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allthebooksandcrannies · 4 years ago

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I know a lot of older people think it's a problem that so many young people don't want to have children, but I think it shows an increased understanding for how much of a responsibility parenting is and how much damage you can do to a child of you're not ready to raise someone.

I think that everyone is capable of being a good parent and I think that some people should never be parents. These may sound mutually exclusive but they aren't because there's a big if involved in the first half. That if, is that everyone is capable of being a good parent someday if they put in the work to take care of their own shit first.

When you become a parent or guardian, you are officially signing on to prioritize another person's physical and emotional needs before your own for the rest of their life. That means loving them no matter what they do or who they become. That means putting aside your own exhaustion and frustration at your day when they walk through the door so that you can be their champion and their confidant and their companion. That means teaching them how to process their emotions and think critically and empathetically and it means letting them find their own path, even if it's different than the one you wanted or imagined for them, but making it clear that if they need or want your comfort, your help, or just your ear that they will have it. You don't have to be perfect. No parent ever is, and it's important anyway for kids to learn in nontraumatic ways that adults make mistakes too and that's okay as long as you take responsibility for that and strive to learn and grow because of your mistakes. Kids learn by watching and listening to the adults around them and the things they conclude from those early years of observation will stick with them the rest of their lives.

I know that that sounds scary. It probably should because deciding to raise a child should be the biggest decision you can make, and if it's not, you may not be taking it seriously enough.

I also know that this is hard. And I have the greatest respect for people who truly understand this and decide to raise a tiny person anyway.

I'm also not trying to discourage you from becoming a parent. You may not be ready now, but that doesn't mean you can't be later. I personally would love to be a mom some day not I know that I have a lot of personal growth and healing I need to take care of first, to say nothing of the stabilization of my financial and career status.

The real question is what can you do to be a better parent, guardian, or even trusted adult to someone else's child (a really important and valid role and choice in itself!) later?

First off, you need to do some hard core introspection to figure out what traits and behaviors you have that might exhibit that would interfere in your ability to be a good parent. Maybe you're still emotionally immature. Maybe you're struggling with uncontrolled mental illness, chronic illness, or addiction. Maybe you've internalized some toxic ideas. Maybe you're still recovering from trauma or just now realizing that what you have even is trauma. None of these things makes you a bad person and none of them stops you from being capable to becoming a good parent. But, all of them can interfere with your ability to model healthy behaviors and coping skills to your child. Children learn through observation and, because their brains need the world to make sense and be predictable, they're going to interpret everytime you seem upset or lose your cool as being their fault. Young children aren't capable of going "mom is upset and snapped over something relatively trivial, she must be having a bad day/be tired/etc" because that's an interpretation of the world that is outside their control. Instead, they're going to go "I did x and mom got mad at me, it's my fault so I better not do x again" and that's a really harmful mindset that can contribute to self-worth issues and other mental illnesses like anxiety, especially if this happens long-term (for the record, you're going to make mistakes and you're going to snap over stupid things because being a grown-up is hard, so when you inevitably make this mistake it's important to be honest and upfront with your child about what happened, why, how it's not their fault, and you have to genuinely apologize for it, turning your mistake into a chance to model good adult behavior).

It's important to take care of yourself and let yourself grow and heal before bringing a kid into the mix because 1. you'll be a better parent if you start out in a better place emotionally and mentally, and 2. because you deserve the chance to be healthy and happy and it's much harder to address the things that are interfering with that when your also trying to juggle the additional emotional/mental demands of raising a child.

Additionally, I definitely recommend making sure you and anyone else taking a primary caretaker role in your child's life is in a stable financial and that the relationship between you and any other caretakers is stable and amicable regardless of what kind of relationship it is. The financial aspect is important because kids are expensive as hell (both the having/acquiring and the raising) and you want to be able to provide then with the best possible shot at life.

This isn't about me but I feel like the example will be helpful. We weren't poverty level growing up, but even as a child it was clear to me that we could be. My parents were 20 year old newlyweds when they got pregnant. My dad had been set up to inherit a position in his father and grandfather's construction company and did not go to college because they thought he was guaranteed a steady job. My mom was paying for a college education she couldn't afford because no one had ever explained how to get financial aid and scholarships to her and her parents were too caught up in their own shit to be anything but relieved about getting to make her future my dad's problem. Then they got pregnant. They started building a house that took much longer to build then expected because that construction business dad was expecting to inherit went out of business because it turned out that a cousin had been embezzling and my great-grandmother wouldn't let them sue or press charges against family. Mom had to drop out of college to raise me because daycare costs as much as she makes at work and she no longer has the time or funds. They had a baby they weren't prepared to raise and my dad's new job had him working in the Texas heat all day before going and working on our house at night so that we could move out of my maternal grandfather's house now that he was getting divorced and couldn't afford it. My parents society never saw each other and they were constantly worried about money. Less than two years after I was born they accidentally got pregnant with my brother. He ended up with failure to thrive and (although he did eventually recover) it raked up a serious amount of debt in addition to my mom's student loans and the mortgage. Flash forward four more years and my dad falls through a roof at a construction site and permanently cripples his ankle. Cue a year of the only breadwinner in the household being unable to work, several surgeries and massive medical bills we can't pay. A year after that my mom has to have a historectomy because her fibroids are causing immense pain and then they find pre-cancerous cells. Another year after that she starts having unexplained siezures and signs of organ failure that will take years to diagnose as a rare autoimmune disorder that will leave her disabled and, again, rake up serious medical debt. I found out in college that it came to the point that we almost lost the house but as a kid I still always knew we were struggling. And that fucks with a kid's head. There were reasons I didn't tell my parents that something was wrong for a week after I sprained my wrist when I was 10 and it wasn't just because I didn't want to sound like I was asking for attention (a phobia that also comes from having emotionally immature parents). I pushed myself ridiculously hard in school because I knew I couldn't expect any help paying for college from my parents. I still feel incredibly guilty anytime I spend more than 20 dollars even though it's my money and I need groceries or textbooks or gas or whatever. A lot of these issues would have been financially difficult and unpredictable, but had my parents been in a more stable position when they got married and started having kids, it would have been much easier to weather the storms.

Additionally, money is the main thing couples fight about, so if you can take that off the table as a significant concern before bringing kids into the mix, please do. Maslow's hierarchy of needs states that you can't address higher order concerns like personal growth of your worried about where your next meal is coming from and that goes for your children as well.

Again, I'm not trying to shame people for their financial difficulties. Most of us are playing at a game we were never intended to win and I get that not all children are planned. But, your good intentions unfortunately will not put food on the table or pay the rent and your children will have a lot less stress in their lives if you are able to make sure that things are as stable as possible before you bring them into it.

The same goes for your relationship with fellow caretakers. Don't try to have kids to save your relationship. Don't ever make your children feel like your relationship is in anyway their responsibility. Again, they need their world to make sense and if you're fighting they're probably going to assume it's somehow their fault. Don't do that to them.

Anyway, this rant turned out a lot longer than I intended but I think I needed to say it. In summary, raising children is not about you but your going to make it about you unless you take care of your own shit first. Children don't ask to be born. If you're not ready for that responsibility, either don't have kids or put in the work so that you will be. If you already have kids, and don't have your shit together, there's still time but it's going to be harder and you might have to do some damage control from any traumas you may have already inflicted on your child, regardless of your intentions. If that's the case, you have a responsibility to get your kid the help they need and do everything in your power to avoid further harm. You're the adult in this situation, and if you're going to be a parent, you need to act like it.

#parenting #emotionally immature parents #childhood trauma #parenting advice #personal rant #personal growth #original post

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vias-words · 5 years ago

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Can we get directors commentary on forty years?

Ooh, I’m excited to talk about this one! It’s definitely one of my favorite fics I’ve written. I was up way past the time I normally go to sleep to write this because once I got on a roll with it, I didn’t want to stop! I have SO much to talk about so buckle up and let’s get started :)

Spoiler warning! I will be putting the commentary below the cut since it will give away the whole plot. But here is the link if anyone wants to read along!

