise addiction and how I’m finding balance in my work and personal life. It’s been a whirlwind to say the least but what I know for certain is that hitting publish was single-handedly the best decision I made for my life.

So when I get asked the question “is blogging dead?”, you better bet I’m giving it a lot of thought! To be fair, this is usually coming from my non-blogger friends though I have heard it happen in blogger groups too. There are certainly a lot of takes on the argument, but today I’ll be giving you mine.

IS BLOGGING DEAD?

Yes and no.  Blogging what it was 5 years ago is dead. It’s no longer about just posting your weekend recap and daily escapades. Those things are fun and still valuable but it’s increasingly hard to sustain your passion AND business with this model. Not because people aren’t interested (trust me- our creepy need to stalk other people’s lives isn’t going anywhere!) but because there are other platforms to do that. If you still love doing that, do it – but it will be challenging if you decide to turn this passion into a business. But from a personal standpoint, if you just want to share your creative passion with the world, please please do it!

Now let’s discuss it from a business perspective. If you want to turn your passion into a career, it can’t just be about what makes you happy (though that matters a fair deal!), it also matters what makes other people happy and brings value to their lives. When it comes to creating valuable long-form content: things like recipes, nutrition information, DIYs, self-care tips and well beyond the scope of the wellness space, this stuff is becoming increasingly important. The barrier to entry these days is that there’s a baseline level of quality that needs to be met before you can gain any kind of community. This is a good thing. This weeds out people who are simply producing content for views but don’t do their research or have poorly tested recipes. Bad blogging is dead…hopefully!

From my personal perspective, I haven’t seen huge number drops or anything like that. I’ve seen my audience diversify in how they take in their media. Some prefer video, others prefer podcasts and some people, like you, read the blog. Does this mean blogging is dead? Definitely not. It just means you need to be aware that people use different platforms to take in their information…because there are so many different platforms out there! Blogging isn’t going anywhere – people are just picking and choosing their preferred mediums to take in media and I think this is a good thing!

SHOULD I STILL START A BLOG?

Oh my god yes. YES YES YES. I can’t even tell you how many people have asked me if it’s still worth starting a blog. When I started THM I didn’t in a million years think it would ever make money, let alone become my career. In many ways I think that’s why it was successful. I had zero expectations of it having any success. I truly believe that because I wasn’t grasping for something and instead found joy in each moment of the process it manifested into a career. This is what is so hard for new bloggers now – there’s just so much comparison of where you are to where you want to be. Blogging has taught me so many life skills, professional skills and become my creative outlet. It’s also connected me to the most incredible people around the world. If your sole goal is to make money or gain ‘followers’, I’m sure you could do it, but truthfully you need a level of passion and commitment to blogging even when you feel like no one is reading and you definitely aren’t making any money…because you won’t….for a long time.

So should you still start a blog? Yes! But do it for you. Allow yourself to explore and learn the ropes. Don’t expect you can do everything off the bat or that you need a perfectly designed website before you can share. It took me 4 years to get the web design of my dreams! Be patient, work hard and love what you do.

CAN’T I JUST USE SOCIAL MEDIA?

Sure, why not! I’m not here to tell you what you can and cannot do. But if I had to be honest with you, I would say that social media should be second in command to your blog. One of the benefits of being a blogger before social media got as big as it is (Instagram especially) is that I learned how to build long-form content that is valuable to my readers (all of you). I learned not only how to use this place as my own personal form of therapy, but also how to provide useful tips, tricks, recipes and DIYs that could help you guys lead a healthier lifestyle. Social media was simply a marketing tool to get the word out.

As more and more people start Instagram accounts, I sadly watch as they complain about the algorithm and beg people to turn on notifications. Sure, I’d love for the stupid algorithms to be gone, but my business and my passion doesn’t live in those places. I need marketing to promote my content, but I’ve spent years building up valuable posts that can be found without social media at all. SEO, email lists, those things are SO important and have a shelf-life that lasts longer than a single Instagram image. Any blogger will say the same. So does that mean you should ignore social media? No way. But really figure out what your priorities are. Do you want to share random snippets of your life to inspire people? Instagram might be your jam. Do you want to give long-form nutrition tips or recipes? Blog your heart out. Different goals require different means. Figure out what yours are and then determine how you should be spending your time.

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED:

I asked you guys on Instagram (a great use of social media!) to share some questions you have about blogging. I thought I’d tackle them here today.

How do I start a blog?

The #1 question I got and I won’t be answering it here! Some of you may remember that a couple of years ago Lee and I started The Blogger Project to help answer beginner blogger questions like “how do I start a blog?”, “how do I pick a theme?” etc… so head over there and start here if you’re just beginning.

How do you set yourself apart in an increasingly saturated market?

BE YOURSELF. I know it���s so cliche, but trust me you will attract the tribe you’re meant to attract if you present yourself exactly as you are. Don’t second guess everything or constantly be trying to emulate someone else. Don’t compare. The world is big enough for all of its abundance and that includes your blog and the blogger behind it. The biggest lesson I’ve learned is that people just want to connect with people. So be that person to someone. And eventually that someone will be a lot of people.

Do you need a niche?

Yes and no. For your first year of blogging, I’d be open to exploring a lot of different topics. You don’t want to corner yourself into an idea where 6 months later you hate it and give up blogging entirely. Sometimes it’s the topic that’s challenging and not blogging itself. Give yourself permission to explore and find what you’re passionate about. That being said, from a business perspective it’s helpful to be known for something. I became known as a food blogger, which helped get my business off the ground but didn’t necessarily attract the audience I really wanted – i.e. the people who care about healthy food and all other aspects of health as well! What I didn’t realize was that health and wellness is a niche in and of itself. Don’t feel like your niche has to be super narrow. I just wouldn’t necessarily start a blog that is about cat bonnet knitting and dehydrated foods. It’s a little too all over the place!

