7 Tips for Starting a New Blog

This post was originally published on my old blog, Ellipsis, over 3 years ago. I've learned a lot since then, so I've adapted the post to fit the current blogging climate. 

When I started my blog, I really didn't have any advice to turn to. I started blogging because I wanted to be just like Gala Darling (cringe!) but I've definitely grown since then. I see a lot of talk about advice for new bloggers. Here are my simple, 7 tips after blogging for almost 10 years. 

1. Start with clean, simple design. 

No matter what platform you use (Blogger, Wordpress, etc.) pick a theme that is clean & simple. I see a lot of "cluttered" looking blogs -- huge headers, double sidebars, crowded sidebars... it's incredibly overwhelming for readers! I'm a firm believer in less is more & I personally like designs that have one sidebar with a clean, organized look -- not too many icons, no random text, etc. Beyond that, remember to pick a readable font for your body text! The other day I went to a new blog that used cursive as the body font, that was near impossible to read. 

2. You don't need a fancy camera. 

I love my Canon Rebel t2i, but honestly, I don't use it as much as I used to! Most of the time, I use my iPhone to take photos or I use stock photos from websites like PicJumbo and Unsplash. If I'm writing a review post, I'll use my Canon to take those -- but an iPhone or point-and-shoot camera takes photos that are just as good. Remember, you don't need perfect photos -- just photos that clearly demonstrate what you're trying to show! 

3. Content is king. 

Your content matters -- from formatting to what you're actually writing, your content is the most important piece of your blog. The other day, I clicked to a blog that has 1000+ followers & had received a box of samples from Benefit -- really! -- and the first paragraph of that blog post? About 30 lines of text with not a single period. It was so stream of consciousness and it read horribly. Content matters. The amount that businesses pour into content marketing makes that very clear: write good posts and you will reap the benefits. 

4. Pick 2-3 social media platforms & use them to their advantage. 

Most of my traffic comes from Twitter and Pinterest. I also get a lot of traffic from Google+, which I don't even really use! Lots of people try to use every social media network, but that's not really necessary. Pick the ones you like best & work them! Post consistently, post intelligently, and post your links! (And if you decide to use Twitter, participate in chats whenever you possible can! I like #lbloggers, #fblchat, and #blogtrends the best!) 

5. Network. 

The blogging community is just that--a community. My blog is primarily read by other bloggers. If I find a blogger doesn't interact with the community, I'm much less likely to read their blog! It's totally fine to be busy, but replying to people on Twitter, asking questions, participating in chats, joining communities... it'll help you go further in the long run. 

6. For Love, Not Money. 

Ok, I have something to tell you: the blogging bubble has burst. There are just too many bloggers. It is certainly possible to have a creative career, but blogging will only be one part of that. To be truly successful, you have to have multiple streams of income if you are an entrepreneur: you can't rely on just a blog or just an etsy shop. You have to establish multiple ways to be successful & work hard at all of those things. Have passions, hobbies, and a career outside of blogging. It will all fall into place someday! Don't blog to get rich -- you'll only end up disappointed! 

7. Be yourself. 

This is something I cannot stress enough. I see so many blogs that are just carbon copies of each other. You don't have to have the perfect, pin-worthy home, an expensive camera, or new everything all the time to be successful. You just have to be yourself. When you blog in a way that is genuine to who you are, you will be successful. 

How to Keep A Clean Home (Without Cleaning All The Time)

I won't say I'm a paragon of cleaning. I'm really not. However, I do like to think that I keep my house at least "decent" through quick cleaning when I get the time. With a husband, a dog, and a small human, cleaning is sort of a fruitless endeavor: every evening I pick up the living room, put the alphabet mat back together, put the toys in the toybox... and they're all out again by 9am the next morning.

Being an adult means keeping a clean house--and it does wonders for your mental health and happiness. 

However, I have a few tried-and-true things I do every day to help my house stay presentable and save my sanity. 

1. Wipe down the kitchen counters every evening. 

We have an open plan home, so our living room is also our kitchen. If the kitchen is dirty, the living room, to me, feels dirty too. Before I go to bed every night, I take a few minutes to clear the kitchen counters and wipe them down with Lysol wipes. If I have a few minutes, I'll clear away clutter, put away any drying pots and pans in the sink, and wipe down the cabinet doors and knobs. But mostly, I just make sure the counters (and table) are clean!

