This Year I Want To Blog More

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Actually dressed up for a show #selfie #nye

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Happy New Year!

Every year, I seem to have a new opinion on the whole idea of New Years Resolutions. Last year, my new year resolution was to have none. And it was awesome. I wasn’t disappointed for breaking promises to myself. In fact, I had a pretty great year and finally achieved a few milestones that I’ve been struggling to reach for a few years.

I was finally employed (twice) and for the first time ever, moved out of my parent’s house. I travelled and attended my best friend’s wedding in PEI. I took on more collaborative projects and forced myself to leave the house and make new friends. I was truly really busy for the first time. This led to putting a lot of blog posts on the backburner. I have plenty of content in the queue that is my mind, but I just haven’t put the pen to paper (or I guess the fingers to the keyboard). My excuses were plenty. I’m too tired after work. I don’t have time. I could be watching more movies on Netflix. The problem is they were all stupid excuses. The more I pushed writing, the harder it was to get back into it.

That’s why for 2015. I want to blog more. Blog more here. Blog more on Ride the Tempo. I’ve already pushed myself to start over the holidays. As much as I can, I will blog everyday. Whether it is a photo blog , a drawing, or a piece of longform writing, I will hit the blue publish button and send something into the interwebs. It will encourage me to find time for a bit of time everyday to be creative.  Afterall, to improve at something is to do it every day and here on my personal blog, there are no boundaries.

Hi, people of 2015, you will be seeing much more of me.

Finding the Time to Blog When You Have a Full-Time Job

Moleskine diary

For a while, I was just living the freelance life and underemployed. That meant hours were flexible and I had a lot of free time to do whatever I wanted when I was between projects. My blogs and sites were active and fruitful.

Recently, I have obtained work that is more time consuming and has unpredictable office hours. This made it more difficult to schedule time in advance to blog, because time seemed like a scarce luxury. Obviously since there are still posts churning out on all my content streams, I have found ways to adjust to this new transition. Here are some tips:

Find out what your internet policy is at work. This is an important first step if you want to blog at work (during downtimes/breaks of course). Some companies don’t allow you to use internet services outside of work purposes and you must abide by those rules. Personally, I don’t blog at work because I have way too many other things to be doing so the next few steps are more useful.

Schedule Content in Advance. To keep my music blog alive and active, I schedule a lot of content in advance. There’s always a period of time where I’m like OKAY LET’S SIT DOWN AND BLOG on weekends or evenings and I churn out a bunch of content and schedule them over the next few days. This works better for posts that aren’t particularly time sensitive.

Carry a notebook. I always have a notebook in the vicinity to brainstorm things I want to write about the moment they come up.

Find inspiration everywhere. This applies most when it’s a personal blog and therefore you can post whatever you want – food, photos, projects, inspiration, thoughts. The blog is about YOU after all. Life changes constantly, and there are tons of exciting and thought-provoking things to write about at every corner.

Take advantage of your Smartphone. By now, most people have a smartphone. Whether, it’s an Android or an iPhone, there is a wealth of apps that sync to the cloud. There’s even a WordPress app on both platforms. These can be great for long commutes. Personally, I use OneNote on my iPhone because it syncs with the version on my laptop. I draft a lot of posts while on the train. In fact, this one was partially written on a commute.

Don’t stop. The moment you stop actively blogging for a while, it becomes tough to start again as each day passes. It’s all about finding new ways to fit writing into a new schedule. Sometimes when you have a free half hour, you just have to make yourself sit down and write. It’s totally possible, you just have to stop giving yourself excuses and do it.

 

I originally published this post on Medium.

Who Should Blog?

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A couple weeks ago, I wrote one of my many restaurant experiences on this blog. I hit publish and then proceeded to paste the link on my Facebook wall. Most of my friends enjoy reading of local eats, so I do the occasional share on social networks. A minute later somebody posted this rather passive aggressive Facebook status:

“Unless you know what a mirepoix, paysanne or bain-marie is you shouldn’t write about food. Eating out with a camera doesn’t make you a writer.”

Technically, it wasn’t personally directed at me, but the timing was just too perfect. For the record, I do know what all those things are without looking them up on Wikipedia. I do my fine share of making fried rice, cutting vegetables for stir fry and watching the food network. Anyways, all those things are irrelevant to what makes a blogger.

If you’re reading a food blog, unless it’s a recipe blog, nobody cares if the carrots were julienned. In the Yelp and Foursquare era, people just want to know that things taste good. That is what the food (books and other) posts are for, to give an opinion on something. If you don’t care about my opinion than kindly hit the x at the top right corner (or left if you’re on a Mac). Also, what are you doing here in the first place? I have a modest following of people who do care.