Where do you find new inspiration?

GO OUT AND LIVE! I always tell people “I blog about my life but I don’t live for the blog”. THM is a big piece of my life, but it isn’t everything. It took me a while to get there but I now see so much value in not working. It gives me space to breathe, allows for fresh ideas to flow and brings inspiration to my blog simply from living in the world around me. Also, go with the flow. If you’re working on something that isn’t inspiring you, switch to something else. I used to do a ton of seasonal/holiday recipes but I realized that what inspires me most is the everyday, easy-to-make recipes that don’t require strange ingredients. It’s fun to get creative but sometimes simple is best.

How do I transition from a hobby to a business?

This is a loaded question but my first piece of advice is that “no one will tell you that you’ve officially become a business”. If you want to run a business, run a business. It’s as simple as flipping that switch in your mind. You’re as legitimate as you believe you are so don’t seek others permission for your success. Beyond this, make sure you understand your value. Even if you don’t have huge numbers, perhaps your strong suit is photography or you’re an expert in a certain area and you consult. Think outside the box when it comes to your business.

How do you gain readership, followers and viewers?

If I had a dollar for every skype chat/consulting sessions/DM I received about this topic I would be rich. Truthfully, I don’t think there’s a secret sauce. The blogging industry and everything that goes with it is changing constantly and with that you need to have a deep understanding of the needs of your audience, no matter what size it is. My main message to you is to focus less on how many but who they are. How can you best serve them? What kind of community are you building? More numbers doesn’t mean more business. Most of my brand work comes in before they’ve even seen my numbers. What is visible to them is how much I care about my audience and ensuring they receive valuable and helpful information. Focus less on the pretty picture and more on what your message is. Be honest with that message and let people connect with you.

Do I need to do video? What about podcasting?

I think this is up to you! When I first started out you were a blogger or a youtuber or maybe a podcaster. You weren’t all three! These days, the game is different and there’s obvious advantages to tapping into each. That being said, what resonates most with you? If you’re not comfortable in front of the camera, try “tasty-style” videos. If you don’t have the time to produce video, focus on blogging. If photography is not your thing, try podcasting! I don’t think you need to do everything and especially if it means sacrificing quality. Focus on what you love and what you WANT to learn more about. Not what you feel you HAVE to learn more about.

For more blogging tips, check out these posts:

What I Wish Everyone Knew About Sponsored Posts

My #1 Piece of Business Advice

How I Found a Better Work-Life Balance

* * * * *

Lastly, thank you to EVERY.SINGLE.ONE.OF.YOU who has come along for this journey this past 5 years. I’m eternally grateful for your support and I hope I’ve done you proud in the privilege you’ve given me to have this platform. Whether my business disappeared tomorrow, I know I’d still keep doing it because I absolutely love it. The past 5 years have blown by because of this passion and my only wish is that all of you have found or will find something that you care this much about. So much love to you all!

-Davida

Did I miss any of your questions? Do you think blogging is dead?

Photos courtesy of Bettina Bogar

The post Is Blogging Dead? And A Few Other Nuggets of Wisdom For New Bloggers appeared first on The Healthy Maven.

from News About Health https://www.thehealthymaven.com/2018/02/is-blogging-dead.html

[amorehouse5-blog]

We’re still swimming away at Goldfish Swim School and loving every minute of it! Little Johnny has been learning so much (and so have my husband and I!) 😉 We have been attending every Thursday for the past 2 months and it has adapted into our weekly routine very nicely! We even attended their Grand Opening event, which we really enjoyed our  “family swim time” along with meeting the famous “Bubbles”!

So far Little Johnny is learning to: 

become comfortable in the water

kicking with barbell (unassisted)

pulling paddle swim with face in (unassisted)

conditioning with water in face

breath control in underwater dip (5 seconds with assistance)

superman glide (unassisted)

wall hold (assisted)

crab walk (assisted)

climb out of water (assisted)

underwater jump and turn back to wall (assisted)

underwater dip and rollover, front to back (assisted)

relaxed in back float position (assisted)

(This is a sponsored post, but as always my opinions are my own.)

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Mostly right now Little Johnny is learning about safety skills, especially how to easily get out of the water. (elbow, elbow, tummy, knee, knee) He is still in the Mini 2 lessons and it has been so nice to be able to attend as a family. My husband and I switch off with participating with Little Johnny in the pool. I look forward to our Thursday morning swim classes! Every time we walk into the building we are always greeted with smiles and a very warm welcoming! They even know Little Johnny by name and immediately interact with him, which is so comforting as parents!

Let’s “dive into” our 5 Reasons we LOVE

Goldfish Swim School! 

They are always concerned about safety 1st! (especially with the infant/toddler classes)

Friendly Environment– ALWAYS greeted with smiles

Swim Instructors are very supportive– If you’re child seems to be struggling with a specific skill they instructors are right there to provide assistance and tools in order for them to advance in that area

We LOVE the songs that are incorporated– It’s a fun environment when we are learning skills to the tune of children’s songs.

They teach the parents too! – Every lesson my husband and I learn something new we can incorporate with Little Johnny when he is in contact with water. Also, for older kids at the end of each lesson they bring the parents in and have the kids show them what skills were taught! I love the collaboration involved with all the adults!

A snippet about our most recent experience… 

Last swim class Little Johnny had a hard time floating on his back. The swim instructors stepped right in and adapted to the situation with providing “tools” to help make him more comfortable. They gave him a mirror that we held up so he could see himself floating, which seemed to help. The instructor also took over to see if Johnny would do better with them. It was so comforting as a parent to see the support offered by the instructors.