Forty Years by Vias_words on AO3

The idea came to me when I was thinking about the quote "Still, if I had to choose a companion to be at the return of eternal darkness with, I'd choose you." I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of act 4 compared to the other acts. I think it’s got a little too much plot convenience in it which always irked me a bit as a writer. I totally understand why it’s done this way because it’s made for the stage and works on the stage (Forty Years definitely would not) but on paper I wasn’t thrilled. But, it does have some lovely quotes. So I started wondering about alternatives to act 4, specifically focusing on the Scorpius line about being companions and Albus’ line right before it: "As pleasurable as it will be to hide in a hole with you for the next forty years...”

What if Albus and Scorpius couldn’t find a way to send a message to Harry and Ginny? What if they were well and truly stuck in the past?

I could have taken this in the dark route that was intended by “the return of eternal darkness” but that would require the whole wizarding history to be changed and that was a little too ambitious. Plus, I really wanted to focus on the relationship between Albus and Scorpius over the years, specifically as “companions” both trapped in this weird world where the only other person they can really trust to understand their situation is each other. So I decided to go on a more domestic route with a mix of fluff and angst, which still required Delphi to be defeated.

I didn’t want Albus and Scorpius to kill her: they’re far too young and innocent to have to go through that. Not to mention, they don’t have their wands. So I needed a magicless alternative way for them to defeat her. Bathilda was specifically mentioned in the play and I thought that was a perfect opportunity for them to go to her to seek help. I also loved the idea of this little old lady straight-up murking Delphi for these two strange boys from the future. I think it would be hard to convince her at first because she’s a very smart witch and this sounds entirely crazy but I think seeing Albus and making the connection to James and Lily (she lived right next door and went to Harry’s first birthday party!) could convince her. Plus it was a nice call back to everyone comparing Harry to his parents. And Albus is able to accept the fact that he looks so much like his father and be able to use it for good for once, rather than hating the attention it brought him. We love a bit of sneaky character development!

After the threat of Delphi is gone, it really hits the boys that they are trapped in time. As far as they know, there is no other time tuner and there’s no way for their parents to know where they are. There would definitely be a long period of mourning before they could adjust which is why I thought that living with Bathilda would be the best option. No one else can know about their situation and I think she’d be very caring to the boys as if they were her own grandsons. But she’d eventually want them to go back to Hogwarts for a bit of a normal childhood and so they could learn more magic. I liked the idea of their new lives at Hogwarts feeling flipped from how it was back in their timeline. No one knows who they are so they aren’t bullied and are able to make more friends. It’s a small but impactful benefit in their new lives but still takes a toll on them because they can’t truly be themselves--they are Syrus and Alaric and have to stick to some weird made-up backstory.

From what they know about time travel as laid out by the place (not so much the rules in POA), one little misstep, like talking to Hermione at the first task or embarrassing Cedric, can make a huge impact on the future. They don’t want that to happen again. If they make too much of an impact on someone else’s life or in the world, they risk changing history for even which, at worst, could lead to their parent's lives being affected or to Albus or Scorpius not being born at all. Their goal is just to make it through life to get back to their parents in 2020 so they can explain what happened. They aren’t really able to see themselves having a normal life or future as much as they might want it.

That doesn’t stop them from trying, of course. Scorpius definitely wants to when he starts dating Elaine. Albus disapproves of this from the start. He justifies his feelings by saying it’s just because of the timeline but it’s actually rooted his feelings for Scorpius. He’d jealous that someone else--who, by all means technically shouldn’t know they exist--is getting the attention that he wants.

The relationship and the general stress on the boys would definitely cause them to lash out at each other eventually. We see this at the train station. But even when they fight, they always come back around because, in the end, they are bound by their experiences. They are the only people they can be themselves around and are closer than anyone else. Their secrecy eventually leads to Elaine breaking up with Scorpius. He can’t open up to her, or introduce her to his family, and is obviously hiding something. I think Scorpius knew their breakup was inevitable, but it was nice to pretend to have a normal life for once and Elaine was that escape he needed.

Albus is the opposite in a way, he seeks comfort from what he knows about his old life--thinking about reuniting with his family, looking back on his Hogwarts experience in his own timeline, and, of course, leaning of Scorpius for support. On the other hand, Scorpius tries to fit in more in his new life by making friends and being with Elaine--thinking of his own timeline I think upsets him more because he’s reminded that his father is all alone. But with their two viewpoints, they balance each other out. It switches sometimes, which is only natural, but there is always one of them acting as the voice of reason which is so desperately needed.

That being said, their future is still so unclear to them that it’s hard to judge just what is reasonable and what is the correct way to go about things--this has never really happened before and it’s not like they can get advice from anything. One line that sticks out to me from chapter 8 is Albus saying, "I don't know what's best anymore. No one does." Being confused and having their pent up mixed feelings about the world is such a huge thing in their lives. So when Scorpius kisses Albus, he immediately thinks it’s a mistake. We find out later why--he’s afraid that Albus will break up with him and he’ll be alone for real. But in the moment, he’s confused--is this the best choice or has he just messed everything up? He can’t lose Albus in the way he lost Elaine. Not to mention the different views in the 80′s (I considered mentioning the AIDs crisis but that seemed a bit too heavy and I wasn’t confident that I could do it justice, but it is an important thing to remember about this time).

As always Albus and Scorpius, can’t stay mad for long and still go on to live together after Hogwarts. I purposely put in a time gap, in between which Albus would likely hold some resentment towards that night when he got so close to having Scorpius share his feelings. But he can’t lose his best friend so they stay together with the lingering awkwardness between them. During that time, going to the muggle world seemed like the best option as they would be much less likely to affect anything in their parent's lives as they would be in the wizarding world. I wanted to give them jobs that they’d like but would also not make a huge impact on time. In the story, they don’t know about the other time turner but I wanted to make sure that once their parents are able to go back and rescue them, very few lives would be majorly impacted after the loss of “Syrus” and “Alaric” (ex. if Scorpius became a healer and helped cure people, if he was erased from the timeline, those people might end up never being helped). Librarian works for geeky Scorpius and bartender works for my headcanon of Albus being good at potions. During this time we get a peek at domestic Scorbus, their pining, and Albus’ jealousy when Scorpius gets attention from women. Although Scorpius wouldn’t date anyone because of the timeline (and his crush on Albus), the fact that he has the potential to date makes Albus upset because he doesn’t think he has the same chances. He blames it on the time they live in but really, I’m sure he could find a man, but he’s too stuck on his feelings for Scorpius to ever try.

For 1994, I opened with Albus describing himself as looking too much like his father. I think that would be something he struggles with because it reminds him of home and how long it’s been since he’s actually seen his father--but yet he still sees him every time he passes a mirror. (This drawing of adult Albus by Marisdrawings was stuck my head writing this)I took more time to describe how Albus looks/dresses here because I like to think the 90s would be his favorite decade in terms of style. I also wanted to show how he’s changed from an angsty insecure wizard to being much more confident in himself as an adult living as a muggle. But he’s still got that edge to him which I think never truly fades. And Scorpius loves that. I believe that he sees Albus as having more confidence that him--feeling more comfortable with his life and sexuality than Scorpius does. And that’s very attractive to him because it’s what he wants most in life--confidence and stability. It’s what they’ve both need and find in each other. But when Scorpius kisses him again he is reminded of all his insecurities and fears, especially when Albus gets angry again. Albus doesn’t want a repeat of last time and Scorpius thinks that, by acting on his feelings, Albus will eventually leave him. I just loved this chapter so much because this is where the floodgates finally break open and everything that’s been pent up finally spills out. They do love each other and always have and finally, they can accept it and come together.

I knew I wanted to write a chapter in 1998 because that’s a huge year in wizarding history, especially for their parents. That whole decade, they’ve been keeping up with the news, knowing their parents are out there living the lives they grew up hearing about. It would be a struggle, especially for Albus, to stay disconnected from that. He wishes he could witness more of his father’s life to understand him better or to give him some help--or just to see his family again. It’s tempting but they still have 20 years to go until they can see them again. There’s no alternative to the path they chose to take now--it’s just a waiting game.

But, as much as Albus might wish he could be back in his own timeline, there’s so much he’s thankful for in his new life. He’s with Scorpius, living a life on his own, and he could never regret that. But he also sees the mistakes he made as a child and realizes he can’t just call up his father an apologize for their arguments and tell him he always loved him--he’s matured a lot since his father last saw him. There’s both good and bad in their lives and he just has to accept that and find happiness in what he has.

