{"id":4712,"date":"2012-01-23T00:01:10","date_gmt":"2012-01-23T05:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/?p=4712"},"modified":"2020-12-09T06:22:03","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T11:22:03","slug":"things-blogging-has-taught-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/things-blogging-has-taught-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Things Blogging Has Taught Me"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Friends-<\/p>\n<p>No new recipes today&#8230;Today&#8217;s post is straight from the heart (and a little long, sorry about that).&nbsp;Recently I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of work on my blog and it&#8217;s got me thinking about some of the things I&#8217;ve learned over the last year and a half.<\/p>\n<p>I thought I would share them with you guys in the rambly sort of way I do best, so here we go&#8230;in no particular order:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/things-blogging-has-taught-me\/bloglessons\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4753\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-4753 size-full\" title=\"An honest, candid look at some of the lesson I've learned from being a blogger. \" src=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/bloglessons.jpg\" alt=\"An honest, candid look at some of the lesson I've learned from being a blogger. \" width=\"640\" height=\"498\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/bloglessons.jpg 640w, https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/bloglessons-250x195.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/bloglessons-550x428.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a class=\"pin-it-button\" href=\"http:\/\/pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=www.theleangreenbean.com&amp;media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theleangreenbean.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F01%2Fbloglessons.jpg\">Pin It<\/a><br \/>\n<script src=\"http:\/\/assets.pinterest.com\/js\/pinit.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<strong>-Blogging is hard.<\/strong> It&#8217;s hard to find several hours a day to devote to blog writing, reading, cooking and taking pictures. It&#8217;s hard to constantly be creative and try to think of new things that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">you<\/span> haven&#8217;t blogged about, let alone anyone else. It&#8217;s hard to be organized enough to line up guest posts or prep extra posts when you have a busy week coming up. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">But I make time and I put in the effort, because I love it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-You could easily drown in the sea of social media if you let yourself.<\/strong> When I first started blogging, the only thing I worried about was publishing the post. Occasionally I&#8217;d share the link on my personal facebook page. That was it. Then I made a facebook page for my blog. Then I got a twitter account. Then I joined pinterest. And now, it feels like between stumble upon, posterous, tumblr, foodbuzz, youtube and others, that there are million other social media sites that I&#8217;m not even using&#8230;and quite frankly, I don&#8217;t have time for all of them. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">So I choose to stay active on the social media sites I enjoy most, instead of stretching myself a million different directions and not enjoying any of them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-You will get jealous of other bloggers<\/strong> Do I get jealous when a blogger gets their 98th picture accepted by Foodgawker while I can&#8217;t get them to accept even one of mine? Yes! Or when someone makes it into the Foodbuzz Top 9 for the 10th day in a row? Absolutely. Or when someone gets the same number of pageviews in a day that I do in an entire month? Sure. But I&#8217;ve come a long way since I started blogging because I realized that <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">it just doesn&#8217;t matter<\/span>. I can be happy for them and their successes, while still being proud of myself and the things I&#8217;ve accomplished. I can work really hard on a recipe or a post and just because it doesn&#8217;t get a certain number of page views or pins or whatever, DOESN&#8217;T MEAN IT ISN&#8217;T AN AWESOME POST! <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">If you find yourself being jealous of other bloggers, &nbsp;remember that somewhere, someone out there might be jealous of you and the amazing things you&#8217;re doing!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-You don&#8217;t have to do everything other bloggers are doing.<\/strong> On the food side- You don&#8217;t have to spend 1 hour after you cook a meal taking pictures of it every single night. If you&#8217;re not in the mood, snap a quick picture and dig in. Your blog can still be successful if you don&#8217;t take amazing pictures. One the fitness side- You don&#8217;t have to go out and run 20 miles every day to call yourself fitfluential, a runner or an athlete. If running 3 miles is hard for you, then <strong>every.single.time<\/strong> you run 3 miles, you should be proud of yourself because that is an accomplishment for <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong>YOU<\/strong><\/span>. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Quit comparing yourself to others and start celebrating all the awesome things <strong>you<\/strong> can do.