My husband and I made a short video to document Little Johnny’s first experience with swim lessons, and we wanted to take this opportunity to share it with you!

Having FUN while learning to swim! 

If you’re like me and enjoy kids activities that have “themes” to them, you’ll really like the fact that Goldfish Swim School has monthly celebrations that they incorporate into the lessons along with the kiddos getting a “prize” for the month.

Here’s a fun article about their monthly celebrations!

Goldfish Swim School Monthly Celebrations 

Just this past month the theme was “Celebrate Animals” and all the swimmers received a float toy which was the Goldfish Swim School mascot, “Bubbles”. Little Johnny loved it and actually started saying “bubbles” for the first time!

The BIG question…Is it really worth the money? 

We all know that as parents we have to closely watch where we spend our money related to lessons or kids activities, especially since there are so many out there! I mean we work hard for it, right? So, I’m sure we can all agree that we want validation that the money we are spending is actually going to benefit our children. Are you still unsure about the cost, and wondering if it’s “really worth spending the money for swim lessons?” Well, I honestly believe that this is an investment in your child’s future. They will truly “thank you” for providing them with this type of learning opportunity where they won’t grow up afraid of water, and as they get older they will have more confidence in knowing that they can swim. Below you will find a short post I found helpful that provides more details about the Top 5 Reasons Goldfish Swim School is worth the money.

Top 5 Reasons Goldfish Swim School is Worth the Money

We enjoy our experiences at Goldfish Swim School and would love for others to join us! Remember they specialize in infant & children’s swim lessons. If you want more information you can visit my two previous posts listed below!

“Splish, Splash” Goldfish Swim School is Opening in Florida! 

We’re Splishin’ and Splashin’ at Goldfish Swim School (Our 1st Swim Lesson Experience)

And of course, make sure to visit their social media accounts and show some love by following them for updates! 🙂

facebook

instagram

twitter

Happy swimming! 

Wishing you well,

~Amanda

5 Reasons why we LOVE Goldfish Swim School We're still swimming away at Goldfish Swim School and loving every minute of it! Little Johnny has been learning so much (and so have my husband and I!) 😉 We have been attending every Thursday for the past 2 months and it has adapted into our weekly routine very nicely!

[cash4youblog]

Why I Quit Freelancing (to Really Work for Myself)

It’s been quite a week, friends. On Monday, I literally touched three states and one province, driving from Boise, through Oregon and Washington, all the way back home to Squamish. I got to catch up with a few good friends on Tuesday morning, then tried to get back into work mode. Admittedly, the anxiety and grief I’d been trying to ignore on my trip caught up with me, and I have since shed a lot of tears – and, as a result, did not get a lot of work done. But with the low’s, I can always find a high – and I did have one thing to celebrate this week.

Wednesday marked the beginning of my third year of self-employment! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and on the podcast, I never thought I would work for myself. It wasn’t part of the plan. When I got a job with the government in my early twenties, I thought I had made it. I was going to climb that career ladder until I retired and collected my pension. That was the plan. Quitting to work at a startup wasn’t part of the plan. And quitting the startup to become a full-time freelancer definitely wasn’t part of the plan. Then one day, it became an option.

My first day of “funemployment” was June 27, 2015. Looking back on that now, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I had six months of freelance lined up, and a four-month buffer in savings I could use if I ever found myself without work. If I had to find a job after that, I told myself I’d never regret at least getting a taste of working for myself. The opportunity presented itself and the shopping ban taught me how little money I needed to live on. I had to at least see what would happen if I went out on my own.

After my first year of self-employment, I outlined most of the lessons I had learned in this post. You definitely need to be comfortable earning (and budgeting with) irregular income. Having savings in the bank is what will help you sleep at night. You should always save more than you think you’ll need for tax time (because not doing so could end your business). Hiring an accountant will be the best money you spend all year. And if you don’t feel like you’re being paid what you’re worth, you won’t enjoy doing the work.

All of those lessons still ring true for me today, but I learned another lesson in my first year that I wasn’t ready to share until now: I don’t actually love being a full-time freelancer. And by “freelancer,” I mean writing and doing other kinds of contract work for clients. When I quit my job, my goal wasn’t to do client work forever. My goal was to work for myself. I wanted to wake up in the morning and spend the first few hours of my day working on my blog. And for the first two years, I couldn’t, because I was always putting my clients first.

Blog posts were delayed. Some weren’t written at all. I have over 50 of them currently sitting in my drafts folder, right now, along with a list of ideas I’ve thought about working on. None of them have come to life yet because I always prioritized my clients’ goals and deadlines over my own.

This has been a running theme in all areas of my life: putting other people first. I didn’t actually realize that, until I started therapy in April and figured out a number of issues could be fixed by setting more boundaries in my life. On the personal side, that has meant communicating more of my thoughts and needs with the people I love (which has been both terrifying and liberating). And in my business, that has meant being honest with myself about what I want – and don’t want – and communicating that to my clients.

There are a number of reasons why I knew I wanted to quit freelancing one day:

I stopped feeling excited about the work.

I hated having to follow-up on late payments (this wasn’t an issue for me in 2015/16, but I feel like almost all of my clients were late to pay in 2017).

I started resenting the clients who paid late.

I then procrastinated the work.

And I wasn’t being the best freelancer I could be.

But I was still afraid to cut the cord. I first started freelancing on the side of my day job back in 2011, and it had done so many good things for me. It boosted my annual income, which helped me pay down my debt sooner. I then funnelled that money into my emergency fund, which helped me feel comfortable quitting my day job. And having enough client work lined up is the only reason I was able to quit my day job at all. For all those reasons and more, freelancing had been an incredible gift.