Fast forward to 2007. Scorpius is a plant dad, a dog dad, and now wants to be a real dad. He’s so caring and just wants to care for something else, especially as an adult seeing other people his age with kids. He wants that for him and Albus too--to have that bit of normalcy in their relationship and to give a child the love he’d lost after he got stuck in time. There is a possibility that they could have adopted a kid since, in their minds, they would never get their old lives back (and a muggle child wouldn’t affect his father’s life much if at all), buuuut as the writer, I knew what the ending would be. I couldn’t have a child lose their fathers when the timeline was repaired. If they had a kid, they never would have decided to be rescued back in 1981. The life of their child would matter more than fixing their own.

Going off of that, I remember someone commented about them considering having children before marriage which brings us to the proposal in 2014. As out of order as it may have seemed, gay marriage wasn’t legal until 2014 and the time they would most likely have kids would be between their 30s and 40s. By 2014, they are almost 50 and have basically already been husbands for years now--just not legally. If anything, the proposal is more of a gesture, since their relationship has already been as close as a married couple--their soulmates, together for life whether the government recognizes that or not. But I loved the idea of them going back to Godric’s Hollow since it’s their childhood home. A lot of bad happened there but a lot of good did too. It was the start of their story and this is their way of associating one of their happiest memories in a place that also contained their worst. Reclaiming it in a way, I guess.

And the lights in this scene--from the streetlamps to the colorful glow of the stained glass--also have meaning. Albus calls Scorpius his light, referencing back to the “eternal darkness” and, one of my favorite lines “light in the darkness.” It really emphasizes how they found the good, especially in each other, in the darkness of their lives.

Finally, 2020...there’s a lot to unpack here but this is already such a long post that I will try to keep it short. This day would be so surreal to them--they’ve waited so long and pictured the day they could finally reunite with their families. But they also know that their understanding of the events would be completely different than their parents, who have only been missing their children for a few hours not years. In fact, Albus and Scorpius are more mature than their parents which is weird to think about--they are older and have lived a whole crazy life that their parents would never be able to fully understand. And their parents almost don’t even recognize them (I mean, if your 14-year-old son showed up on your doorstep suddenly 40 years older, would you?!). But, calling back to the first chapter, it’s Albus’ eyes that causes Ginny to be the first to accept their story.

I like that they are able to joke about the situation a bit because it shows how they’ve accepted what became of their life. Sure, it’s a real shock to their parents but Albus and Scorpius have spent more time as Alaric and Syrus than they ever did as themselves in their own timeline. This became their new normal, despite all the years they wanted to reject the truth of the matter.

Albus and Scorpius would have told them about their whole lives if there hadn’t been the second time turner. But it became more special, something to keep between them, once it was accepted that they would be rescued. They’d accepted their lives, yes, but they knew it wasn’t the life they were meant to live. They were happy with it enough to give it up--give them the chance to live again with their families, with a better chance of happiness and less hardship. And for their parents--who would miss out on the entire lives of their children if they hadn’t gone back.

Harry, Ginny, and Draco would always remember the visit from the old Scorpius and Albus, so it was better that they didn’t know the whole of what took place in those 40 years--once they were rescued, that whole timeline would be extinct anyway. They wanted their families to have very little knowledge of what happened to them because it would leave them with little expectations of the boys--free to experience life alongside them with no preconceived notions or understandings of what might become of them. To see how time would play out on its own, with no influence from alternate versions of themselves.

They are satisfied with what they have and accepted that this is where their current lives would effectively end, but they are willing to give that up for the prospect of an even better future. Deep down, I’m sure that they know they will be together no matter the timeline. Which is why only Ginny is told that (or, rather figures out that) they are married--Albus and Scorpius want to be able to get together and come out on their own without their parents already expecting them to be together and out of all the parents--that’s such a big and important moment for them that they want their younger selves to experience naturally. I think Ginny would be the best at keeping that secret.

The scene when they are finally left alone, facing their pending fate was one I had in my head from the very start--what I’d originally written down when I came up with the idea. As I said, it’s bittersweet. But they are together, and that’s all that matters to them because they know that together they can face any challenge. In a way, it’s not Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy who are “dying”--it’s Alaric and Syrus Bagshot (and yes, Albus definitely took the name Bagshot when they got married to honor Bathilda.) So when they fade out of existence, they are satisfied with what they have and are looking forward to what their next life will bring--their real life. This is the eternal darkness they knew they’d have to face, it’s just forty years later than they expected. But this time, they are ready for it because the darkness isn’t all that bad.

Do I want to cry rereading this? Maybe...But I love it just the same.

And I almost left it there and made it an open ending. But I’m not that evil and thought there should be some closure, so I brought it full circle back to 1981. Albus is lamenting about the situation just long enough to feel an extreme amount of joy and relief when his parents show up. It will still be a lesson and experience they will never forget, but it’s far less traumatizing than what they went through in the other timeline. And I don’t think anyone will tell them about what happened until they are much older--perhaps Ginny will mention it shortly after their wedding day once everything comes together as they should.

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WOW that was a whole ass essay, I’m sorry to just unload that on you when you probably only wanted something half this size!! I just really feel passionate about this story and could go on about it forever so I apologize for this rambling mess. I feel like an English teacher, picking out all the meaning and symbolism I didn’t even realize I’d written but there’s just so much that can be said. Anywayyysss hopefully I didn’t bore you to sleep, I just love my boys sm...

That concludes my TED talk. Thank you for this ask ❤

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the-bounce-back · 5 years ago

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THE CONFIDENCE CHRONICLES PART III - CONFIDENCE IN STARTING OVER

This is post 3/5 of my “Confidence Chronicles” series, in which I discuss the mindsets, actions and thought processes I’ve applied to build/rebuild my confidence in different aspects of my life. The goal of these 5 posts is for you readers to be able to apply relevant points to your own insecurities in order to combat them, and hopefully aid in building your own confidence over time.

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I know… this is insanely overdue. But this time I have a valid reason, I promise.

The purpose of this part of the Confidence™ series was (and still is) to discuss and learn how to eliminate feelings of insecurity, fear, anxiety and situational depression that can arise from trying to pattern a major life change. Namely, those changes that you just know are going to reshape your whole future from the moment it’s set in motion, and completely tear you out of your comfort zone.

Believe it or not, when I started planning this series what feels like eons ago (April? May? Who even knows anymore), I had an extensive plan about how I was going to discuss how I found the confidence to completely start over - twice - and how much it has made me feel better about myself in all aspects of my life for overcoming it all. I was so pleased with myself in regards to how I was going to tie in this post to my post about overcoming my crippling anxiety that came with moving back to London earlier this year (read it here anyways, it’s good stuff), and I had even almost finished the post.

Ok, that’s a lie. But I had come a little more than half way.

However, I was forced to delete all my delightful anecdotes and clever little reasonings about my growth from forcing myself to move back to the UK and eventually back to London to be happy (I don’t count moving to Sweden or Nottingham as sTaRtInG oVeR because I didn’t choose it for myself… all tea/shade/offense intended), because something very unexpected ended up happening.

Basically, the job that I moved to London for - my *~dReAm jOb~* - ended up not being at all what I wanted. In fact, it ended up putting me in a much worse place mentally. I could go into detail about what exactly happened at that office but it’s honestly not worth the energy - I recently quit on the spot, packed my load and went home the same day, and since then, I’ve been unemployed.

So - what does this have to do with this post?

After having some time to regroup and pattern my emotional and mental adjustment to this new situation, I realised that a lot of the coping mechanisms I used to get through other life-changing predicaments in the past were also applicable to a major life change that didn’t necessarily involve the stress and drama of relocating to another country or city. In addition to this, I also realised that the more I put myself in not so ideal situations - such as unemployment - the better I get at handling myself in these situations, and the more able I am to stay calm and collected while I’m trying to figure out my next step. In other words - it would have been wrong to submit this post about navigating a large change in my life, all while excluding a currently ongoing major life change… if that makes any sense at all.

Anyway - all you need to know is that this post will discuss how to find the confidence, mental resilience and energy to go through a complicated life change, eliminating the fear of failure during the whole project and understanding that while everything might not go to plan, you will be okay at the end of the process. I will draw examples from my two big moves, as well as my ongoing situation to illustrate my points.

So, without further ado, if you want to know how I’ve been able to confidently navigate a few of the hardest times of my short life with (most of) my sanity intact, do keep on reading.