2. Dust every Saturday. 

This one is actually quite easy, mainly because I can pretend that I'm playing with Forrest. I use a box of Swiffers to wipe down our bookshelves, TV and stand, and windows. It takes maybe 10-15 minutes and it makes a world of difference!

3. Keep living areas for living.

As much as I'd like my house to look like it popped right out of a copy of Marth Stewart Living, that's just not going to happen. I try to keep my downstairs clean and tidy--but when it comes to upstairs in our bedroom and office? I let it get a bit messy. It saves my sanity. I do my vacuuming, my de-cluttering... but I don't need those areas to be perfect. 

4. Keep bathrooms clean.

The number one thing that makes my whole house feel cleaner is clean bathrooms! Without a doubt, a dirty bathroom seems to spread through the whole house (at least in my opinion). Bathrooms are very easy to keep clean, especially if you clean them as you go. I wipe down the mirror and counters every day (or every other day) and Swiffer the floors every other day. Then, every Saturday, I scrub the toilet, wipe everything down with Lysol, and mop the floor. It's an instantly "ahhh, clean!" feeling. 

The Benefits of Being Treated Like an Adult At Work

This post originally appeared on my old lifestyle blog, Ellipsis, over 2 years ago. This is a minor rewrite. If you'd like to see the original, click here. 

Sometimes, I feel like I've tricked people into thinking I'm an adult. The amount of responsibility--for other people's companies, for their public images--I'm handed every day is kind of astounding, despite the fact that I feel like I should still be answering to someone. And yet, sometimes--when there are dishes in the sink, or the stairs need vacuuming, or I've run out of clean socks--I find myself wishing I could opt out, have someone else be the grown up and take care of that. 

I'm a little obsessed by age--acting my age, acting like a grown up, acting like a kid. There are times where I feel like I really shouldn't be 27--I feel about 14 or 15, tops. And I'm not the only millennial that feels that way. Even though I have a child now, I still often feel like I'm not the adult in any given situation. I look to other adults to help me out, more often than not. 

I recently read an article about the benefits of treating employees like, well, adults. The United States in particular has fallen into the trap of treating employees like students and/or children: dress codes, strict times to show up and leave, strong rules of how to do things, specific procedures, and limited creative freedom. Boooooring. Isn't that supposed to be the benefit of leaving school? You start getting to work and act like an adult? 

I've started to wonder if my own inability to see myself as an adult is tied to the fact that my jobs, up until two years ago, all treated me as if I was a child. 

At one of my last jobs before my current one, my boss had a rule that I had to tell someone when I was stepping into the bathroom for even a minute. About 9 times a day I was telling my boss and/or one of my coworkers that I was going to the bathroom, and they were doing the same thing. It was obnoxious and embarrassing. What kind of boss really needs to know when I'm taking a 45 second break to run to the restroom?

I know I'm not alone in having stories like that. It seems like workplaces overwhelmingly lean towards treating employees like overgrown babies who need a lot of rules to do basic work. And, surprise! Research shows that when you treat employees like little bitty babies, they are act more irresponsibility. 

As well, treating employees like children allows bad employees to fly underneath the radar. We've all know a coworker for followed all the rules--showed up on time, followed procedures to the letter--but never actually did any work. Those kind of employees thrive in environments where the procedure matters more than the outcome--and being a "good employee" is all about following the basic policies. 

This article explains the entire idea nicely: 

What works is focusing on results. If your employees are nonexempt, you do have to pay them by the hour for their work (and pay overtime, when applicable), but if they are exempt employees (that is, professionals or managerial or outside sales workers), let them be grownups. Set expectations. If problems come up, address the problems. If their work is otherwise good, who cares if they check Facebook eight times per day?

There isn't any real, concrete reason about why this has happened. With the rise of the Internet & the abundance of smart phones, I think employers have grown increasingly concerned about not paying their employees for downtime. They focus on the minute-by-minute action of their employees days, instead of seeing the big picture -- did the project get done? Was the work good?

In the end, you get employees who resent their bosses & act like kids. 