The problem with “gifts” like this is that I am the type of person who feels like she owes people things in return. I stayed at my last job for longer than I wanted to because deep down I felt like I owed my boss something. I felt like she had taken a chance on an island girl, brought her to the big city and made some of her dreams come true – and I owed her. The problem with quitting to work for multiple clients is that I then felt like I owed multiple people for the opportunity. I am grateful for it. But feeling like I was obligated to work felt – well, like an obligation. And pushing back my own goals for two more years felt like I was giving up on my dreams.

It wasn’t until a friend suggested I look up what percentage of my income has been from freelance work in 2017 that I realized I could potentially walk away from it. The answer: less than 10%. Last year, it was 31%. I needed that money. And I still need the 10% it’s given me this year, but I also know I could make up that 10% in other ways – ways that would involve me finally putting myself and my blog first. With these numbers in mind, I was one step closer to quitting. The day Lexie died, I made the decision and sent the emails to my clients.

Similar to my experiences with learning to communicate more of my thoughts and needs with loved ones, quitting has been liberating. Immediately, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And it’s opened up so much space for creativity and inspiration to pour into the work I’m doing.

But it’s also been terrifying. On top of always putting other people first and feeling like I owe them, something I am only just starting to talk about in therapy is the fact that I don’t feel like I am worthy of all the good that comes into my life. I don’t know where this belief comes from. I didn’t even know I had it, and I almost quit therapy when I realized I was going to have to dig deep and figure it out. But it’s there – hidden underneath every part of my life, including my work. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. It’s a recipe for a life of lost dreams.

So, here I am: at the beginning of my third-year of self-employment, and my first year of truly working for myself. I will never say a bad thing about freelancing. I didn’t quit because I hated it or hated my clients. I quit freelancing because quitting became an option, and I knew I would regret not seeing what would happen if I went out on my own. I also quit because I want to believe I am worthy of the opportunity.

Like so many of the changes I’ve made in my life, I don’t know how this is going to turn out. But losing both girls in nine days reminded me that life is short – too short to keep putting myself last. If I owe anyone anything, at this point, it’s me. And if I’m good to myself, I have to believe I’ll be a better version of myself for you too.

As always, thanks for your support. <3

Why I Quit Freelancing (to Really Work for Myself) posted first on http://ift.tt/2sSbQiu

[carpediempagesite]

Why I Quit Freelancing (to Really Work for Myself)

It’s been quite a week, friends. On Monday, I literally touched three states and one province, driving from Boise, through Oregon and Washington, all the way back home to Squamish. I got to catch up with a few good friends on Tuesday morning, then tried to get back into work mode. Admittedly, the anxiety and grief I’d been trying to ignore on my trip caught up with me, and I have since shed a lot of tears – and, as a result, did not get a lot of work done. But with the low’s, I can always find a high – and I did have one thing to celebrate this week.

Wednesday marked the beginning of my third year of self-employment! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and on the podcast, I never thought I would work for myself. It wasn’t part of the plan. When I got a job with the government in my early twenties, I thought I had made it. I was going to climb that career ladder until I retired and collected my pension. That was the plan. Quitting to work at a startup wasn’t part of the plan. And quitting the startup to become a full-time freelancer definitely wasn’t part of the plan. Then one day, it became an option.

My first day of “funemployment” was June 27, 2015. Looking back on that now, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I had six months of freelance lined up, and a four-month buffer in savings I could use if I ever found myself without work. If I had to find a job after that, I told myself I’d never regret at least getting a taste of working for myself. The opportunity presented itself and the shopping ban taught me how little money I needed to live on. I had to at least see what would happen if I went out on my own.

After my first year of self-employment, I outlined most of the lessons I had learned in this post. You definitely need to be comfortable earning (and budgeting with) irregular income. Having savings in the bank is what will help you sleep at night. You should always save more than you think you’ll need for tax time (because not doing so could end your business). Hiring an accountant will be the best money you spend all year. And if you don’t feel like you’re being paid what you’re worth, you won’t enjoy doing the work.

All of those lessons still ring true for me today, but I learned another lesson in my first year that I wasn’t ready to share until now: I don’t actually love being a full-time freelancer. And by “freelancer,” I mean writing and doing other kinds of contract work for clients. When I quit my job, my goal wasn’t to do client work forever. My goal was to work for myself. I wanted to wake up in the morning and spend the first few hours of my day working on my blog. And for the first two years, I couldn’t, because I was always putting my clients first.

Blog posts were delayed. Some weren’t written at all. I have over 50 of them currently sitting in my drafts folder, right now, along with a list of ideas I’ve thought about working on. None of them have come to life yet because I always prioritized my clients’ goals and deadlines over my own.

This has been a running theme in all areas of my life: putting other people first. I didn’t actually realize that, until I started therapy in April and figured out a number of issues could be fixed by setting more boundaries in my life. On the personal side, that has meant communicating more of my thoughts and needs with the people I love (which has been both terrifying and liberating). And in my business, that has meant being honest with myself about what I want – and don’t want – and communicating that to my clients.

There are a number of reasons why I knew I wanted to quit freelancing one day:

I stopped feeling excited about the work.

I hated having to follow-up on late payments (this wasn’t an issue for me in 2015/16, but I feel like almost all of my clients were late to pay in 2017).

I started resenting the clients who paid late.

I then procrastinated the work.

And I wasn’t being the best freelancer I could be.

But I was still afraid to cut the cord. I first started freelancing on the side of my day job back in 2011, and it had done so many good things for me. It boosted my annual income, which helped me pay down my debt sooner. I then funnelled that money into my emergency fund, which helped me feel comfortable quitting my day job. And having enough client work lined up is the only reason I was able to quit my day job at all. For all those reasons and more, freelancing had been an incredible gift.

