Author Archives: suzie81speaks

FOMO Bloggers: Why You’re Harming Your Own Blog

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FOMO Bloggers: how the fear of missing out can actually be hurting you and your blog!

Ethel has written a post. It’s a great post and it’s receiving lots of positive feedback. Janey wants lots of positive feedback too. Janey copies the post, changes a few words around, adds in a few extra ideas and publishes it as her ‘brand new, completely original post’ in all of the 232 Facebook groups that she’s a member of. Nobody will notice, right?

In the last week I’ve read two articles that I immediately connected with. The first, a completely fabulous post by Kate Toon – 19 Things NOT to Do in a Facebook Group – which hilariously highlighted just some of the silliness that I witness daily, and the second by Elena Peters – What’s Up With the Fast Blogging? – a short set of thoughts on the misconceptions of overnight blogging success and the desperation of bloggers to achieve it. They’re both completely different posts, but they essentially focus on the same thing:

FOMO.

Fear Of Missing Out, an all-consuming desire to keep up with everyone else, to have what they have, to do what they’re doing. Continue reading →

The Online Power of a Squirrel…

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The Bloke is an avid photographer. He particularly likes wildlife, architectural and landscape photography and his pictures are utterly fantastic – we can be in the same place at the same time, photographing the same thing and he always manages to create something beautiful and artistic with seemingly very little effort. I’m so proud of him, and extremely jealous of his skills.

However, there’s one particular thing that he has an affinity for…

Squirrels.

Living in Birmingham, UK, we have an abundance of them and very little else. I’m enormously envious whenever I go on Instagram and see images of incredible wildlife in people’s back yards – I saw a racoon in Central Park a few months ago when we were on our honeymoon and that was honestly the first time I’ve ever seen one in real life… Perhaps I shouldn’t have stood there and yelled “oh my god it’s a raccoon!” at the top of my voice while pointing at the poor thing like a maniac, but it was a bigger deal to me than most. Continue reading →

A Massage, Merchandise and Motivation

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There’s an awesome quote that appeared on Pinterest a little while ago by Colette Werden:

‘It’s ok if you fall down and lose your spark. Just make sure that when you get back up, you rise as the whole damn fire…’

This. This is what I needed to remember last week, and that’s exactly what I did. I’ve got into the habits of doing smaller jobs every day, but this week I was feeling particularly fired so up decided to throw myself at much larger tasks and goals. As a result, my mind feels clearer, my space is tidier, my blog stats are up, I’ve lost 5lbs and I have a whole list of positive things that will be happening in the future (no, I’m not pregnant before everyone starts freaking out). Continue reading →

How to Spend 4 1/2 Days in New York City

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The Bloke and I recently visited NYC on our honeymoon and had an absolutely incredible time. It’s a fast paced, exciting and vibrant city that has interesting things to see and do on every block, but it isn’t possible to do it all in just one visit, particularly on a limited budget.

It is, however, possible to experience an enormous amount of things in a short amount of time and without spending an enormous amount of money, and we’re proof of this as we’ve just done it ourselves.

It is worth noting at this point that we were staying at a fairly centralised hotel – Hotel @ Times Square on West 46th Street, near 6th Avenue, so it was possible to easily walk to a number of the locations we visited on the first few days, but the subway is efficient enough that it is easy and inexpensive to get from one side of Manhattan to another in a short space of time. Continue reading →

The Festering Process: How I Deal With Anger

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In my experience, there are usually three ways in which people deal with anger.

The first group go from zero to sixty very quickly, let everything fly, calm down just as quickly and move on.

The second take their time – after the initial incident the rage builds and spreads over a period of days, reaching its peak long after everyone else have got on with their lives.

The third have the ability to shut off, compartmentalise and just walk away.

I am in the second group. I go from zero to sixty in about four days. It doesn’t happen often, but when something truly upsets me (and we’re not talking just a general level of minor irritation here) then I start what The Bloke refers to as ‘The Festering Process,’ during which I mull everything over to the point where I end up in such a state that even functioning beyond a certain level becomes difficult for a while. Continue reading →

110+ Blog Post Ideas

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Blog post ideas for when bloggers block strikes!

I’m asked all the time for ideas for blog posts and I’ve been through quite lengthy periods of Bloggers Block over the last few months, so here is a list of useful ideas that can hopefully spark a whole bunch of new posts for your blog! I’ve categorised many of them as best I can.

Blogging

1. How to start a blog from scratch.
2. Why I started blogging.
3. The origins of my blog name.
4. My blogging goals.
5. How to increase your traffic.
6. How to use Twitter/Facebook/StumbleUpon/Pinterest/Flipboard…
7. How to create a social media schedule.
8. How to use SEO effectively on your blog.
9. How to grow a mailing list.
10. A discussion about the pros and cons of dot com or self-hosted. Continue reading →

How to Survive the January Blues

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Surviving the January Blues

After a few weeks of excitement, joy, celebrations and consuming my entire body weight in chocolatey goodness, its back to work for many of us. The decorations have been taken down and my house looks quite dull and bare, I feel sick and lethargic after eating so much and I’ve already managed to overwhelm myself with my to-do list. On a day like today, where it has been dull and rainy all day, it’s difficult not to sink into a wallowing state of mind.

It’s not a new thing – I go through the same cycle at the start of every year, but each time I have found ways to cope a little better. Continue reading →

2017: A Year to Remember!

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Sunset at The Top of The Rock, NYC

It’s already New Year’s Eve 2017, and what a year its been! Here are just some of the highlights…

Watching my niece – Baby Squidge – develop into a little bundle of energy, with little blonde locks, bright blue eyes and a cheeky grin. Her arrival has brought my whole family much closer together…

Planning and organising the wedding and getting a kick out of creating my own centrepieces and seating cards. We also managed to save an enormous amount of money and I had a blast finding the bargains so that it was cheap, but didn’t LOOK cheap.

Meeting up with blog friends in person separately from the Bloggers Bash – staying at Sacha’s house with Sacha, Helen and Lucy then seeing Tiffany and Donna in London, meeting a bunch of my favourite bloggers in Birmingham for lunch and having Elena stay at my house for a few days when she came over from Canada. Continue reading →

A Fabulous Christmas…

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Christmas

Turkey and stuffing, garlic and rosemary roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings, honey-roasted parsnips, gravy, chocolate, crisps and dips, salted caramel cake…

At the minute, I don’t think that I want to look at food ever again.

It’s been three glorious days of Christmassy fabulousness. The Bloke and I spent our first Christmas at home together – normally we individually travel and stay with our own families – and it was also our first as a married couple. I had spent weeks planning and organising so that by the time it got to Christmas Eve we didn’t have to do anything, and it paid off. Continue reading →

Happy Christmas Eve!

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It’s Christmas Eve, and it’s already been a day of firsts…

It’s the first time I’ve not had to travel, the first time woken up in my own home on Christmas Eve, it’s the first Christmas with The Bloke as a married couple, and I realised the other day that this was the first year that I’ve not had to organise, participate in or watch a Christmas concert or assembly since I was about eight years old… Admittedly it’s an odd feeling not to be waking up at my mum’s house with some sort of awful soap opera on the TV and two excited doggies jumping on me while I try to put various Christmas themed hats on them. Continue reading →