1. Identify how badly you want to/need to make a major change in terms of your mental health.

Don’t get me wrong, I’d never downplay someone else's mental and emotional turmoil… but if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably have a mini meltdown at least once a week over something extremely minor, in which you dramatically declare to yourself that you are leaving and never coming back. Last time this happened, I was pissed off because McDonald’s hadn’t given me any sauces for my nuggets.

A tragedy? No (yes).

A reason to uproot my whole life and move to Indonesia? Depends on how you see it… but I’m going to go with no.

The point I’m trying to make is that you need to evaluate your current situation in depth, assess what about it is making you feel like a major change is needed, and see if there are any less drastic solutions that can help you through that rough patch.

In my case, even after analysing the situations in hindsight, I genuinely believe that there was no other option for me in either of the cases. I’ve touched upon how I never really felt at home or like I belonged in Sweden; therefore, moving back to the UK for uni and meeting new people that were more on my wavelength ended up being a massive boost for my self-confidence and sense of belonging. In terms of moving from Nottingham to London, I had a massive back-and-forth with myself if it was really necessary; I considered changing jobs and moving further away from areas in the city that constantly reminded me of my ex, but in the end, I decided that cutting Nottingham out of my life altogether was the only way I could allow myself to heal. Finally, with my former job, I considered firming all the stress until I’d either a) pass the one year mark so it’d look better on my cv when I quit, or b) tough it out until I got promoted and would get a massive pay rise so that the stress would be worth it. Needless to say, I opted for neither.

The common denominator here is that I thoroughly evaluated the situations in terms of the toll they were taking on me, and made a decision based on that. I’m a firm believer that once you prioritise your mental wellbeing over everything else - and do all in your power to keep your mental peace - self-assurance will inevitably follow, simply because knowing what you will or will not put up with is the first step to becoming more confident.

2. Eliminate fear.

Please don’t get me wrong here. It is one million percent normal to fear the unknown and hesitating to venture out of your comfort zone. We crave stability, comfort and familiarity to have a calm and peaceful life. But trust me on this - forcing yourself to ignore the alarm bells in your head and resisting the temptation to not go through with the change will be the best thing you’ve ever done.

It’s definitely no secret that there are so many of us out there that hate our strict routines, go to a job we hate every day, and are made to feel worse by our peers who seem to be having the time of their lives on social media (spoiler: they probably aren’t). However, we choose the dullness and boredom over making a change, because we’re afraid of instability and uncertainty in life. I even used to be like that, because I got told at a young age that education and career stability are two of the most important things in life, and that venturing away from them will severely damage my prospects for my future career.

This is true, to a certain degree - but I decided that my own happiness needed to start taking priority over my fear of being unstable. In other words, I decided that my own well-being is and always will be my main priority in life, regardless of the situation.

Once you make that commitment to yourself - and really mean it - I promise that you will discover confidence you probably didn’t even realise you had. When you look at your life and realise that you’re not being the happiest version of yourself, you’ll want to do everything within your power to change this - regardless of how scared you are.

In my case, this was especially true when I was working in Nottingham and first started considering moving to London. I was absolutely terrified that I was going to be moving to one of the most expensive cities in the world without a 100% guarantee that I would be financially stable, and for a long time my fear of both financial and emotional uncertainty made me try my best to see the positives with my current situation, and to find an excuse to play it safe.

However, as you can probably imagine, I got tired of lying to myself and pretending to be content with my situation. You can only run away for your feelings for so long, and in the end me forcing myself to stay somewhere where I was no longer happy just made me even more emotionally drained. In other words, the fear ended up inflicting more pain and stress than actually getting my sh*t together and organising the move when I first had the idea to leave the city behind.

I want you to remember that part. Letting yourself stay in a distressing situation because of fear will only stagnate and depress you in the long run. I really, really hope that this testimony gives you the kick up the arse that you need to take control of your future and emotional state.

Another approach to fear is to not eliminate it, but to embrace it. This, in the sense that my fear of living with regrets is infinitely larger than my fear of living in uncertainty. The thought of making a “safe” decision now, and then 10 years down the line finding myself obsessing over loads of different “what if…?” scenarios that could’ve happened if I had just been brave enough, makes me incredibly anxious. In this case, I welcome the fear, because it takes on the role of a motivator.

The bottom line is that you (most likely) won’t die from living in uncertainty for a while. However, you have to develop the confidence that everything will turn out fine in the end. Which brings me to my final point…

3. Understand that although things may not go to plan, life has a way of figuring itself out.

If you by any chance are already considering going through the process of starting over (if so, kudos!) and have devised an immaculately detailed plan on how to succeed, I’m here to tell you to rip it out of your notebook, scrunch it up, and slam dunk it right in the bin. Honestly. You could have the whole process planned down to the minute, and still, something will go wrong. And that’s okay.

I used to be an extreme control freak that would immediately feel anxious when I didn’t know what was going to happen, and if things didn’t work out as I had envisioned it in my head I’d go into full meltdown mode. However, the more I make these major life changes, the more I understand that part of the beauty of it is letting things work out as they should, at the exact right time that they should.

Allowing things to fall into place naturally - as opposed to trying to force the result that you want - empowers you to get used to adapting to difficult situations that may arise. Learning to adapt is heavily built on accumulated experience over time from other difficult situations. Having this experience with a variety of differing predicaments allows you to be able to proceed with confidence that everything will turn out okay no matter what happens - and having the fact that everything will be fine in the back of your mind can give your anxiety and overthinking brain a well deserved break. Furthermore, allowing your brain to have this chance to relax gives you even more confidence.

You see how all factors come full circle? This is because we are not meant to try to manipulate the process. Attempting to control an unpredictable situation is what leads to stress and anxiety in the first place, and - at least in my case - when efforts to force a certain result end up failing, it takes even more of a toll on your confidence levels. I start obsessing over the how/why/where/when I went wrong, just bringing negative energy into my own life for no reason - trying to justify it by telling myself that I’m trying to LeArN fOr NeXt TiMe. There is a huge difference between analysing a mistake and criticising yourself with hurtful and negative thoughts - the latter being a massive killer of confidence.

Instead, allowing things to flow naturally and observing pain points during the process while keeping a calm and collected mind makes you more resilient to recurring problems - which in turn gives you confidence to take a leap of faith when needed.

With these three points in mind, along with a genuine drive to succeed, I can guarantee that pushing yourself to start over won’t feel as terrifying and daunting. Once you’ve established why you need to make a major change in your life, what needs to be done to achieve it and have a clear vision of how this project is going to benefit your mental health (or whatever aspect of your life that you want to make a change for), pushing through the hard times of starting on a completely clean slate will be infinitely easier.

That’s right - it is going to be maddeningly hard at times. There will be times where you will want to give up, and try to convince yourself that your current situation isn’t so bad, after all - because let’s face it, these kinds of changes are hard work. However, as the cliché goes - nothing worth having comes easy, and that also applies to your peace of mind and happiness. I genuinely hope that anyone reading this that is considering starting over completely - whether that entails moving jobs, cities, or even countries - can use this post as a reference point, and as a reminder that everything will turn out just fine.

Put it this way - if I can navigate two major moves and two major career changes while trying to pattern my then near crippling anxiety, then I have no doubts whatsoever that you can find the confidence and resilience to make whatever changes you need to make to improve your mental health.

