Keeping up a blog while running a marketing agency is simply impossible at times. Most of my work is in the digital realm, meaning, working with clients via email and diving into SEO, web analytics, and marketing campaigns, among so many other tasks like accounting and people management and social media and meeting after meeting after meeting. I start my day at 5 a.m., learning first, then meditation/yoga/fun reading (AKA my yoga book club book) for what seems like fewer and fewer minutes every day, and I normally don’t end it until after 6, if even then, as our team works into the night, so I often do, too. Weekends are often filled with the same. This is why you don’t see me teaching yoga too much any more, as much as I miss it.
Marketing never, ever ends, and you can never rest on your laurels, whatever that even means, and neither does running your own business, for anyone looking to go down this route. That essentially means I’m behind a computer all day every day working to ensure our clients are getting people in their doors. Spending all my time behind a computer means the last thing I want to do many weeks is type my blog.
Even though it’s my favorite thing to do.
Because of that, I miss deadlines from time to time. I don’t allow myself to miss my client deadlines, so I miss my own. Isn’t that funny though – I am putting others before myself. Don’t we do that? I guess you could say yes but they pay your bills and this is just a silly little blog. And that would be true, but this silly little blog is my passion. It’s my curiosity. It’s what I prefer to be doing, if I could do anything in a little magic world where bills are paid by fairies and achievements were praised by level of creativity: cook, read, write, share.
So I missed yesterday’s weekly deadline: publish a recipe every Thursday. The recipe I had completed, yet the words I simply couldn’t get myself enough time to focus in on this page. And the recipes, they are important to me – but it’s the words that I like the most. The recipes are just the way to get the words out into this little world without just being a random blogger. If I give you something, maybe you’ll read and then maybe we’ll have more things to share with each other.
Maybe my new guide will be: publish a recipe a week and whatever day you can get around to it is the day that it’s posted. That could work. We’ll see.
The funny thing about working and living in marketing and then having a passion of writing a blog is this: I know for a fact that if I changed the way this blog was written that more people would find me through google searches. I’ve known this for years, yet I refuse to do it. This space on the web is a space filled with random thoughts and yoga practice notes and meditation and reading. It’s to connect people. The words, I want them to be fluid and natural and not flooded with certain “keywords” or written in ways in which the men behind the curtain at Google approve. I want them to be written how I write, and so from day 1, I refused to follow their algorithms.
I’ve had so many marketing professionals (who didn’t know I’m one, too) find me randomly over the years and make suggestions in order to “grow my reach” in this little blogging world, and I always refuse.
For me, quality comes first. Do I want this site appearing in google and more and more people reading? Of course I do. But I’m not willing to budge on my writing style in order to do so. And the good people at google, I get why they set parameters…and yet I won’t play ball.
I’ll do it for my clients, over and over and over again. I’ll do it for my yoga website. But not here. This space – it’s for the reader, not for an algorithm. It’s for you and me to connect naturally in whatever way we find each other. It’s to be honest about what’s going on and to connect with people who feel or don’t feel the same. People who simply want a discussion about things other than: the weather, their children, the person at work who pissed them off. That’s what it’s for.
So I hope we find each other, whether google approves or not. And I hope we all allow some deadlines to pass without judging, some breaks in our days for relief, and much more time for connection.
With love,
Jen.
Blogging Spring Salad with Avocado Cream Dressing
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/2 pd baby red potatoes, cubed
- 1 c. quinoa
- 1 large shallot, diced
- 3 large garlic cloves, minced
- 1 c. cashews
- 2 medium avocados
- 1 tbsp. olive oil
- 1 tsp. salt
- 2 large garlic cloves
- celery
- lettuce
- cucumber
- red bell pepper
- tomato
- carrots
Instructions
- Heat your oven to 425. Make the potatoes: slice them, mix with your favorite seasonings (I use olive oil, salt, pepper, chili powder), and roast for 20 minutes, flip in the pan, then 10 more minutes.
- Meanwhile, make the quinoa: cook according to directions, remove from heat, and then toss with the minced garlic and shallots.
- While all this is happening, start the dressing: in a Vitamix or high-powered blender, combine the: cashews, avocados, olive oil, salt, garlic cloves and 1 and 1/2 c. water. Blend on high for 1-2 minutes until creamy and combined. Set aside.
- Chop whatever veggies you like in your salad; I listed my faves above. Plate the salad ingredients, then add the quinoa and potatoes. Serve with the avocado dressing.
- The dressing will last about a day. Know that it'll brown on the top so just remove that top layer if you have leftovers. If there's only 1-2 people in your house, I suggest halving the dressing.