How Are You? Checking In and Sweet Words From Readers…

how are youWelcome back, friends!! How are you?? I hope you all had a splendid Memorial Day weekend and kicked off the unofficial beginning of summer in style. As we ease back into our routines (is that EVER an easy thing??), it occurred to me: You all are always so wonderful and listen to me prattle on endlessly about everything — even the most mundane things — and I am SO grateful for that! So I thought today would be the perfect time to ask YOU…

What’s going on in your corner of the world? What exciting things have you been up to lately?? I’d LOVE to hear all about your life, friends!!! Also, I’ve been getting lots of sweet emails ever since my Good Housekeeping essay came out! I’ve so enjoyed hearing from everyone and thought I’d share some of those sweet words from readers…

–“I have MS and am 20 years older than you, but I just read your article in Good Housekeeping! Great writer, funny as hell, and oh yeah disabled. I am so used to pity looks, disgusted looks, and so on…that I stopped looking at all. So excited to see a woman willing to bare her soul…”

–“I just read your story in June’s Good Housekeeping. You are quite an inspiration. Your story made me think of my own dad and how we supported each other through the bad times and how much we enjoyed the good times.”

–“I read your article in Good Housekeeping on “Father’s Day”. I must say your depiction of your father in your life brought me to tears. You are very lucky to have had such wonderful memories with a great man. Congratulations on your successes in life and overcoming the challenges you have faced with your disability.”

–“I came across your essay in Good Housekeeping this month and wanted to tell you how much I loved it. Your father sounds like an incredible man. I then of course headed over to your blog and spent an hour or so reading through it this morning, and I just had to write and tell you how much it inspired me. I really struggle with being open and vulnerable as a writer, and you do it incredibly well on all kinds of topics–love, relationships, depression, body image, fashion. I’d love to be half as open as you are on a tenth of the topics!”

–“I just wanted to let you know that I LOVED your writing piece in Good Housekeeping. The love you and your Dad shared reminded me of my relationship with my Dad. We are lucky women, aren’t we? It was very touching. You are a great writer! I just discovered your blog after reading your article and will start following. Keep up the great work!”

And, look at this!!! Another piece of excitement I JUST discovered when I logged on to So About What I Said this morning…

how are youWhaaat? Can you believe it? Almost nine years later and 5,700 posts — I guess this whole blogging thing is going to stick, huh?

Anyway, hope you all are having a marvelous Tuesday! I’ve got some fun posts planned for the rest of the week, so STAY TUNED… xoxo

[Top photo via We Heart It]

What Does It Mean to #DressLikeAWoman?

What does it mean to #DressLikeAWomanSo! I’ve been thinking A LOT about this hashtag lately. I went from confusion to utter disgust over who supposedly said it (and let’s be real here…he probably did say it!) to sadness to just plain frustration. And then, like I typically do, I did some hard thinking on this very question: What does it mean to #DressLikeAWoman?

For me, this is what it means to #DressLikeAWoman — a strong, independent, self-assured woman who knows her own mind and isn’t afraid to speak it. That’s me, above, in my old office when I was a college newspaper adviser, and I think it perfectly captures who I am. At my desk, which is now our kitchen table, I feel fierce and in charge — like I can conquer the world right from where I am. I look at that photo and I remember feeling like I was standing behind a podium instead of sitting behind a desk. I could do anything and I could be anything. I wasn’t bound by any rules or codes.

THAT is empowering, don’t you think? That’s what we should be teaching young women — we need to be showing them that what’s most important is who you are, not what you’re wearing. We need to be empowering women instead of dogmatically telling them that there is only one acceptable way for a woman to dress — both inside and outside of the workplace. I mean, our president may choose to live in the Stone Age. It doesn’t mean that we all have to.

I also spent some time scrolling through the #DressLikeAWoman hashtag on Twitter and I’m SO GLAD I did. The photos women posted of them in their natural elements were real, honest and such a powerful statement of who they are…

So, friends, what do you think it means to #DressLikeAWoman? Where do you feel most empowered and most like you? I’d certainly love to hear all about it, so tag a pic of yourself with the hashtag on Twitter and be sure to tag @melissablake so I see it!! #StrongWomen… xoxo

My Essay on HelloGiggles: “Are We Destined to Turn Into Our Mothers?”