Love,

Liv

#selfhelp #Empowerment #confidence

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hollywoodjuliorivas · 8 years ago

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ILLUSTRATION: CHAD CROWE By Peggy Noonan May 18, 2017 7:11 p.m. ET 809 COMMENTS This will be unpleasantly earnest, but having witnessed the atmospherics the past 10 days it’s what I think needs saying: Everyone, get serious. Democracy is not your plaything. This is not a game. Trump Has Been Lucky in His Enemies Cursing pols, screeching students and intolerant abortion advocates have become the face of the left. CLICK TO READ STORY Republicans, Learn the Limits of Loyalty Make clear you want to work with Trump on policy but don’t defend his bad behavior. CLICK TO READ STORY Does Steve Bannon Have Something to Offer? In 2014 the beleaguered White House aide raised important moral questions about today’s capitalism. CLICK TO READ STORY ADVERTISEMENT What’s Become of the American Dream? Part of the problem is definitional. It isn’t just about houses, cars and material prosperity. CLICK TO READ STORY Mistakes, He’s Made a Few Too Many Crisis will inevitably strike, so America needs stability and strength. Will Trump be ready? CLICK TO READ STORY High Anxiety Over Health-Care Reform ObamaCare proved to be a catastrophic victory. The Republican plan had the makings of another one. CLICK TO READ STORY ADVERTISEMENT MORE BY PEGGY NOONAN The president of the United States has produced a building crisis that is unprecedented in our history. The question, at bottom, is whether Donald Trump has demonstrated, in his first four months, that he is unfit for the presidency—wholly unsuited in terms of judgment, knowledge, mental capacity, personal stability. That epic question is then broken down into discrete and specific questions: Did he improperly attempt to interfere with an FBI criminal investigation, did his presidential campaign collude with a foreign government, etc. LONDON: TRUMP, BREXIT AND THE RISE OF THE UNPROTECTED, WITH PEGGY NOONAN Join the WSJ’s 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner Peggy Noonan and EMEA editor Thorold Barker for a frank and probing discussion about the inner workings of U.S. politics past and present, Thursday, June 22. But the epic question underlies all. It couldn’t be more consequential and will take time to resolve. The sheer gravity of the drama will demand the best from all of us. Are we up to it? Mr. Trump’s longtime foes, especially Democrats and progressives, are in the throes of a kind of obsessive delight. Every new blunder, every suggestion of an illegality, gives them pleasure. “He’ll be gone by autumn.” But he was duly and legally elected by tens of millions of Americans who had legitimate reasons to support him, who knew they were throwing the long ball, and who, polls suggest, continue to support him. They believe the press is trying to kill him. “He’s new, not a politician, give him a chance.” What would it do to them, what would it say to them, to have him brusquely removed by his enemies after so little time? Would it tell them democracy is a con, the swamp always wins, you nobodies can make your little choices but we’re in control? What will that do to their faith in our institutions, in democracy itself? These are wrenching questions. But if Mr. Trump is truly unfit—if he has demonstrated already, so quickly, that he cannot competently perform the role, and that his drama will only get more dangerous and chaotic, how much time should pass to let him prove it? And how dangerous will the proving get? Again, wrenching questions. So this is no time for blood lust and delight. Because democracy is not your plaything. The president’s staffers seem to spend most of their time on the phone, leaking and seeking advantage, trying not to be named in the next White House Shake-Up story. A reliable anonymous source who gives good quote will be protected—for a while. The president spends his time tweeting his inane, bizarre messages—he’s the victim of a “witch hunt”—from his bed, with his iPad. And giving speeches, as he did this week at the Coast Guard Academy: “No politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.” Actually Lincoln got secession, civil war and a daily pounding from an abolitionist press that thought he didn’t go far enough and moderates who slammed his brutalist pursuit of victory. Then someone shot him in the head. So he had his challenges. Journalists on fire with the great story of their lives—the most bizarre presidency in U.S. history and the breaking news of its daily missteps—cheer when their scoop that could bring down a president gets more hits then the previous record holder, the scoop that could bring down the candidate. Stop leaking, tweeting, cheering. Democracy is not your plaything. There’s a sense nobody’s in charge, that there’s no power center that’s holding, that in Washington they’re all randomly slamming into each other. Which is not good in a crisis. For Capitol Hill Democrats the crisis appears to be primarily a chance to showboat. Republicans are evolving, some starting to use the word “unfit” and some, as a congressman told me, “talking like they’re in a shelter for abused women. ‘He didn’t mean to throw me down the stairs.’ ‘He promised not to punch me again.’ ” We’re chasing so many rabbits, we can’t keep track—Comey, FBI, memoranda; Russia, Flynn, the Trump campaign; Lavrov, indiscretions with intelligence. It’s become a blur. But there’s an emerging sense of tragedy, isn’t there? Crucially needed reforms in taxing, regulation and infrastructure—changes the country needs!—are thwarted, all momentum killed. Markets are nervous. The world sees the U.S. political system once again as a circus. Once the circus comes to town, it consumes everything, absorbs all energy. I asked the ambassador to the U.S. from one of our greatest allies: “What does Europe say now when America leaves the room?” You’re still great, he said, but “we think you’re having a nervous breakdown.” It is absurd to think the president can solve his problems by firing his staff. They are not the problem. He is the problem. They’re not the A-Team, they’re not the counselors you’d want, experienced and wise. They’re the island of misfit toys. But they could function adequately if he could lead adequately. For months he’s told friends he’s about to make big changes, and doesn’t. Why? Maybe because talented people on the outside don’t want to enter a poisonous staff environment just for the joy of committing career suicide. So he’s stuck, surrounded by people who increasingly resent him, who fear his unpredictably and pique and will surely one day begin to speak on the record. A mystery: Why is the president never careful? He doesn’t act as if he’s picking his way through a minefield every day, which he is. He acts like he’s gamboling through safe terrain. Thus he indulges himself with strange claims, statements, tweets. He comports himself as if he has a buffer of deep support. He doesn’t. Nationally his approval numbers are in the mid to high 30s. His position is not secure. And yet he gambols on, both paranoid and oblivious. History is going to judge us by how we comported ourselves in this murky time. It will see who cared first for the country and who didn’t, who kept his head and did not, who remained true and calm and played it straight. Now there will be a special prosecutor. In the short term this buys the White House time. Here’s an idea. It would be good if top Hill Republicans went en masse to the president and said: “Stop it. Clean up your act. Shut your mouth. Do your job. Stop tweeting. Stop seething. Stop wasting time. You lost the thread and don’t even know what you were elected to do anymore. Get a grip. Grow up and look at the terrain, see it for what it is. We have limited time. Every day you undercut yourself, you undercut us. More important, you keep from happening the good policy things we could have done together. If you don’t grow up fast, you’ll wind up abandoned and alone. Act like a president or leave the presidency.” Could it help? For a minute. But it would be constructive—not just carping, leaking, posing, cheering and tweeting but actually trying to lead. The president needs to be told: Democracy is not your plaything.

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khalilhumam · 5 years ago

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To Bolster Global Health Security, What About IMF Gold?

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/to-bolster-global-health-security-what-about-imf-gold/

To Bolster Global Health Security, What About IMF Gold?

