This morning, I opened the living room blinds to see the sun creeping up in the east. The sky was lavender; a mix of pink and blue. Blue! We haven’t seen a blue sky for a long, long time around here. You will have to excuse the hyperbole, but it feels like forever ago.
I have considered the purchase of a “happy light” to get me through this gloomy period. The winter months in Ohio are so dark, cold and gray. Always gray. Well, except for today of course.
Things seem so much more hopeful when the sun is out. Life is brighter, happier and significantly more beautiful. The gray days make me irritable and longing for summer, when daylight hangs around until my children are already tucked into bed. On the rare occasion that we see the sun in the winter, the warmth on my skin makes the slush beneath my feet just a little more bearable.
There are only so many Chai tea lattes a girl can drink to keep her warm and only so many layers of fleece. I need the sun. I need its glow, the color it brings and the way that it produces a contrast between a frozen landscape and the sky.
The sun makes me feel good. Today, I feel good.
You know how you have a day off, but your kids still have to go to school and you scream, “This is going to be GLORIOUS!”, and it immediately goes downhill when you shovel the driveway for the fifth time in a week, and drop off the kids at school (which is not the same as dropping them off at the pool) and they argue the whole time, then you go to the ob/gyn and get a pap smear, and after that you go to the grocery store for the first time since December 23rd and trudge through the snow with a very full cart, then go to the pharmacy and find out they don’t have your medicine in stock, and after you take your boatload of food home and put it away you go to your mom’s house to shovel her driveway, and you’re sweating, and coughing, and it’s heavy, and your coffee is cold, and then a man comes across the street with his snowblower and finishes the job for you, and that man is 90 years old, and he smiles at you, and having crossed his (snowblown) path makes your heart happy and the day ends up being glorious after all?
Yeah, me too.
I started blogging roughly three-and-a-half years ago. I didn’t plan on having it take me anywhere. I didn’t know that I would end up loving it so much that it would become my passion, or that blogging would lead me to conferences and Twitter, which would lead to my new job.
My whole life has come full circle, right here for the world to see.
Okay, so maybe the world doesn’t read my blog, but I’m pretty sure my Aunt Shirley does. Sometimes. In fact, the 30 or so hits I used to get each week have grown into thousands. I don’t know where you people came from, but I’m glad you did.
I love it here. It is my home. And, much to my husband’s chagrin, I like to redecorate.
Out of all of the celebrities I have met through blogging, like her…
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| Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi. Couldn’t the pretty have been shared a little? Not fair. |
…and this fella…
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| The center of our solar system, also known as the Jimmy Dean sun. |
…there are none whom I consider to be more inspiring than this lady here.
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| a) Don’t look at my hair b) I told you not to look! c) Nice glow in the dark necklace, Momo |
That woman next to me is Ree Drummond, also known as The Pioneer Woman. Also, I am in no way comparing Ree to the Jimmy Dean sun. Though she can make a room brighter just by walking in. Just sayin’.
Ree is one of the most popular, female bloggers in the world. She is an amazing photographer, mother and author (of a cookbook, a romance story and a children’s book…how well rounded can someone be?). To top it off, she’s about as down to earth as a person can get. I want to be Ree when I grow up.
Now, I don’t take a lot of advice about what to do with my blog. I follow the advertising guidelines of my publishing network (Hi, BlogHerads!), but that’s about it. This is my hangout for crying out loud. Stay off my lawn!
But, when the intelligent and successful Ree Drummond tells you that you should “change things up”, you should listen. She wasn’t talking to me, specifically, but rather to her audience in her “Ten Important Things I’ve Learned About Blogging” section.
A couple of years ago I did change things up when I requested a custom blog design from Courtney of Judith Shakes Design. She took a mish-mash of my ideas and made this page exactly the way I wanted. It was a dramatic and brilliant alteration for which I am not responsible. Dang it.
Now the time has come, once again, to “change things up”. I’m eventually leaving this platform and going where there is more to offer. I’m getting a new custom theme, custom icons, a new twitter background, new page templates, miscellaneous graphics, all of my posts transferred and SO much more.
Courtney at Judith Shakes Design is doing ALL of it.
Courtney is about eighty shades of smart and I am not. I want professional results, so I’m letting a professional handle it. I’m taking Ree’s advice and running with it, but I’m letting someone else do all of the exercise. Wait…I am smart!
I didn’t plan on this blog taking me anywhere, but it did, and I don’t want the same scenery for my entire journey. I’ll create the experience, but Courtney will be my travel guide so I don’t get lost along the way.
And, if YOU book space on the Judith Shakes Design calendar for a design project of at least $300, Courtney will give you $50 off with the code – MOMO4EVER.
You. Are. Welcome.
If you’re a blogger, come and join me. Let’s go places we never thought possible. Life is too short to just stand still.
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