Are We Destined to Turn Into Our MothersI’m not sure if it’s because of my age or just the natural passage of time, but I’ve had one central question rolling around in my head for the last several months: Are we destined to turn into our mothers? And even more specifically…is turning into our mothers really such a bad thing in the end?

So you can pretty much imagine my sheer excitement when I got to write about this very topic for HelloGiggles last week! My essay “Are We Destined to Turn Into Our Mothers?” is my third piece for the site and I’m incredibly happy with the way it turned out. Full disclosure: I didn’t let my mom read it before it was published, but luckily, she enjoyed the finished product, too!

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, and I hope it makes you think about the relationship you have with your own mother…

So why, then, have I felt like I see her every time I look in the mirror? Lately, her words have been coming out of my mouth.

It’s such a natural thing that it’s even shocking at times. I’ll spontaneously start talking out loud when I get frustrated with my computer. I’ll make a point of ordering my burger well done because you can never be too careful with prepared meats.

But I’ve heard stories from friends and have seen enough Lifetime movies to know that, as my grandparents used to say, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Sometimes, like in my case, it falls from that tree and surprises you by just how hard it smacks you right on the top of your head. That moment when we become a walking, talking mini-me of our mothers — well, it’s not exactly a moment we can plan for, can we? It happens, it takes us by surprise and all we can really do is try to integrate it into the adult we’ve become.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo

My Essay on HelloGiggles: “How a Recurring Dream Helped Me Overcome Impostor Syndrome”

recurring dreams impostor syndrome hellogigglesWe’ve talked about recurring dreams a few times on the blog and I’ve been plagued with some dozy dream reruns in my day — some involving hospitals and others involving my father. Pretty heavy stuff, huh? Why can’t I ever dream about gentlemen-ly pool boys over and over? That would be the stuff dreams are made of…

But I digress. I had one dream in particular, though, that started playing itself on a never-ending loop. It was the same scenario, with the same feelings, with the same, “what-the-heck-is-going-on?” vibe even after I’d wake up. And it wasn’t until I actually sat down and wrote about it — all of it — that I finally started putting the crazy puzzle pieces together. I finally saw the whole picture for what it was…

Impostor Syndrome.

Even better? The essay How a Recurring Dream Helped Me Overcome Impostor Syndrome was published on HelloGiggles today! It details the recurring dream I had about finding out that I technically never had enough credits to graduate college — yikes! If I wanted to get my degree, I’d have to go back and finish. ASAP. Looking back now, it’s obvious what the dream was all about, but at the time, everything was just one big ball of confusion.

Here’s an excerpt of the essay, and something tells me I’m not alone in my dream dilemmas…

I hated to admit it, but maybe I was suffering from a case of Impostor Syndrome, that phenomenon that fills our heads with all kinds of anxiety and doubts about our abilities.

The insecurities grow increasingly palpable until we’re questioning our very worth.

The more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t deny that my insecurities were getting the best of me. I felt like a complete fraud as I saw other writers getting published in the same magazines I’d been trying to break into for years; they made it look so easy. What was I doing wrong? Maybe I really didn’t have any idea what I was doing — but the scarier thought? Maybe I didn’t have what it takes to be a writer.

Our minds have a strange way of showing us the light during the darkest hours of the night. It’ll show us things we can’t see in the morning, and, maybe more importantly, it’ll show us those deep fears that we can’t admit — both to other people and to ourselves.

You can read the full essay here and I’d love to hear your thoughts. Feel free to email me anytime at mellow1422@aol.com and let’s chat! And of course, feel free to share my essay on Facebook, Twitter or even your local refrigerator. If you share on Twitter, be sure to tag me @melissablake so we can connect! I can’t wait to hear from you! Love you all… xoxo

Update Your Bookmarks! So About What I Said Is Back!

Hi…hey…howdy…hello!!

It’s been pretty quiet around these parts for the last few weeks, friends!! Aside from writing two election posts last week, you haven’t heard much from Yours Truly.

Until now!

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have seen my enthusiastically exciting tweets over the weekend. I got myself all in a tizzy because I knew today was going to be a VERY special day. It’s a day I’ve been talking about for awhile. It’s a day I sometimes thought would never come. It’s a day that is sure to go down in history — well, in my mind, anyway…

So About What I Said has a new home with its very own domain!! It’s official new home is melissablakeblog.com…

Yes, that’s right — let the celebration begin, let the church bells rings from every village in the land, let balloons and confetti line all the streets of the world!!