The world’s developing countries have a desperate need for increased international assistance to deal with the coronavirus and its frightening economic fallout. In the 70 poorest, low-income countries, mostly in Africa, almost a million people are facing a daily battle just to stave off hunger, and millions more are at acute risk of falling into extreme poverty, all for no fault of their own or even of their own governments. So there are immediate and compelling calls (UN, IMF, G20, Oxfam) for trillions of dollars of additional economic support to poor countries for the duration of the recessionary effect of the pandemic. But today the world should be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. COVID-19 is a stunning example of the failure of what public health experts call adequate “preparedness” for the control and prevention of easily transmitted infectious disease. This is the moment for an international initiative to lock in sustained, long-term investment in global health security. Scientists agree the likelihood and frequency of viruses jumping from animals to humans is growing. Encroachment of humans on the habitat of wild animals, in effect the de-wilding of the earth we share, combined with continuing climate change and population growth, make what we think of as a rare event more likely to happen more often. Pandemics are a global public bad; their prevention is a global public good. Every country has an interest in every other country having a strong Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with an effective and open system of disease surveillance and a commitment to rules of the game on disclosure and sharing of vital information about new viruses and their spread. Rich and large, powerful countries have an obvious interest in maintaining funding of their own CDC systems to protect their own populations. On this score the USA lost its way in the last decade, with Congress failing to maintain adequate funding of the CDC and the Trump Administration failing to support strong, credible leadership. China’s failure was not funding but lack of immediate disclosure. The rest of the world can hope these two rivals have learned their lessons. In rich countries, the US example suggests that sustained and adequate domestic funding of disease surveillance and preparedness is politically a high hurdle. In poor countries, the situation is far worse: there is no real track to run on. The health sector as a whole is chronically underfunded, and within the health sector basic care to save lives inevitably takes precedence. Prevention programs, from vaccination (via Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance) to malaria net provision, depend heavily on international support. Inadequate staffing of disease control in Africa is revealing. Dr John Nkengasong, the head of the continent-wide Africa CDC said recently there are only 1,500 epidemiologists working in all of sub-Saharan Africa, with a population of more than 1 billion people; the USA, with one third the number of people, has almost three times as many employed epidemiologists. For poor countries, there is no substitute for international support in setting up adequate systems of disease surveillance. Poor countries represent the classic weak link-in-the-chain phenomenon; it was three of the smallest, poorest countries in the world—Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra Leone—where the Ebola virus thrived for far too long; only because of its much lower rate of transmission was the rest of the world saved from its worst ravages. Before Ebola was HIV/AIDS, which originated in non-human primates in Central and West Africa, and brought millions of premature deaths before it has become increasingly contained through treatment. A simple way to guarantee an adequate flow of long-run, sustained funding for health surveillance and disease control, and to prepare for the next novel virus in the world’s poor countries, is to create an endowment dedicated to that purpose. A $10 billion endowment could generate income of $500 million a year. That is a tiny amount relative to the estimated $4.5 billion gap in global preparedness funding according to a 2017 high-level commission report, and tinier still compared to the $130 billion donors spend on total development aid each year. But it is sufficient to create critical momentum for sustained international attention to the neglected infrastructure of pandemic prevention in the poorest countries. The IMF owns about 90 million ounces of gold that at market value today is worth about $150 billion. The gold can be called “functionless” for the IMF. It does not generate interest or investment income and it does not constitute collateral against which the IMF could borrow. Its only apparent purpose is to add to the reassurance of the Central Bankers of member countries that their funds are safe with the IMF, or—put another way—to help central bankers sleep well at night. In a 2002 book that one of us (Birdsall) wrote with John Williamson we proposed the IMF tap more of its gold (than it already had) to finance additional debt relief beyond the then-HIPC program for low-income countries. We referred to the needs of countries at that time as being “more compelling than safeguarding against the contingency of Central Bank rationality” (p. 96). (That felicitous phrase probably came from John, one of the world’s finest scholars on international economic policy, and especially on international monetary policy. We mention it here to add to the credibility of the point for unsure readers.) IMF country members have in fact agreed to tap the institution’s store of gold twice in the last 20 years. In both cases, the organization “mobilized” (an elaborate internal procedure to avoid outright gold sales, which might reduce the market price) a portion of its gold to set up purpose-specific trust funds. One, in 1999, raised almost $4 billion to finance its portion of the debt relief under the HIPC initiative. The second, in 2009-10, is more relevant for our purposes. In the preceding decade, the demand for IMF lending had fallen, reducing its income from operations. In response, the IMF turned again to its gold, this time to create an endowment-like fund. It The interest income from tapping $4 billion of its gold holdings now helps finance the IMF’s critical non-revenue producing work of financial surveillance. IMF programs of surveillance or monitoring of countries’ financial stability, including of countries’ debt management, provide not only technical help to individual countries but permit in the aggregate its ongoing assessment of risk to global financial stability. IMF surveillance is in short a global public good. Is it appropriate for the IMF to finance “health” security? Yes, because the lack of health security in an inter-connected world risks, as we now know well, contagion from one country to another. Like climate change, now thankfully firmly on the IMF’s agenda, a new virus knows no borders. When the IMF rescues a country from financial collapse and insolvency, it treats that country as a weak link in the chain of global stability, and may prescribe tough medicine (so-called “conditions”) on that country not only for the country’s sake but to prevent “contagion” of its malady to others. Of course the IMF does not have the technical capacity to prescribe the exact medicine for weak systems of disease control. There is a logic to its tapping its gold to address a source of global recession and instability. But the use of its global gold resource is in the purview of the World Bank and the WHO, for the World Bank to provide grants or loans for countries and groups of countries to invest in their own effective CDCs, and for WHO to have dedicated funding to strengthen its programs of advising and monitoring those systems, and its capabilities in collecting and curating data on how those systems are working. Lack of pandemic preparedness anywhere is a global public bad. Surely it is time for the IMF to tap its gold to lock in long-term financing of investments in global health security, and to organize with the World Bank and the WHO the optimal use of the resulting annual income in the weak chain countries of the world.

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lindyhunt · 7 years ago

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This Strategy Helped the HubSpot Blog Break a Year-Long Traffic Plateau

Presiding over a 10+ year old blog has a lot of unique challenges. There are some days when it seems like we've covered all there is to cover, and others when it doesn't seem like we can possibly keep up with changing trends and technologies fast enough.

From where you sit, it might seem like we've figured it all out -- we're one of the largest and most visited B2B blogs on the internet, we have a team of extremely talented and motivated staff writers, and we still manage to find new stories you want to read on a daily basis.

But growth doesn't just happen -- you have to work at it, and then keep working at it.

There isn't one magical strategy that will keep your blog growing forever. Your approach needs to constantly evolve to fit your changing needs as a property.

When I joined the HubSpot Blog team in 2016, our editorial strategy looked drastically different than it does now.

About once a month, our entire team would gather in a conference room for a brainstorm session. Armed with coffee and spreadsheets full of topic pitches, we'd spend a few hours going around the room, discussing what we wanted to cover for the month. At the end of the meeting, we'd leave with a solid list of articles to get started on.

For a long time, this process served our interests well. Our team developed a keen sense of what our audience wanted to read, and an extensive knowledge of what we'd already covered. But as our property grew and our audience expanded, it became clear that something was missing.

We could no longer manage our archives and identify topic gaps (areas we haven't yet covered on the blog) by gut feeling alone. Although we had some processes in place to pinpoint gaps and select pieces for historical optimization on an article-by-article basis, none of these methods were scalable or precise enough to keep up with what our readers were searching for -- and those issues starting catching up with us.

Rediscovering our momentum meant completely changing the way we plan, write, and optimize content. In March 2018, we started to see the impact of these changes: a new all-time traffic record across our three blogs -- Marketing, Sales, and Service -- and a renewed sense of purpose for the future. After months of traffic plateaus and uncertainty, we know where we're headed now -- and we're ready to share our new strategy with you.

The Blog Traffic Plateau of 2017

I won't sugarcoat it: 2017 was a tough year to be a blogger. Between 2014 and 2016, we'd become accustomed to seeing month-over-month traffic growth without regularly switching up our strategy. When 2017 hit, that line started to flatten out, and then -- even more alarming -- decline. And it wasn’t just us -- Unbounce, Wordstream, and WordPress all saw some form of traffic decrease in 2017.

Traffic to the HubSpot Blog 2014 - 2017

To say we were confused would be an understatement. Up to this point, we thought we'd perfected the formula for sustainable traffic growth: Traffic from existing posts in organic search + new traffic from new posts = steadily increasing traffic, forever … right?

It turns out it wasn't nearly that simple. Our usual protocol for fixing a slump -- changing publishing volume, leaning into more clickable topics, historically optimizing a handful of our heavy-hitting posts -- wasn't having a significant impact. This downward trend wasn't just a temporary dip in our numbers -- it was starting to look like the new normal.

So we did what any good content marketing team would do, and cracked open our reporting dashboards to take a deeper look. Unfortunately, what we discovered after many hours of analysis and many coffees consumed wasn't comforting. Much like the factors behind the mysterious decline of the bee population, there seemed to be multiple culprits converging to create a disaster.

We'd gone looking for a single root cause, and found several macro trends instead:

1. Social algorithms (and users) love native content.

Social media has long been a (relatively) dependable distribution channel for digital publishers, but recent algorithm changes across multiple social networks increasingly favor native content over links that take users off site. The shift makes perfect sense from the social networks' perspectives -- they want users to spend as much time as possible on their network -- but it hurts publishers who depend on social traffic.

2. Conversational search is constantly improving.

Google has gotten a lot better at understanding the intent behind a specific query, and as a result, they're able to serve up extremely relevant pieces of content to meet your exact query. This is great news if you regularly use a home assistant device, but bad news if you're a publisher looking to capture organic traffic from multiple long-tail keywords with a single, comprehensive piece of content.

Back in 2012, a post on "The Best Interview Questions" might have appeared as a top result in searches for "great interview questions," "interview questions to ask an interviewer," and "what questions to ask during an interview." But in 2018, those long-tail search queries are more likely to result in entirely different SERPs with entirely different top results. This means many of our "ultimate guides" started ranking for fewer long-tail keywords, resulting in organic traffic losses on some of our most highly-trafficked pieces.