The problem with “gifts” like this is that I am the type of person who feels like she owes people things in return. I stayed at my last job for longer than I wanted to because deep down I felt like I owed my boss something. I felt like she had taken a chance on an island girl, brought her to the big city and made some of her dreams come true – and I owed her. The problem with quitting to work for multiple clients is that I then felt like I owed multiple people for the opportunity. I am grateful for it. But feeling like I was obligated to work felt – well, like an obligation. And pushing back my own goals for two more years felt like I was giving up on my dreams.

It wasn’t until a friend suggested I look up what percentage of my income has been from freelance work in 2017 that I realized I could potentially walk away from it. The answer: less than 10%. Last year, it was 31%. I needed that money. And I still need the 10% it’s given me this year, but I also know I could make up that 10% in other ways – ways that would involve me finally putting myself and my blog first. With these numbers in mind, I was one step closer to quitting. The day Lexie died, I made the decision and sent the emails to my clients.

Similar to my experiences with learning to communicate more of my thoughts and needs with loved ones, quitting has been liberating. Immediately, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And it’s opened up so much space for creativity and inspiration to pour into the work I’m doing.

But it’s also been terrifying. On top of always putting other people first and feeling like I owe them, something I am only just starting to talk about in therapy is the fact that I don’t feel like I am worthy of all the good that comes into my life. I don’t know where this belief comes from. I didn’t even know I had it, and I almost quit therapy when I realized I was going to have to dig deep and figure it out. But it’s there – hidden underneath every part of my life, including my work. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. It’s a recipe for a life of lost dreams.

So, here I am: at the beginning of my third-year of self-employment, and my first year of truly working for myself. I will never say a bad thing about freelancing. I didn’t quit because I hated it or hated my clients. I quit freelancing because quitting became an option, and I knew I would regret not seeing what would happen if I went out on my own. I also quit because I want to believe I am worthy of the opportunity.

Like so many of the changes I’ve made in my life, I don’t know how this is going to turn out. But losing both girls in nine days reminded me that life is short – too short to keep putting myself last. If I owe anyone anything, at this point, it’s me. And if I’m good to myself, I have to believe I’ll be a better version of myself for you too.

As always, thanks for your support. <3

Why I Quit Freelancing (to Really Work for Myself) posted first on cashforcarsperthblog.blogspot.com

[fesahaawit]

Why I Quit Freelancing (to Really Work for Myself)

It’s been quite a week, friends. On Monday, I literally touched three states and one province, driving from Boise, through Oregon and Washington, all the way back home to Squamish. I got to catch up with a few good friends on Tuesday morning, then tried to get back into work mode. Admittedly, the anxiety and grief I’d been trying to ignore on my trip caught up with me, and I have since shed a lot of tears – and, as a result, did not get a lot of work done. But with the low’s, I can always find a high – and I did have one thing to celebrate this week.

Wednesday marked the beginning of my third year of self-employment! As I’ve mentioned in previous posts and on the podcast, I never thought I would work for myself. It wasn’t part of the plan. When I got a job with the government in my early twenties, I thought I had made it. I was going to climb that career ladder until I retired and collected my pension. That was the plan. Quitting to work at a startup wasn’t part of the plan. And quitting the startup to become a full-time freelancer definitely wasn’t part of the plan. Then one day, it became an option.

My first day of “funemployment” was June 27, 2015. Looking back on that now, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. All I knew was that I had six months of freelance lined up, and a four-month buffer in savings I could use if I ever found myself without work. If I had to find a job after that, I told myself I’d never regret at least getting a taste of working for myself. The opportunity presented itself and the shopping ban taught me how little money I needed to live on. I had to at least see what would happen if I went out on my own.

After my first year of self-employment, I outlined most of the lessons I had learned in this post. You definitely need to be comfortable earning (and budgeting with) irregular income. Having savings in the bank is what will help you sleep at night. You should always save more than you think you’ll need for tax time (because not doing so could end your business). Hiring an accountant will be the best money you spend all year. And if you don’t feel like you’re being paid what you’re worth, you won’t enjoy doing the work.

All of those lessons still ring true for me today, but I learned another lesson in my first year that I wasn’t ready to share until now: I don’t actually love being a full-time freelancer. And by “freelancer,” I mean writing and doing other kinds of contract work for clients. When I quit my job, my goal wasn’t to do client work forever. My goal was to work for myself. I wanted to wake up in the morning and spend the first few hours of my day working on my blog. And for the first two years, I couldn’t, because I was always putting my clients first.

Blog posts were delayed. Some weren’t written at all. I have over 50 of them currently sitting in my drafts folder, right now, along with a list of ideas I’ve thought about working on. None of them have come to life yet because I always prioritized my clients’ goals and deadlines over my own.

This has been a running theme in all areas of my life: putting other people first. I didn’t actually realize that, until I started therapy in April and figured out a number of issues could be fixed by setting more boundaries in my life. On the personal side, that has meant communicating more of my thoughts and needs with the people I love (which has been both terrifying and liberating). And in my business, that has meant being honest with myself about what I want – and don’t want – and communicating that to my clients.

There are a number of reasons why I knew I wanted to quit freelancing one day:

I stopped feeling excited about the work.

I hated having to follow-up on late payments (this wasn’t an issue for me in 2015/16, but I feel like almost all of my clients were late to pay in 2017).

I started resenting the clients who paid late.

I then procrastinated the work.

And I wasn’t being the best freelancer I could be.

But I was still afraid to cut the cord. I first started freelancing on the side of my day job back in 2011, and it had done so many good things for me. It boosted my annual income, which helped me pay down my debt sooner. I then funnelled that money into my emergency fund, which helped me feel comfortable quitting my day job. And having enough client work lined up is the only reason I was able to quit my day job at all. For all those reasons and more, freelancing had been an incredible gift.

