Editorials

03/21/16

The Post I Never Wanted to Write

This is the post I never wanted to write. Why? Because I’m going to open up about a topic that is profoundly personal, troubling to me, and unpleasant. It’s my deepest fear and uncertainty, one I don’t have the answers for. I never wanted to write about it because it makes me incredibly emotional, and showing my strangely strong emotions about this makes me feel so…weird. I know that’s not the best word, but it describes the strangeness and high level of discomfort I feel about being emotional.

I’ve always been a writer and have found that writing is my best outlet. It allows me to get out my thoughts and feelings in a safe way. I can hide behind the words as I type the letters instead of confronting them by speaking them out loud. At the same time I’m hiding, I can also reveal my most intimate feelings in a very public way.

I enjoy writing about hope, positivity, and answers. I don’t like complaining for the sake of complaining – I think when you have a problem, you should seek a solution to it. In this post I never wanted to write, I don’t have a solution.

03/17/16

What is the NoFollow Tag and Why Bloggers Need to Use It

If you are a blogger, you may have heard about the “nofollow” tag but aren’t necessarily sure what it is, if it applies to you, if you actually need to bother with it, or how to add it. Let me break it down for you in the simplest terms possible.

When your blog or website includes external links, little search engine bots crawl all over the internet searching for these to include in a website’s page rankings. The more your website appears in external links, the better your page rankings, which generally translates to more revenue and traffic for your business. As bloggers, we often link back to businesses we love naturally because we want to share our excitement for great products and add value to our readers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this!

However, when you provide affiliate links or links from sponsored posts, it becomes a problem. Google wants to protect the integrity of organic searches of websites and ensure companies are not just paying others to link to their site, thus boosting their rankings and revenue.

03/2/16

15 Lessons From My 7-Year-Old Self

Recently I came across some true gold, buried in my parents’ basement – a school journal from 1994. I quickly immersed myself in my 7-year-old life, approaching it the same way as when faced with a new box of Oreos: needing to devour it at once yet wanting to savor every last tiny morsel. So that’s what I did. I read it out loud, page-by-page, wanting to speed read and skip ahead to see what’s next but kept cool and reserved to cherish my youngster words. My lucky husband got to pause his show and his work for the night until I made it through the whole year, as I shared my most personal childhood confessions, likes and dislikes, and pretty much every little detail that ever happened to me in 1994. What can I say? I was always a writer and didn’t want to miss a thing.

As I smiled, gasped, and laughed so hard I actually cried (not just as in the expression…there were tears), I realized there were so many raw, honest truths from my 7-year-old self that apply to me today. I’ll share excerpts from my journal that coincide with my top 15 lessons that I learned from my 7-year-old self.