3. Featured snippets and other on-page search features are taking a toll on CTR from SERPs.

You're probably familiar with Google's featured snippets: those short lists or paragraphs that appear at the top of a SERP and (usually) directly address your query. In addition to featured snippets, there are also a number of other on-page search features that push a piece of content ranking number one even further down your screen.

While these quick answers have certainly made the search experience faster for users, they're eating our organic traffic -- even on SERPs where we hold the number one organic result. People don't have any reason to click through to a blog post (even if it's ranking number one) if the answer they're seeking is already on the top of the SERP. As a result, fewer users are clicking on the number one organic result. Ahrefs found that on SERPs without a featured snippet, the top result received 26% of clicks. When a featured snippet appeared on the SERP, the top result received only 19.6% of clicks.

None of these were things we could fix with a band-aid solution. These shifts called for a massive overhaul of our editorial strategy, and a completely new way of approaching blogging in general.

Our New Editorial Strategy

While these trends were scary for the future of our blog, they weren't entirely surprising. We'd been aware for a while that future-proofing for Google algorithm changes meant restructuring our site architecture. Back in late 2016, Leslie Ye had begun the tedious and challenging work of transitioning the blog's internal linking system into a pillar-cluster model. This move was intended to give us an organized way to understand our content gaps, and a cleaner architecture to help posts rank faster and bring in more organic traffic.

Thanks to a blog redesign project (headed up by Carly Stec) that automated this pillar-clustering process across the entire blog, our 10,000+ posts were neatly sorted into the pillar-cluster model by mid-2017. But our process for planning and writing new content hadn't fully adjusted to work optimally within this new system. We had a much better understanding of where our content gaps were, but we weren't filling these gaps systematically -- we were still largely guessing when it came to the topics we should be writing about on a monthly basis.

We were also suffering from a lack of foresight: we weren't planning for the search terms that would be popular a few years or even a few months into the future. This left room for other blogs and publications to capture organic green space that would be essential to our sustained growth down the line.

With this in mind, we made the decision to focus all our efforts behind stabilizing and growing our organic traffic. If our existing content was slowly but surely losing clicks to featured snippets in search, and our new content wasn't consistently earning as much traffic from promotional channels like social, we needed to offset those losses. And that meant zeroing in on organic green space in a big way.

This led us to create three guidelines we now use to determine what net new content we create:

Does this topic have search volume, or will have search volume in the future?

Does it fit into our pillar-cluster model?

Is it duplicative (is there a piece of content on this topic that already exists)?

If no one is searching for a topic, and we don't anticipate the search demand to grow in the foreseeable future, there's no long-term benefit in covering it. At least for our blog, posts created without a clear keyword in mind tend not to produce sustainable traffic after their first month of publication.

To rank these days, your site usually needs both depth and breadth on a topic -- in other words, you need to cover a concept or subject at a high level, then dive deeper with specific, detailed posts. Using the pillar-cluster model (more on that here) makes our content much likelier to rank than if we published an individual post that targeted one or two keywords. If a blog post doesn't fit into an existing cluster, it's probably not worth our time and energy to write it.

As you can probably imagine, we've covered quite a bit of ground in our 10+ years as a blog. Some overlap is inevitable, but writing on the same exact topic more than once -- even if the takeaways are ultimately different -- can lead to self-competition in the SERPs. And if we’re already ranking highly for a topic, our efforts are better spent creating a piece of content for a SERP we’re not on at all instead of piling on where we already have valuable real estate.

If a topic doesn't meet these three guidelines, we won't create content around it. There are a few exceptions of course -- The Marketing Blog's news program (headed up by Amanda Zantal-Wiener) and thought leadership on topics we think our readers need to hear about -- but for the most part, this organic-first strategy represents an enormous shift in the way we plan our editorial calendar and create content. Posts created with an organic goal in mind don't always pay off immediately, but organic is the only type of traffic that can consistently pay off month over month.

The Editorial Process in Action

Adopting an aggressive organic-first approach required a serious mindset change for our team -- one that required us to put aside our obsession (some would even say addiction) with quick wins, and instead put our primary focus on sowing seeds for the future. We weren't going to publish a post with no strategic organic potential, even if we knew it would bring in a satisfying spike in traffic.

Ultimately, the temporary traffic from a quick-win post brought us nothing of value in the long run. To truly grow, we need to keep our eyes on the organic gaps in our pillar cluster model.

A big part of seeding for the future also means educating ourselves on emerging topics: subjects our readers aren't too concerned with right now but that will eventually become trending search terms, like the nuts and bolts of artificial intelligence, or practical applications for blockchain. These are the technologies people will likely be searching for in droves in the future, and we want to get out ahead of the competition and position our blog as a resource right now -- and earn the traffic when the search volume spikes.

So how exactly do we select which topics to cover? We've talked about the reasons behind our new strategy, now let's see what this process actually looks like on a quarterly basis.

Stage One: Planning

We've partnered internally with our SEO team to create a blog taskforce of sorts, headed up by our former Sales Blog Editor and current Sr. SEO Strategist Aja Frost. Each quarter, Aja conducts in-depth keyword research across our three onsite blog properties (Marketing, Sales, and Service), taking into account both gaps in our existing topic clusters, and emerging topics we haven't yet thoroughly constructed content clusters around.

The resulting quarterly report includes well over 100 post suggestions broken down by topic clusters for each blog. Here's what our completed "Advertising" cluster looks like on the report:

Stage Two: Execution

Our Multimedia Content Strategy team handles the creation of each cluster's pillar page (the long-form piece of content that serves as a broad, foundational resource on the subject), and the Blog team owns the production of the supporting blog articles that delve deeper into specific subtopics. Most of the articles need to be written from scratch, but in some cases, we already have a blog post in existence that just needs to be updated to include a fresher, more exhaustive take on the subject.

SEO optimization has always been a consideration for our team when writing posts, but under this new strategy, its become a top priority. Before a single word is typed on a first draft, our writers already have information from our SEO team on the keyword(s) to target, section titles (H2s) to include, and featured snippet sections to work into the copy.

Here's an example of a typical article assignment on our editorial calendar:

Targeting featured snippets with consistently formatted sections has removed some (but definitely not all) of the guesswork when it comes to ranking for featured snippets. Matthew Howells-Barby, HubSpot’s Director of Acquisition, has stressed that clean and consistent code is a significant factor in winning snippets.

His team created a simple code our writers can use when formatting sections of copy for paragraph or list snippets. Not only has our team started incorporating featured snippet sections into all our new posts, but we've also historically "snippetized" hundreds of posts from our archives to help Google surface them more frequently.

If you're a regular reader of our blog, you've likely encountered these snippet boxes before:

While there's unfortunately not a 100% guaranteed formula to win featured snippets, this method has helped our team capture more than 6,300 featured snippets as of June 2018.

In addition to optimizing our articles more intentionally for featured snippets, we've also adopted a more aggressive historical optimization approach in 2018. Our team has had a historical optimization strategy in place for several years now, but it’s been years since we’ve had a full-time human dedicated to making sure our existing content is performing optimally in search.

Braden Becker, a Senior Staff Writer on the Blog team, has taken on the task of monitoring the organic performance and optimization of our 10+ years worth of archives as a full-time responsibility. Each month, Braden works with our SEO team to develop an update strategy that works with the new content clusters we're producing. He selects posts for updating largely based on their individual monthly organic traffic -- "the better they're performing, the higher the potential benefit once I optimize them," he explains.

Stage Three: Analyze

Once a month, the Content and SEO teams meet to discuss our progress, dig into the numbers, and plan for the next few weeks. We examine organic traffic numbers across our three blog properties, report on featured snippet attainment and loss, and discuss new ways we can adapt to Google's ever-changing algorithm.

The biggest shift in our reporting method under our new organic-first strategy has been a mental (and, I'll say it, emotional) one. Although we still report at a monthly cadence, we've had to largely abandon our fixation with month-over-month growth, and instead focus on broader trends over longer periods of time.

When I first joined the Blog team, month-over-month growth was the ultimate goal. If the end-of-month traffic number beat out the previous month, we considered it a success; if that number was in the red -- a lost month. No matter what, the slate was wiped clean on the first day of the next month, and we started the race all over again. This short-term mentality led us to become so focused on hitting monthly numbers, we ended up neglecting the bigger picture: our blog's health and continued growth over time. Enter the traffic plateau of 2017.