The problem with “gifts” like this is that I am the type of person who feels like she owes people things in return. I stayed at my last job for longer than I wanted to because deep down I felt like I owed my boss something. I felt like she had taken a chance on an island girl, brought her to the big city and made some of her dreams come true – and I owed her. The problem with quitting to work for multiple clients is that I then felt like I owed multiple people for the opportunity. I am grateful for it. But feeling like I was obligated to work felt – well, like an obligation. And pushing back my own goals for two more years felt like I was giving up on my dreams.

It wasn’t until a friend suggested I look up what percentage of my income has been from freelance work in 2017 that I realized I could potentially walk away from it. The answer: less than 10%. Last year, it was 31%. I needed that money. And I still need the 10% it’s given me this year, but I also know I could make up that 10% in other ways – ways that would involve me finally putting myself and my blog first. With these numbers in mind, I was one step closer to quitting. The day Lexie died, I made the decision and sent the emails to my clients.

Similar to my experiences with learning to communicate more of my thoughts and needs with loved ones, quitting has been liberating. Immediately, it felt like a huge weight had been lifted. And it’s opened up so much space for creativity and inspiration to pour into the work I’m doing.

But it’s also been terrifying. On top of always putting other people first and feeling like I owe them, something I am only just starting to talk about in therapy is the fact that I don’t feel like I am worthy of all the good that comes into my life. I don’t know where this belief comes from. I didn’t even know I had it, and I almost quit therapy when I realized I was going to have to dig deep and figure it out. But it’s there – hidden underneath every part of my life, including my work. I don’t want to feel this way anymore. It’s a recipe for a life of lost dreams.

So, here I am: at the beginning of my third-year of self-employment, and my first year of truly working for myself. I will never say a bad thing about freelancing. I didn’t quit because I hated it or hated my clients. I quit freelancing because quitting became an option, and I knew I would regret not seeing what would happen if I went out on my own. I also quit because I want to believe I am worthy of the opportunity.

Like so many of the changes I’ve made in my life, I don’t know how this is going to turn out. But losing both girls in nine days reminded me that life is short – too short to keep putting myself last. If I owe anyone anything, at this point, it’s me. And if I’m good to myself, I have to believe I’ll be a better version of myself for you too.

As always, thanks for your support. <3

Why I Quit Freelancing (to Really Work for Myself) posted first on http://ift.tt/2lnwIdQ

[andrewmrudd79]

Website Redesign—One Year Later (Critical Lessons Learned)

It’s been a year since the latest major redesign of the Smart Passive Income blog, and I wanted to give you an over-the-shoulder look at what has happened since, including all the great things and the not-so-great things.

I also want to highlight some of the latest features and updates we’ve added based on what we learned.

Let’s do this!

The design before the recent update wasn’t terrible. In fact, it was great! We actually converted the custom theme into a distributable WordPress theme that hundreds of people have since downloaded and are now using for their own website.

It’s called the SPI Pro Theme, and you can check it out here on StudioPress. It was the number one downloaded theme for a couple of months after it was released, which is awesome!

The older site worked great, but it was lacking in a couple key areas specifically for the needs of the SPI brand and where I knew it was going:

With the abnormally large amounts of content on the site across several different media types (blog, podcast, video), it didn’t provide an easy way to access that content, especially on the homepage.

Knowing that I was going to produce more courses, products, and books, it was easy to see that if we kept the old version of the site, things would become a mess.

It was like living in a great starter home, but now we needed space for our growing family.

(Okay, maybe that analogy wasn’t so good, but you get my point.)

Those were the main drivers for the change, and of course there were other things like increasing pages per visit and optimizing daily email subscribers that are always important too.

In SPI Podcast Session #208, I dive into more of the details of the design changes, in case you’d like to hear more. If you really want to take the Delorean and go back into time, I recommend reading this article, which is a history of the themes since the start of SPI, including this bad boy here:

Now that we’re a year since the update, here’s the good that has happened since.

1. People Can See More!

We accomplished our goal of giving users the ability to discover more content on the website.

Instead of a two-post homepage feature, now you could see see up to six pieces of content on the homepage.

On the blog page, instead of seeing the headlines and first 500 words of about ten articles after scrolling down, you can easily see the headlines of about twelve posts in a grid format, so you don’t have to scroll far at all to scan them quickly.

Click the load more button, and then it will automatically load twelve more onto the same page, instead of opening up a new window and leaving your other posts behind. This is called “infinite loading,” as opposed to “infinite scrolling” (like on Pinterest).

Per page visit, we are seeing more people dig deep and spend more time on the site. So that’s a big win.

2. The Reading Experience is Cleaner

We used Medium’s reading experience as inspiration because my team and I, who all read articles on Medium, agree that it’s a nice and seamless approach to content.

Typically, blog posts are plastered with a lot of distractions, especially in the sidebar. We completely removed that, increased the font size, and added a little bit of styling to make it more like reading a book.

The response has been great so far!

3. More Unique Post Types to Enhance Specific Kinds of Content

My podcasting tutorial, which has been the number one post here on SPI since it was published, was originally a giant blog post written on a normal template, which just happened to include six tutorial style videos, each one leading onto the next.

Because this was a top post, we paid careful attention to it, and decided to make it even easier to consume, and highlight it as a tutorial here on the site as well.

If you visit the page now, you’ll see the same content as before, but it’s laid out a bit differently, especially at the end where the tutorial videos are.

Part of the plan moving forward is to create more tutorials just like this one, and we’ve already come out with something new this year: a six-video tutorial (using the same template) walking you through the steps of how to start and grow your email list. You can check that out by clicking here or going to StartanEmailList.com.

We also have new post templates for other special posts, such as my income reports, which include a much more organized spreadsheet to house all of the numbers. My team built in the calculations aspect of the chart, so that all we have to do is plug in numbers, and it runs all on its own. It even includes percentage changes from the previous months!