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-No one can make you feel inferior unless you let them.<\/strong> There is absolutely no reason why your 20 minute workout can&#8217;t be considered just as good as someone else&#8217;s 2 hours of running. &nbsp;I&#8217;ll probably never run a marathon&#8230;let&#8217;s be honest, I can&#8217;t run more than 4 miles without a) feeling like i&#8217;m going to die and b) being just plain bored. I don&#8217;t enjoy running long distances, so i&#8217;m not going to do it. I <strong>do<\/strong> enjoy putting together an amazing 20 minute circuit workout and calling it a day&#8230;so that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m gonna do- <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">And that&#8217;s fine!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-You don&#8217;t have to blog multiple times a day, or even every day to be successful.<\/strong> There are bloggers out there who religiously blog 3 times a day. And there&#8217;s nothing wrong with that. It works for them&#8230;I admire their dedication and their ability to come up with that much stuff to talk about. And I read those blogs and love them&#8230;but I&#8217;ll never be like them. AND THAT&#8217;S OK. It took me a long time, but i finally realized that I don&#8217;t need to blog every day in order to keep my readers. In fact, sometimes I go three days without blogging, and guess what! NOTHING happens. People still read when I do post, they still comment, they&#8217;re still there if I decide to put living life ahead of blogging. And just because I don&#8217;t blog every day doesn&#8217;t mean i&#8217;m not dedicated to my readers. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Blogging is supposed to be fun! If I turn it into a chore\/competition\/requirement, then what&#8217;s the point?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-Just because you&#8217;re a food blogger doesn&#8217;t mean you have to like all the same foods as everyone else.<\/strong> I don&#8217;t like kale chips, or coconut water, or dates filled with peanut butter &#8230; <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">And I don&#8217;t have to pretend to like them just to fit in.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-Numbers don&#8217;t have to matter<\/strong> I realize that some people blog to make money or as their full-time job&#8230;and to them, it probably does matter how many page views they get because for them, page views = pay check. And that&#8217;s fine. But that&#8217;s not me. Blogging is not really a source of income for me. Sure I make a little money here and there&#8230;.like enough to treat myself to an extra frozen yogurt, or occasionally pay someone to do some behind the scenes techy stuff to my blog&#8230;but it&#8217;s nothing life changing. AND THAT&#8217;S OK! When I first started blogging, I looked at my stats page every day. I let whether I had a lot of page views or not as many as normal control my mood. It stressed me out constantly and I was always feeling pressured to do something bigger and better. So I stopped looking. Quit cold turkey. Now I never look at my numbers unless I have to submit them to a company for an opportunity. And it was so freeing! I know not everyone takes this approach, and that many people will continue to check their numbers all the time&#8230;but for me, it works. It helps me keep myself in check and helps keep blogging what it&#8217;s supposed to be- FUN. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I blog because I want to, and it doesn&#8217;t matter if there&#8217;s one person reading my post every day, or one thousand.<br \/>\n<\/span>*This doesn&#8217;t mean I&#8217;m not interested in growing my blog, gaining readers or making improvements to my site&#8230;it just means that I&#8217;ve learned to not let the numbers dictate my feelings or rule my life!<\/p>\n<p>SO, some of those things may have been viewed as blogging negatives, although I don&#8217;t really think they are&#8230;but I wanted to also focus on some of the positives&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><strong>-The blogging community is the most inspirational &amp; motivating group of people I&#8217;ve ever been a part of.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve never been surrounded by so many amazing people that share the same interests as me, get excited about the same things as I do or are as supportive as they are. If I&#8217;m lacking motivation to go work out, I turn to Twitter and am usually up off the couch within 5 minutes. If I don&#8217;t know what to make for dinner, I just open my google reader and I usually have about 27 ideas by the time I&#8217;m done reading all the new blog posts. If I have an amazing workout and I tweet about it, I immediately have at least 5 people telling me what a good job I did or how awesome I am. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">It doesn&#8217;t get any better than that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-You can make good friends through blogging.<\/strong> Even though I&#8217;ve met very few bloggers in real life, there are several that I consider to be some of my best friends. I email them about life and they can relate. I text them when I&#8217;m stressed about school because they&#8217;re going through the same thing. I send them packages on their birthday because I know it will make them smile. It&#8217;s been an amazing way for me to find some new friends, which is something I never expected would happen when I started this blog. <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Embrace every opportunity. You never know when one will positively change your life for the better!