Can you tell I’m pretty stoked, friends?? In honor of this most glorious of days, I thought it only appropriate to celebrate with a big blowout posts. Although the blog looks the same, there are a few things that have changed, so let’s dive right in…

The Backstory

When I started So About What I Said in 2008 (this month, actually!), blogging was really in its infancy; no one knew exactly what this new medium was. Was it just an online diary? The Internet equivalent of simply spouting off? At first, people weren’t sure what the purpose was, never mind the idea that you could actually become a legitimate blogger, but I knew one thing: I needed to have an online presence — especially for my writing — so I naturally wrote my first post on Blogger.

The years flew by and something pretty amazing happened: I soon fell in love with everything about blogging and the whole blogging community. I discovered just how powerful this medium is, but more important than that, I found my career. It was sort of like finding my place in the world, like coming home, and I knew I wanted to do this for a very, very long time.

In the beginning, the Blogger platform served my needs perfectly. But the more I looked toward the future, the more I began to see the value of owning my own little corner of the Web. Not only is it more professional, but moving to a self-hosted WordPress blog would allow me more flexibility and opportunities; I could take my blogging and my writing to the next level.

That’s where Lisette from High Note Designs comes in. I may be creative, but, umm, tech-savvy has never been one of my strong suits — plus, the thought of trying to migrate EVERYTHING myself and losing 5,000+ posts nearly gave me a heart attack. Lisette is an amazing designer and specializes in moving blogs from Blogger to WordPress, so I knew I needed her in my corner. She was such a joy to work with and helped me bring my new blog vision to life. She never minded answering my millions of questions and took the time to explain everything. I felt like I was enrolled in WordPress 101 and it was a really fun learning experience! And, no blog posts were lost in the transfer process!

An Update on a Classic

Like I said, the overall design of the blog doesn’t look that much different. It was really important to me to keep the essence and feel the same, but you know me — I do like to tweak things every now and then. So you’ll notice a couple subtle changes. The most obvious? The blog went from three to two columns, which means that the sidebar needed to be rearranged a little. I also want to update my ‘Daily Reads’ section, so look for that coming soon — got any suggestions?

As for other changes to be aware of…

I changed the look of the drop-down menus…don’t you love the background color and font size?

aa2My social media icons are also new and spiffy looking. I wanted to incorporate more of the blog’s color palette (read: pink!) and also feature the social media’s logo on each one.

aa6When you click on posts, you’ll see two cool things at the bottom: A collection of Related Posts and social share buttons so you can go to town and share on your favorite social media platform. We’re still in the process of transferring all the photos from Blogger, so if you see a related post without its accompanying photo, don’t worry — all will be fixed once the photo transfer is complete!

Let’s Get Social

Speaking of social media, have you perused my social accounts lately? I gave them a little makeover too — and I did this all by myself!

aa3Facebook: After almost five years, I finally updated my profile photo and added a cover photo!

aa4I also fleshed out the ‘About’ section — some fun facts included!

aa5Twitter: I did the same thing — updated my profile pic and added a cover photo. Why did this take me so long? I also rewrote my bio, adding a few of my byline hot spots!

**Side note: In the name of full disclosure, I didn’t get a chance to make all the changes I wanted to on Pinterest and Instagram, but they are coming! It’s on my massive to-do list, so it will get done! AND, as always, feel free to subscribe to the blog via RSS or subscribe by email to stay in the know!

Are you still with me? Bonus points if you are! Anyway, I couldn’t be more grateful to Lisette for a smooth transition! I think the finished product truly reflects the heart of So About What I Said — honoring its past while also making room for its future. Of course, there are still some things to fix — like making sure all 42,000 photos transfer and fixing broken links — but I’m so excited to get back into the blogging groove! Thanks, friends, for sticking by me this month and being so patient while I got everything in order. I feel like a kid on Christmas morning!

Is there anything you’d like to see? Any posts you’re dying for me to write? Let me know and don’t forget to update your bookmarks to melissablakeblog.com! As always, I love you and our awesome community!! xoxo