Under our new editorial strategy, we're more focused on seeding for the future -- and that means letting go of our monthly traffic goals. An article we publish this month on "How to Create a Content Marketing Strategy for Virtual Reality" might not have a ton of search volume right now, but we're betting it will sometime in the future. It might be many months before we see the rewards reflected in our traffic numbers, and we have to be okay with waiting, knowing we're setting ourselves up well for the future.

As a result of this strategy, our team's mindset has gone from "We'll do anything to smash our monthly traffic goals" to "Stick to the plan."

Getting out in front of future search terms and filling gaps in our existing topic cluster structure will pay off more than watching the monthly traffic numbers rise over a few well-timed, clickable posts.

What challenges is your blog facing? How are you approaching growth in 2018? Talk to us @HubSpot.

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armorroofing · 8 years ago

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The article Wow! Armor Roofing - Neosho MO Roof Repairs Neosho - A+ BBB originally appeared on Armor Roofing Kansas City.

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The post Wow! Armor Roofing - Neosho MO Roof Repairs Neosho - A+ BBB appeared first on Armor Roofing Kansas City.

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baburaja97-blog · 8 years ago

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New Post has been published on Vin Zite

New Post has been published on https://vinzite.com/weight-training-for-sport/

Weight Training For Sport

There is no longer any doubt that effective, targeted resistance training is not just beneficial but critical to improvements in sports performance. Sports such as rugby, American Football, and rowing have employed weightlifting techniques of some form for what seems like forever. However, these are sports where the size of the athlete has in the past been viewed as ‘bigger is better’ hence the enthusiasm for lifting weights.

Fortunately now, even coaches in sports which have traditionally ignored weight training for fear of ‘bulking up’ realize that weight training can be programmed in such a way as to cause dramatic improvements in performance without large increases in muscle mass.

It is not my intention to provide vast amounts of studies confirming the importance of weight training in a sport as many highly-detailed books already exist.

I am more interested in giving you the practical knowledge you need to train hard and effectively whether you have a keen interest in a particular sport or just want to find the most effective, time-efficient ways to achieve particular fitness goals.

In recent times we have seen the emergence of Rafael Nadal as the tennis World Number 1 following 4 years of domination by Roger Federer. There is no doubt in my mind that, aside from his raw talent, Nadal’s intense training in the gym has paid a massive part in his success. Whenever his matches are featured on TV, the conversation inevitably turns to his impressive physique and seemingly infinite supply of energy on the court!

Whilst talking of tennis I am reliably informed that Laura Robson, recent winner of Junior Wimbledon in 2008, has spent the last year training with kettlebells.

Closer to home, and on a level which is probably more relevant to you, my personal training clients at BodyClocq in Nottingham have experienced fantastic results on the sports field. Some of these people play sport as a serious (or not so serious) hobby.

For instance, I currently train a guy whose primary concern is fat loss. A combination of sound nutritional practices and kettlebell training have resulted in the fat loss of around 3 stones.

However, a noticeable side effect of powerful swings has been my client’s delight with the dramatic increases in the length of his golf drive off the tee. At this point, I have yet to do any direct rotational power drills with him but we have worked extensively with kettlebell windmills and get ups to improve hip mobility, hamstring flexibility and core stabilization – all key elements on the golf course.

Another client at BodyClocq who trains with my business partner recently embarked on a structured weight training routine for the first time. As a cyclist weighing in the region of 55-60kg he cannot afford to be adding unnecessary weight to his frame.

A combination of kettlebell swings and snatches in his training have dramatically increased his strength and power on the bike culminating in the 2nd place in the British National Pursuit Championships and 3rd place in the European Championships. Power out of corners has been particularly noticeable according to our client.

So what’s happening here and why is weight training so important?

Again I don’t intend to fire too much science at you but it will aid your learning if you understand the key concepts behind weight training in sport.

Every sport has its individual requirements but I will take some of the most popular British sports to use as examples of how weight training can improve performance on the sports field.

Football/soccer (and most team sports)

Most team sports involve repeat bursts of speed over short distances with periods of low-intensity activity in between.

Soccer players for instance (bar the goalkeeper) are required to move around the field at relatively low intensity before being called into action for usually anything between 5-20 seconds at a time. Clearly different positions will have slightly different requirements.

However, at a basic level, every player needs the ability to be able to produce fast sprints repeatedly for 90 minutes. This is known as power endurance – the ability to produce power over the entire duration of the match. An inability to maintain speed on sprints can be the difference between winning or conceding late goals which change the result in an instant.

Before you can develop power endurance, you must have power in your muscles. If you were listening in physics class you’ll know that…

Power = Force x Distance Time

In other words, to maximize power over a given distance, you need to be able to maximize the force your muscles can produce and minimize the time in takes to complete the movement.

Another equation you may recall is that….

Force = Mass x Acceleration

Now you might be thinking (and rightly so) that the mass you are required to move on the sports field remains (relatively) constant as it is your bodyweight.

A lot of improvement can be gained by training with bodyweight through the use of ‘plyometrics’ such as jumping, bounding and leaping to increase the acceleration part of the equation. However these gains are limited, and at a certain point, the introduction of working against added weight of some form is crucial if continued gains are to be made.

The force a muscle can produce will increase greatly if you are able to move increasing amounts of resistance explosively. This requires strength in your muscles which can only be increased noticeably by working against external resistance (weights).

This is a good time to point out that as a sportsperson you shouldn’t be looking to just lift heavier and heavier weights. You do need to lift heavy weights to improve strength and power but your focus should be on your ability to recruit your muscles fast and explosively as is required on the sports field. For this reason, if when you are doing squats, for instance, ensure you move the weight as fast as possible. If it takes more than a second to take the weight through the full range of motion of the muscle, you should reduce the weight until you can perform the exercise quickly but under control.

Before things get too confusing, lets some up what we have discussed so far.

Power endurance is the ultimate requirement of most sports, particularly team sports

Power must be developed before we can ‘endure’ it or repeat it over the time span required

Power requires strength

Beyond certain limited gains with bodyweight, strength increases require weight training

You should now understand why everything in sport comes down to strength. If a netball player lacks the power to accelerate their body high enough off the ground to jump and catch a ball, there is little point wondering how to improve their performance in the final minutes of the game! Develop strength, convert it to power, then develop the capacity to do it over and over again.

On a more basic level, if you aspire to do twenty push ups with your bodyweight you need to be able to generate the strength to do one repetition properly before you can build up the strength endurance to do twenty reps.

Golf

Golf differs to most team sports in that whilst repetition is an element of the game, the repetitions are spread out much more in terms of the time between them.

Returning to my golfing client, aside from the skills required for a good ‘short game’ around the greens, he requires the ability to drive the ball off the tee onto the fairway as close to the green as possible. This requires a one-off, powerful movement with significant rest time in between. Power endurance is therefore not required in the same way as in rugby for instance.

If we can develop a powerful swing on the tee, my player then has a large amount of recovery time before he must tee-off at the next hole. Whilst he has shots to perform to complete the current hole they don’t require the maximum effort as at the tee.

Tennis

Similar to team sports, a tennis player needs to repeatedly generate power in various forms throughout the course of the game. The difference is that, whereas soccer players, for instance, have longer periods of rest between bursts of activity, tennis players have very little chance of recovery. This requires a strong anaerobic base of fitness enabling them to recover and be able to generate power over and over again as they move through each point.

If we dissect an actual point, we can see why power is crucial to a tennis player. Firstly, the power required on the server is often the difference between a good player and a great player with a powerful weapon in their arsenal! Contrary to first impressions, a powerful serve comes from the ability to transfer power from the legs through the hips and into the upper body. It does not simply require a strong shoulder! A strong shoulder is important, however, and weight training of a more prehab based structure is also crucial.

Once the server is complete, assuming the ball comes back, a tennis player now needs to be able to perform repetitive sprints of up to five meters, sometimes for up to 30 seconds in a long rally. This is a great test of power endurance.

Having completed a sprint to reach the ball, hip drive and rotational power are also required to play a powerful shot.

So you can see that every single facet of the game of tennis can ultimately be broken down to strength and power and the ability to generate power for anything from one hour to five hours in some of the men’s five-set epics

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