<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>-After all your hard work, you will have something you can be proud to call your own.<\/strong> When I started my blog, I had no idea how long it would last, or how much a part of my life it would become. &nbsp;When I look back at some of my first posts, it&#8217;s fun to see how much I&#8217;ve grown as a person, developed my identity as a blogger and gained confidence both in blogging and in life. And you know what? <strong>I&#8217;m freakin&#8217; proud of myself. I&#8217;m proud of how awesome my blog looks. I&#8217;m proud of how many hours of work I&#8217;ve put into blogging. I&#8217;m proud of myself for the times I&#8217;ve stepped outside my comfort zone. I&#8217;m proud of all the new foods I&#8217;ve tried. I&#8217;m proud that I&#8217;ve inspired other people to make healthier choices&#8230;.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I&#8217;m proud of ME.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>And if you can relate to this post at all, <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">I hope you&#8217;re proud of yourself too<\/span> for all the amazing things you&#8217;ve done with your life! I hope you&#8217;ll stop comparing yourself to others, &nbsp;stop trying to be someone else&#8230;and start to enjoy just being you!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Cheers!<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;Lindsay&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Sunday&#8217;s Workout: I seem to be in a running mood this week, but sometimes I like to break it up with a little break or two. I set out with the goal of running 3 miles total, one mile at a time. In between, I did three 4-min tabatas to give myself some active recovery!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/things-blogging-has-taught-me\/jan22-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4782\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4782\" style=\"border-image: initial; border: 2px solid black;\" title=\"Jan22\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Jan221.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"411\" height=\"425\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Jan221.jpg 411w, https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/Jan221-193x200.jpg 193w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 411px) 100vw, 411px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a class=\"pin-it-button\" href=\"http:\/\/pinterest.com\/pin\/create\/button\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theleangreenbean.com&amp;media=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.theleangreenbean.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F01%2FJan221.jpg&amp;description=3%20Mile%20Run%20With%20Tabatas\">Pin It<\/a><script src=\"http:\/\/assets.pinterest.com\/js\/pinit.js\" type=\"text\/javascript\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I ran the three miles in 27:52 (9:17 pace) and each Tabata took 4 minutes. I rested for 1 min after each Tabata.&nbsp;I set the treadmill at 6.5mph for each mile. It was tough, but not impossible. By the time I got halfway through the last mile, I wanted to take the speed down to 6.0 SO BADLY but I fought a mental battle with myself and told myself I could do it at the speed I was at, and I did!<\/p>\n<p>Today&#8217;s Workout:<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly it was 11pm and I hadn\u2019t done my workout yet! After 2 days of cardio I decided to do some heavy weights w\/ some of my fav arms &amp; legs exercises.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/things-blogging-has-taught-me\/jan23-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-4783\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4783\" style=\"border-image: initial; border: 2px solid black;\" title=\"jan23\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/jan231.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"499\" height=\"178\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/jan231.jpg 499w, https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/01\/jan231-250x89.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 499px) 100vw, 499px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For me, theses were heavier weights than I usually use to do my high rep circuit workouts so this was a challenge for me. I tried to pick a weight that I would really struggle with in the last set. This took me 20 minutes and I felt great<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Friends- No new recipes today&#8230;Today&#8217;s post is straight from the heart (and a little long, sorry about that).&nbsp;Recently I&#8217;ve been doing a lot of work on my blog and it&#8217;s got me thinking about some of the things I&#8217;ve learned over the last year and a half. I thought I would share them with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4712","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4712"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38297,"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4712\/revisions\/38297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.theleangreenbean.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}