As millennials increasingly enter the workforce, I think we'll see employers re-evaluating their policies when it comes to how they treat their employees. As it is, millennials as a generation feel very stuck by where we are--most of us moved back in with our parents right out of college & some still do until they can afford their own places. Millennials are resisting buying new cars and homes. (I do love that these articles are trying to find a reason for this. Here's the reason, guys: most new jobs are part-time & do not offer very competitive wages, nor do they offer many benefits. We aren't buying homes and cars because, duh, we don't have the money for them, plain & simple. Paying student loans on part-time wages and trying to buy a car or a home would be beyond financially stupid.)

And while us millennials struggle to feel like adults (often because we are being reduced to feeling like children because of our living situations, our difficulty finding good paying jobs, and the media's increasing obsession with making us sound like the laziest generation ever), no one is ever happy being treated like a petulant child. 

For the first time, I work at a job where I am treated like a competent adult. Ultimately, it doesn't matter when I show up or how I do my work or how many times I run to the bathroom; what matters is if my work is good, if I get it done on time, and if I am a nice person to everyone around me. Easy-peasy. The feeling of satisfaction I get from my work simply because I'm treated like the adult I was taught to be is astounding.
 

Being a grown up is hard. There's no reason to make it any harder by treating people like children & then wondering why they act like children. As far as I'm concerned, I feel like I should still be 15--but that being said, I know I'm really an adult and I appreciate when others have confidence in my abilities.

I Have Postpartum Depression

Let's set the scene. 3 weeks after Forrest was born. I sat in the reclining chair in my living room, holding this bundle of blanket and very small human. There were nipple pads shoved into my bra. My back hurt. I'd been up all night, pumping and feeding. Forrest cried, and cried, and cried. I sang to him. I sang every song I could think of. I hadn't left the house in over a week. Most days, the only time I moved was to get more coffee, grab a snack, or pump--otherwise, I sat on the couch, or in the chair, with Forrest. I started to cry and I couldn't stop. I wanted to be anywhere but there.

I loved Forrest with an intensity that bordered on obsessive: I worried about every little thing and recorded it, carefully, in an app that cost $5. But that love wasn't enough. The depths of my misery reached further into me. I wanted to both take care of him 24/7 and have someone else just offer to help me. I wasn't sleeping, period; at my 4 week appointment, my doctor would go through the calendar with me and count hours I had slept since the day I was induced. The number would be staggeringly low. So low, that when people tell me about "not sleeping" now, I want to dare them to wander into the danger zone of "so little sleep, you may actually die." 

Here's the lucky part of the story: because of Forrest's low birth weight and my preeclampsia, we went to the doctor near constantly. Forrest's pediatrician gave me these tests called "Edinburgh tests" that measured my likelihood of postpartum depression. My own OB was also monitoring me for PPD: women who give birth early, are unable to breastfeed, and have low birthweight babies are more likely, than other group, to develop PPD due to both hormonal and environmental factors. 

By our appointments at 4 weeks, I was diagnosed with PPD and started treatment. 

It's hard to describe now, because I feel like a completely different person. The circumstances around Forrest's birth, my sadness at not being able to breastfeed him, my severe sleep deprivation... it all added up to PPD.

I want to say that the minute I started treatment, I was a different person. But that's just not true. It took a lot of things to get me "feeling normal" again. It took treatment, which was hard and expensive and in many ways, unpleasant; it took letting go of breastfeeding and supplementing with formula, because it was the best thing for my mental health; it took going back to work, giving myself time away from Forrest and not feeling guilty about it. 

I started to feel better, more like my pre-labor & delivery self around 8 months postpartum. 8 months. It took almost 7 months of treatment and self-care to start feeling better, to stop snapping at Danny, to start cleaning my house again.

Sometimes, I will wander across an article about the rates of postpartum depression: who gets it and who doesn't. Sometimes, the comments, and the mom groups that post such articles, like to draw lines: bad moms get PPD and good moms don't. But postpartum depression doesn't pick sides in the mommy wars. 