4. A More Consistent Brand Language Throughout

By the time I decided to initiate this design change, one of the things that has always been on my mind is that many things under the SPI brand looked completely different from each other.

There was no consistent brand language, except maybe the green license plate logo which has been around since the third design iteration back in 2008.

My lead magnets looked different from the website, which looked different from my AskPat podcast, and so on.

A big goal was to gain consistency throughout the brand so that it would offer a touch of professionalism and care. Also, having a design language makes it much easier to know what things will look like later.

So, for example, Ebooks the Smart Way, which initially looked like this:

Then turned into this:

And we took that design and applied it to other guides, such as AffiliateMarketingTheSmartWay.com and EmailTheSmartWay.com.

Across the brand, I now feel like we’re speaking the same language, and I’m super thankful for that. This isn’t something anyone on the other end may directly notice, but I think it conveys that I pay attention to the details, which means a lot when someone deciding to subscribe, share, or transact with me in the future.

5. A Successful Content Audit

Part of the plan was to audit our content, very similar to what Todd Tresidder taught in SPI Podcast Session #200.

In that interview, Todd spoke about how he deleted one-third of his content, and as a result of tightening up his website, Google rewarded him with triple the amount of traffic.

Other content creators have noticed that “cutting out the crap,” the old stuff you’ve written that doesn’t matter to your readers anymore, either because it’s old or because you’ve changed directly, has a drastic impact on the worth of your website in Google’s eyes. It makes sense because it increases the value of your website to the reader.

So, we implemented a content audit, where about seventy-five pieces of content were affected one way or another, and the results left us with content that matters, and we got rid of the stuff that didn’t. I was excited to see what would happen, although it would take some time to see.

Now, let’s talk about what didn’t work.

1. It Became Hard to Find Something You Wanted

When people came back to the site after the redesign, they had a hard time finding what they were looking for. For example, if you wanted to find SPI Podcast Session #20, you’d still have a hard time locating it.

There were a lot of discovery options, and we even implemented a strategy to help people discover more relevant content as well, but finding something specific became a drag.

We’ve since solved this problem in a radical way.

Our search function on the site has been completely overhauled. It no longer uses the standard WordPress search function, which actually is very limiting and hardly ever accurate. From the ground up, we built an entirely new experience that is, in my opinion, the best search on a blog, ever.

Here’s an image showing it off a bit:

It features instant results as you type, and the results are way more accurate than they were before. It takes the post title into account, but also everything from category to content to metadata, images, and more to give you Google-like results, but specific to the content here on SPI.

What’s even cooler is that we’ll be able to track exactly what people are searching for (and how often), and use that data to help determine what the biggest needs and wants are from the SPI audience, and how we can best serve you.

Woot! I’m so excited about this.

Go ahead, try it out! Type in anything you’d like, and see results show up. Click Enter and you’ll get another level of search experience and capabilities, too!

2. The “Entrepreneur’s Journey”

When I started SPI back in 2008, I had no idea what the heck I was doing. This became very apparent if you took a look at the list of categories and tags I created for blog posts. They totaled over 150 categories and tags before this recent design change.

Yes, it was kind of a hot mess, but my team and I were determined to fix that.

We had determined that one of the best ways to categorize the 800+ pieces of content on SPI was based on where you are on “entrepreneur’s journey.” If you’re a complete beginner, you’d prefer the “Let’s Start Something New” camp, and if you are more advanced, you’d like content that’s more on the side of “Let’s Optimize Your Work.”

After categorizing every piece of content into these categories (which worked out really well!), we decided to enhance this line of thinking with a filter that lives on the homepage and blog page to help people find content that was relevant to them. That didn’t work out very well.

I mean, it worked, technically speaking. The filter worked perfectly and depending on which one you moved the slider to, you’d see a different set of content in your grid on those pages. Where you were on the journey also followed you across the site, so that the experience was the same throughout, even when you came back. The design and development team did a great job realizing this vision.

However, this vision wasn’t fully utilized by the SPI audience and didn’t become the game-changer we had thought it would be.

For one, the mobile experience for this is not very good. But, more than that, it just isn’t used that much. In order for this type of personalization to work, I feel like I’d have to gain more insight about each user and determine truly what kinds of topics are most relevant to them right now, not just where they are at in the journey.

The slider and filters are still there, but they will likely be removed very soon.

3. Certain Important Pages Remained Buried

We kept a minimal navigation menu at the top of the site. I really liked the design and the flow, especially since it shrinks and sticks with you as you scroll down the page, which is awesome. However, the minimal design made it hard to include too many things without having it feel squeezed and clunky, so a lot of important pieces of content remained “buried.”

I wanted to pull more things up.

Not too long ago, we found a solution that worked, one that lives on many other sites, but has never been a part of the SPI brand: a two-tier navigation system.

We decided to have a sub-set of menu items underneath some of the main topics up top. So, for example, when you scroll over Start Here (which would traditionally send you to the Start Here page), you see a nested menu of other items:

Passive Income 101 (which is the Start Here page)

The Very Best of SPI

About Me

My Business Why

You’ll also notice a large graphic area to the right of those items. Those feature graphics are tied to each page, and change depending on which one you highlight before you click. Additionally, you’ll notice the rest of the site goes dark, enabling you to focus more on the options in front of you.

It’s really a smart design that allows me to surface a lot more important content without it feeling cluttered. I’ve gotten some messages from users specifically complimenting the design and user experience.

A big shout-out and thanks goes to the design and dev team. You’re awesome!

4. Email Subscriber Growth Remained the Same

Nothing too aggressive was done in the new design to drastically increase subscriber growth. We carried over the same email capture elements from the previous design, but I had expected that the new design would at least earn a little bit of an uptick due to better flow of users through the site. I was mistaken.

