Phresh Out the Frontal Lobe

Hello Sweet Friend! Can I just say, I'm loving blogging so much? Full disclosure: with the advent of 2014, I resolved to write at least 5 days a week -- the exact details of my blogging resolution were meant to stay secret so as to avoid false promises and stuff. Oopsie daisy. Anyway, as one who tends to perpetually shoot for the moon, perpetually miss, and perpetually land in the weeds somewhere (i.e. my goals are often a lil' too lofty sometimes, Idk), I'm astounded at how easy it's been to exceed my own writing expectations this year.

Go me.

Because I'm #winning in the resolution department, and because I think the world at large should focus on pushing its collective creative limitations instead of, say, losing ten pounds before spring break, I feel I have some wisdom to offer budding bloggers.

If you have the urge to start a blog, first read this: the why, and go forth, Darling! I will welcome you to the fold with loving arms and twitchy keyboard fingers. Once you begin, though, the trick is to consistently come up with fresh content that you believe in. Here's how:

1. Let your blog evolve with  you. I've talked about what wellness means to me before, and from an entirely practical angle, widening my definition of wellness allowed me to cover a more diverse array of topics. Truth: I have more on my mind than green juice. Boys, books, career goals, crafting, feminist propaganda, making sense of dat lyfe... all serve their purpose in keeping me whole and happy. As such, these subjects fall under my umbrella of "wellness" and I give myself permission to talk about any and all of them at will. Score! Don't limit yourself just so you can call yourself a health blogger or a DIY blogger or whatever. Be all of the things. It's your outlet: make it fit whatever electrifies you.

2 If you don't have anything nice to say, go ahead and be an asshole. I don't know anyone who's positive all the time, and if I did, I wouldn't trust them. Unless you are a psychopath (totally likely that you would be reading this, now that I think about it), your rage probably comes from a caring place... so talk about it. You can't fake an internet persona long-term, Homie. If you strive to be 100% you, you'll come across as super genuine and everyone will love you. They'll write odes to you in your comments section. They'll pimp you out all across the Twitter-verse. Truth. Be yourself.

3. Quit apologizing for disappearances. This is a "do as I say, not as I do" sorta deal. Everyone occasionally needs time off from blogging. Explain yourself if you want (I've done it... more than once), but don't dwell and don't say sorry if you don't mean it. If you need you-time, take it and come up with some baller blog topics in the interim.

4. Don't disappear entirely though. To continually create new content, you have to show up. You can't expect your readers to hold you accountable -- they'll stop comin' round if nothing's ever new. You presumably started a blog because you needed a venue in which to voice all of your brilliant thoughts... so use some of that brilliance to come up with a schedule or strategy that you can stick to. I can feasibly blog five days per week. Be honest with yourself: maybe you'll be satisfied with checking in bi-weekly, and that's totally cool.

5. Everything is blog fodder. I don't mean that you should sell out all your friends and exes on the internet. I mean that your life informs your writing and your writing informs your life. As a writer, you develop the ability to make gorgeous, heartbreaking connections between your physical world, your emotional world and your intellect. Would you like an example of the writerly connections I made out of a perfectly mundane situation today? Of course you would! Today I bought a suede brush for my salt speckled shoes. Emotionally, I was weirdly sad about the possibility of having destroyed these shoes that I purchased with my hard earned money. I called to mind gifts of yore that I didn't treat with the respect they deserved - clothes tossed on the floor, library books earmarked. I felt undeserving of 26 years of privilege when I bought that suede brush. Intellectually, I've been studying up on zen practice, so I know that in some parts of the world, shoes are considered sentient beings, and going forward, I should treat them as such. Or something. See? That was such a weird little half-story. You have opinions and wells of hot emotion in regards to most everything -- use 'em.

6. Finally, not everything you write has to be incredible. I believe in quality content, but sometimes you just need to write something and slap it on the internet so you can say you did it... and then do it again the next day. Do what you need to do to get into the habit of producing work that you're proud of, even if that includes some attempts that, in hindsight, you're not so proud of. You'll get there. Keep going.

That's all for now, loves. Talk soon. Real soon.

XOXO,
Rose