One statistic that always sticks out to me is that moms who formula feed are at a higher risk of PPD. Horrible, judgmental women use this as evidence that "choosing to formula feed" means that you develop less of a connection to your baby and therefore, are a "bad mom." The truth is, a significant number of women who formula feed do so because they are unable to breastfeed--and being unable to breastfeed, or having to exclusively pump, increases your chances of PPD by almost 70%. (Another statistic that's often thrown around by breastfeeding activists is that "only 5% of women truly don't make enough milk," but 5% of the number of women who give birth is still a significant number. That's still thousands of women.) 

When I talk about PPD, it always goes back to my failure to breastfeed. And despite how PPD makes me feel, I logically know that I didn't do anything "bad" to "deserve" not being able to breastfeed or develop PPD--and that those two facts are related when it comes to my improving. 

If anyone reading this is struggling with postpartum depression, or suspects they may have postpartum depression, this is all I can say: it is ok to reach out for help (from your baby's pediatrician, from your doctor, from anyone); it does not make you a bad mom to admit you are depressed; and it does get better, things can improve, you don't have to feel like this. 

25 Facts About Me

A week or so ago, my friend Charlotte at Girl Next Door Fashion posted 25 Facts about herself. Which I loved. I've been reading Charlotte's blog since 2009/2010 (I can't honestly remember when I started now...) and I feel like I could probably tell you 25 things about her too! And yet, I still learned new things from her post. 

Like Charlotte says, when we read blogs, we tend to think we know everything about that person's life based on what they post. But personally, I know there are lots of things I never mention here. So I thought I'd share my own 25 facts! 

1. I'm the youngest of 3. I have an older sister (the oldest) and an older brother (the middle child). I subscribe heavily to birth order personality lines: my sister is motivated & driven; my brother is stereotypical middle child; and as the baby, I most resemble an only child. 

2. My favorite song changes every day, but right now, it's "Dustland Fairytale" by the Killers. 

3. I write in my journal every single day and have since I was 14. I have huge piles of old journals in my house. I have no idea what to do with them.  

4. I love to cook, but I often find by the time I'm done, I'm absolutely sick of whatever it is I made! 

5. I work as a marketing copywriter, but since I work at a start up, I wear many hats: graphic designer, content entry, marketing strategist, social media marketer... the list goes on. 

6. I write fiction when Forrest finally goes to sleep at night. 

7. I grew up in the country and never had close neighbors. The idea of just being able to walk to a friends house is still very foreign to me. 

8. I have been bitten by a tick. It's not pleasant (mostly from my own screaming). 

9. I bullet journal every day because I'm always making lists that I want to remember. 

10. I'm already planning Forrest's first trip to Disneyland because I love it so much. 

11. My favorite food is probably macaroni and cheese, followed by bread. 

12. I don't think I've ever drank enough water a day in my life. Ever. Well, maybe when I was pregnant. 

13. As much as I kind of hated being pregnant, I also really miss it. I also really enjoyed my labor & delivery, so I can't wait to do it again! 

14. Everyone close to me calls me Shelly, so sometimes I have a legitimately difficult time responding to "Michelle," even though that's what I've always been called at school and work. 

15. I love working and I find a lot of personal enjoyment from doing a good job. That being said, if I could stay home and blog for a living, I would in a heartbeat. 

16. Growing up, I wanted to be an artist. 

17. When I was in high school, I was very into the Harry Potter fandom. I was even an integral player in revealing the fake Rupert Grint official website (anyone remember that?). 

18. Sometimes, I really do miss Myspace. 

19. Autumn is my favorite season and I actually don't care how basic that makes me. I even run an insanely popular Fall tumblr. (Not to toot my own horn or anything.) 

20. I probably would not have survived the first 6 months of Forrest's life without my mom group on Facebook. Who else could I fret to about rashes, breastfeeding, and not sleeping? 

21. I don't know how to swim. My mom repeatedly put me in lessons to get me to learn, and it's just like a mental block. 

22. I'm really strict about grocery shopping and meal planning, especially with a baby (formula is expensive, y'all!), but I still find myself throwing random things into the cart when I'm actually there. 

23. I love getting mail. Even if it's just formula coupons. 

24. I always have these lofty goals of how I'll spend my weekend (cleaning or cooking meals for the week), but I usually end up walking around wearing Forrest and playing games on my phone. 

25. After having Forrest, I started becoming anemic and have to take iron supplements, as well as eat my bodyweight in lentils and red meat. (At least, that's what it feels like.) 