There was absolutely no difference at all.

It hovered around 3,500 new subscribers per month between January and November, until I finally did something about it, because one of my goals this is year is to increase my email list to 250,000 emails. That’s up from 170,000 to start the year.

That’s a significant increase.

To reach that goal, I’ll need more than 3,500 per month.

Plans for specific promotions I have throughout the year should do well for adding new subscribers to my list, however. For example, webinars and product launches, which people have to sign up for with their email address anyway.

In November, I decided to run an experiment.

I conducted a challenge called The 72-Hour Email List Building Challenge, where you could start your email list from scratch and gain more than 100 subscribers within three days.

I promoted this quite heavily, and thanks to the sharing mechanisms involved, I was able to drastically increase my email list in this way, since people had to sign up to get the instructions to participate.

In November, 6,052 new people signed up to the list.

You can actually still participate in the challenge, too. It’s available over at 100emails.com. Just sign up, and in three days you’ll have an email list to begin with. And it’s free!

In January, the team and I thought it was best to be a little more aggressive with email capture efforts on the homepage. By that I simply mean actually highlighting an email opt-in form on the homepage, which we were not doing before.

The reason for this is because the primary action I wanted people to take was navigate to the Passive Income 101 page, and then have the value I provide there become enough incentive for people to subscribe once they knew that there was some high-quality content coming their way.

That did work, and the Passive Income 101 page did drive an incredibly high percentage of email subscribers to my list, but after implementing a homepage opt-in form in the hero section (and specifically showing it to those who we knew hadn’t yet signed up to the list), the email growth did finally start to happen.

January saw a growth of 5,055 subscribers without any active promotions going on.

The big lesson here is this: if you want to build your email list, you have to be a little aggressive. Not rude or obnoxious, but you just have to really want it, and then go for it. I teach this mindset to new email marketers in my 100 email challenge, and it was time for me to follow suit.

Now, onto the last aspect of the redesign that didn’t work! I’ve saved the best for last.

5. Organic Traffic Went Down

When you go live with a brand new redesign, there’s always a fear that you’ll end up losing organic traffic. For many, Google seems to be this weird mysterious being that, at any time for any reason, can affect your website, both positively and negatively.

When the new site went up, after the audit was in place, I was excited to get some good hard data on how much the site improved in terms of organic traffic. Unfortunately, it went the opposite direction.

The first month of the launch in April was great. But, this was expected because when you announce a redesign to an audience that you already have, everyone will want to see it. Plus, it takes time for Google to notice any changes and adjust accordingly.

The next month there was a slight decline, but I was optimistic and had heard that sometimes a brand new change can initially negatively affect your SEO, but it often comes back even stronger.

I was bracing myself for “even stronger,” but as months went by I kept seeing a slow decline in organic traffic. I’m still bracing for “even stronger.”

Organic traffic hasn’t declined too much (about 10 percent), but it’s still worrisome because it shouldn’t be going down at all.

We did a lot to potentially “shock” Google. We implemented a number of 301 redirects when performing the audits and thought we had kept everything tight and clean during the transition. We also included a number of new post types, custom built with custom fields that, although we believe we constructed correctly, could potentially affect search engine rankings.

There was also some server stuff done to optimize the website’s speed as well, or so we thought.

The thing is, we weren’t sure.

So, to help solve this problem and get to the bottom of it, I hired an SEO specialist to figure it out.

Thanks to a recommendation from a few people, I connected with Sam McRoberts from VuduMarketing.com, and we immediately booked some time for him to go through the site and offer his advice.

We started communication on December 10, 2016, and he delivered my report on January 1, 2017. Perfect.

Here’s what he gave me to celebrate the new year:

SPI SEO Audit PDF: This is the main audit document, and outlines all of the key issues found and recommendations on how to fix them.

SPI Site Crawl Report Spreadsheet: This spreadsheet is a close supplement to the main audit document, and includes site crawl data with page-by-page issues highlighted, as well as data extracted from Google Search Console.

SPI Linking and Social Analysis Spreadsheet: This spreadsheet includes all of the linking and social competitive data we pulled down for the audit, showing where you are in relation to the handful of sites we compared you to.

SPI Keyword and Ranking Research Spreadsheet: This spreadsheet is a compendium of keyword data and top organic page data pulled from a variety of sources, to give you a snapshot in time of what you rank for and which pages perform the best. This can help you to spot issues (say, pages with lots of organic impression but low clicks, or pages with a lot of traffic but a high bounce rate).

It’s a little technical to share in this particular post, but I invited Sam on the podcast to talk about SEO, audits, and specifically what he learned about my site that needed help. That session of the podcast will be Session #261, coming April 12, and it’s definitely one you should check out. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast so that you’ll get it and all of the other helpful content that’s coming out this year.

We’re almost done implementing each and every recommendation, and I look forward to those “even stronger” results coming out of all of this.

The big lesson is this: a redesign can be scary, especially when it comes to SEO, but search engine traffic isn’t everything either. Yes, you should pay attention to it, and obviously track and make sure that if, like me, you lose a bit of momentum, try to figure out how to get it back.

But, remember, there are humans reading your blog and visiting your website too, not just search engine crawlers. Typically when you follow the rule of providing value for your audience first, the search engines will eventually follow.

I’m confident we’ll be on an upward trend with SEO in no time.

I’ll keep you posted.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and look out for my second Physical Product Experiment installment post coming in two weeks. I’ve got some fun progress to share with you!

For those of you who didn’t catch it, here’s a link to the first post, an announcement of what this new experiment is all about.

Cheers, and all the best!

Website Redesign—One Year Later (Critical Lessons Learned) originally posted at Homer’s Blog