In the internet age, everyone has the right to blog. All food critics probably started out paying for meals themselves and evaluating them. Just like all music bloggers started out paying for concerts and practising their camera shots and reviews. Blogging is not a god-given right to somebody with a pretentious degree in a subject area. In fact I don’t think people would even want to read something with a lot of condescending jargon. Would anybody care if I told you some song had too many parallel 5ths? If you are passionate about a subject, or if you just like sharing things regularly then go ahead and blog.

I lulled on this subject for the past few weeks and then realized. Who cares what one dude thinks? As long as you can maintain readership and a following on your blog (even if it is a few really dedicated fans), then keep writing. You have every right to.

Ps. I love all my followersThank you for continuously following my life adventures and nerdism. I promise to bring you a lot more in 2013.

The People Who Read This Blog (or So I Imagine)

I haven’t written here in a while. I was busy attending NXNE last week and catching up on photo editing this week. However, I looked at my WordPress Dashboard today and there was a striking amount of people visiting in the past week or so. I honestly light up when I even know 10 people read this, but the past little while have been in the 400-500s.

I started to ponder, what you all must be like and came up with this list of people who I think read this blog:

Trolls
You people search the internet for random things. Some way or another, your quest to find junk landed you here.

Dog Lovers
My bichon is obviously the most adorable thing in the world. I assume 90% of you follow this just to look at cute puppy photos.

Food Lovers
Maybe you’re a food lover, and you are here for the delicious photos of food. I’m not sure if my recipes are well written enough to warrant anybody following them, but I am going on an adventure to eat all sorts of things!

Adventure Time Fans
I’ve only ever had one post about Adventure Time, but it is the top Google search of all time here.

My Best Friends
Thank you for visiting, just because we’re BFFs. I know you probably think all that on here is terrible, but you’ll come back anyway.

Things I Learned So Far From Video Blogging


On my music blog I started making video album reviews. It was definitely something that I had my doubts of doing because of some great fear of not being liked or that people would make fun of me. It has only been a few weeks, but here are some things that I took away experience so far:

Inspiration in Colours


The other day I went with my sister to Staples because she needed some things for school. I realized my new Pacman journal had been lacking inspiration lately, stuck in a sort of writer’s block. Then I realized inspiration just like life isn’t black and white. I decided to make my journal as colourful as life and my thoughts are supposed to be.

Are you stuck in a rut with writing?

Perhaps, adding a little colour can spark that brain. Don’t worry, I’ll stick to coloured pens on paper. I think youd all stop reading if this blog had multicolour text.
Your life should be more than just black and white, a pop of colour anywhere whether it be pens, make-up, wardrobe can add a little twist in your life.

Or I could just be trying to find a crazy excuse to buy beautiful pens.

Dear Journal…


It’s been a while since I last kept a written journal, even though I have a billion notebooks. I was 14 then, and I used to write about all the trivial experiences of being a teenager.

My sister got me this Moleskine diary/planner and I decided to use it to catalogue my daily thoughts and musings, most of which will probably end up in the form of blog posts here. With an iPhone giving me daily reminders, I don’t need a book to do it too. Nash made fun of me for referring to to the journal as an offline blog, because really blogs are online journals.

I have to say putting pen to paper again is pretty exciting. If you’re ever having a moment of writer’s block on the computer, stepping away from it really helps. There are times when chicken scratches become something much more and doodles make great stories.

I am in love with writing and since I journal about my dreams, I thought it would be appropriate to write what’s on my mind while it’s awake, so prepare to journey with me in 2012. Thanks for reading and hope we have a great year together!

We’ve Come A Long Way From Geocities


Yesterday I was on my Smartphone writing a blog post on my phone and I thought to myself, Man, we’ve come a long way from Geocities Page Builder.

Dude, I remember the existence of Netscape and Dial-Up internet. Now I have the EXTREME ULTIMATE whatever internet package from Rogers. Maximum speed, maximum bandwidth. Oh, and now, a smartphone and an iPad. What more can a girl addicted to the internet ask for?

Blogging to Fill the Void

Yesterday I read a really interesting article on Behyped on why you should start a blog while unemployed. I recently entered this mysterious realm myself. And it’s scary.

I’ve been in school for what seemed like forever (elementary, highschool, University, and the Entertainment program at Metalworks). Being finally out is sort of frightening as I try to figure out how to find employment in an exciting yet highly competitive industry. I however find myself more and more addicted to blogging as a strange way to cope with doing nothing.