5 Products I Love (Right Now)

The things I use on a daily basis change as I try new things and settle into different routines. As a mom, I budget really heavily, but there are some non-necessary items I like to include in our lives every day. These are them. 

1. Plum Organics Baby Hello Morning Cereals

Forrest loves these cereals. They're little packets of baby-friendly oatmeal: not too sweet, but not too bland (like a lot of baby food tends to be). They're actually made from both oatmeal and quinoa, which means he's getting a pretty good helping of oatmeal as well. He's quite partial to the apple cinnamon & banana blueberry flavors. 

2. NYX HD Photo Concealer

Concealer is extremely hard to find at an affordable price point, but, per usual, NYX comes through. The best part is that the lightest shade matches my skin perfectly, instead of being an unsightly orange color. (What is with pale foundations ending up orange?) 

3. Tazo Organic Chai Tea

I tend to bop back and forth between drinking tea and then not for months at a time. I recently have been struggling with anemia and started needing caffeine in the afternoon to keep me awake. I started drinking chai tea again and I wonder really why I ever stopped. 

4. e.l.f. Studio Contour Palette 

When I first tried this palette, I was not impressed--but the more I've used it, the more I fall in love with it. Contour palettes are expensive, though, and for $8 at Target, this one is a winner. I thought I wanted a cream palette, but the one I ended up getting, I found difficult to blend. With the right brushes (I use a fluffy eyeshadow brush to apply and then a kabuki brush to blend), this one is easy to use and looks great. 

5. Happy Tot Organics Smoothies

Another baby food product--but I use these ones as well. These smoothie blends, meant for toddlers, are great for watering down and giving to Forrest in a sippy cup (I'm hoping it motivates him to hold the cup himself). As well, adding one to my own smoothie adds an extra helping of fruits and vegetables, which is a win-win! They taste pretty good too. 

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What are you loving right now? Share with me on Twitter! 

5 Meals for Baby-Led Weaning

By the time I had Forrest, I hadn't heard about baby-led weaning. Which is surprising, because I'd read about just about everything else. I didn't learn about baby-led weaning (or, BLW) until almost 6 months later, when moms in my mom group were starting to introduce solids (or talk about the unnecessary introduction of purees, same difference, I guess). 

I introduced solids at 5 months (I know, blasphemy), which is pretty controversial in the mom world. Most pediatricians recommend not starting until 6 months OR when a baby can sit up. Well, Forrest wasn't sitting up by 6 months, but he WAS eating me out of house-and-home with formula, so, you know what? Solids it is. 

We started with purees and kept with purees for a long time. Whole foods made me nervous. Babies can choke on just about anything, including rice cereal, which is approximately the texture of thinned out Elmer's glue, so I wasn't 100% sold on the idea of handing Forrest a piece of chicken. 

As Forrest got bigger, and started eating stage 2, 3, and 4 purees, I realized he was ready. He was ready to try this BLW thing. He was 7 months old by then and eating just about everything I offered him on a spoon. 

We started having toast in the mornings with him--toast with avocado or just butter or occasionally peanut butter--and he loved it, often eating an entire piece of toast on his own. Forrest has only choked on one thing and that's a meatball; and, to be honest, it's because he was shoving pieces of it into his mouth as fast as he could. 

I recently was writing down the foods he has the easiest time eating and I realized other moms who are nervous nellies about introducing table foods might appreciate these. Here they are. 

1. Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Who doesn't love a nice grilled cheese? I make Forrest's two different ways: either with olive oil, 1 slice of bread (cut in half), and cheddar cheese; or with cream cheese and mashed fruit. He likes both and while yell if I don't hand him pieces fast enough. 

2. Quesadillas

A common thread among these foods is that they are easy to pick up and chew on for him. Quesadillas are one of those things. I usually mash up refried beans, avocado, and cheese (plus any veggie puree I have on hand to make it healthier), spread on half a tortilla, top with the other half, and then grill until a little crisp, but still soft. He will eat the entire thing if I let him. 

3. Toast

Toast, like sandwiches and quesadillas, is easy to pick up. We do avocado on toast, mashed banana on toast, fruit puree on toast, peanut butter, butter, jam, cream cheese... whatever I've got on hand, if it spreads on toast, he's probably eaten it. 

4. Roasted Carrots

Okay, this isn't really a meal, more of a snack. Available finger food baby snacks out there are very... binding. It's rice puffs or corn puffs or generally processed stuff that kind of, well, gross. And if it's not rice puff things, it's straight up choking hazards; those yogurt melt drops for babies are seriously gag-worthy and I've heard of way too many babies choking on them! I cut up two big carrots into sticks, roast them, and keep them in a container in the fridge. I can microwave them for a few seconds and give them to Forrest to gnaw on while I finish his dinner. 

5. Fruit Smoothies

Fruit smoothies are easy to make and it helps babies learn to use a sippy cup. I make mine with a pouch of fruit puree (usually whatever is leftover from breakfast), a scoop of Greek yogurt, a bit of apple juice, and water to thin it. I just shake it up in Forrest's sippy cup and let him go. If you use a puree pouch, it often has veggies in it too, so you're basically supermom. 

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Have baby-led weaning tips of your own? Send them to me on Twitter!

Committing to Whole30

I have a few things I don't want to admit to, but I should. Firstly, as I write this, I just finished eating a mug cookie. It's my last one, I swear to you all. Secondly, Danny and I ate an entire bag of Pirate's Booty from Costco in three days. It's the last one we'll ever buy, I swear. Thirdly, while I write about this Whole30 thing, I have a headache from not drinking a soda--which suggests to me, at least, that 30 days without sugar, carbs, or anything processed might be the thing that does me in. 

I'm a carb lover. If I had my way, I would eat entire meals of carbs: toast and pizza and noodles and potatoes and plain bread, honestly. It's actually a little embarrassing how high my carb percentage is on MyFitnessPal at the end of the day. At this point, I have to acknowledge that it's kind of an addiction. I don't need this many carbs, I think as I eat another peanut butter sandwich, and then promptly start imagining making some pasta. 

When I mentioned starting Whole30, one of my friends (shout out to you, Charlotte!) mentioned not becoming one of those "Whole30 people." You know, the annoying ones. 

Whole30 is kind of cultish. If I do it (and it's a big if--I'm sure the minute my first carb craving hits, I'll be scream crying on my office floor), I refuse to pay for it. I don't need to pay money to get emails to tell me not to eat carbs or dairy today. I might try to conveniently "forget", but I'm sure I'll remember eventually. I also don't plan to give up sweeteners like stevia and honey; if I'm going to be giving up my coffee creamer, I deserve to have some freaking stevia to sweeten it. 

If you've never learned about Whole30, here are the basic rules: 

• For 30 days, you cut all foods that are not whole fruits and vegetables, plant-based fats, and proteins. 
• Random foods that aren't allowed include "imitation foods" (like banana pancakes), legumes and beans, and sugar of any kind. 
• Dairy products are also not allowed, including any "imitation" dairy products like homemade creamer or that banana ice cream you see floating around on Pinterest and Instagram. 

A lot of the rules are kind of arbitrary. I will admit the creators sound distinctly Not Very Fun, but who am I to judge? They also admit that the original rules, as presented, are based on their personal beliefs and decisions--and so yeah, it's arbitrary. But in their defense, they're only suggesting you do this for 30 days--not the rest of your life. To me, I just need something to cut the cord between me and delicious, delicious carbs; I just need a hard reset. 

Here are my rules for Whole30: 

• For 30 days, I will cut all foods that are not whole fruits & vegetables, plant-based fats, and proteins. 
• I will be allowed to eat imitation foods like banana pancakes as long as they don't include processed ingredients. (In your face, original Whole30 creators!) 
• I will let myself have stevia and milk for coffee because I have a 10-month-old. 

My official start date is August 1. 

I'm really excited to see how well I do at this--and how I feel after a few days. I'm best at sticking to "diets" (although I'm not thinking of this as a diet--more of as a reset for my life) if I have very strict rules to follow. I'll probably just come up with a menu and eat the same thing each and every day because I'm boring and I like a plan. 

If you'd like to follow my Whole30 journey, you can follow my fitness Instagram @fitforforrest. (And you can always follow my main instagram @michellelocke6!)