Tag: blogging

A confession, an admission, and a proclamation

It’s Spring Break at UIC, and I’m taking stock of a few things. Having a few precious hours to reflect on my life, this is what I’ve come up with:

Confession: I’ve broken every rule of blogging lately, and I’ve let this little hub of amusements wither away. As far as the Internet is concerned, this site is totally dead. Today I’d like to confess that it’s only going to get worse.

Admission: I’ve been accepted to the PhD program at the University of Illinois at Chicago (what?!?). So that means my really busy schedule just got a whole lot busier.

Proclamation: I’m resolving today to learn how to say no – to recognize my limits (because I DO actually have them).

Something’s got to give, and unfortunately, for now, that’s One Crafty Lady. Effective immediately, we’re on a hiatus. But that doesn’t mean you can’t keep up with my life… I’ll still be micro-blogging on Tumblr, and you should catch me there. Maybe someday this blog and I will be together again, but let’s be honest: I don’t have time to make a recipe more complicated than instant rice, never mind blog about it.

So I’m asking you to not forget about me, but to make a shift to Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, or Instagram (or heck, even Snap Chat). I want and need to stay connected to real people (or at least the virtual ones that I think are reading my blog).

OH, and if you want to follow the PhD adventure beginning this Fall, you can catch me at Art Intercepts too.

When is it okay to call yourself a writer?

First of all, LOOK!  One Crafty Lady went and got herself a facelift… er… a new free theme (!).  What do you think of my new digs?

I thought I’d celebrate the recent crossing of 100 posts on the blog (this one here is 110) by dressing her up in fancy new clothes and offering my reflections on the journey to becoming the writer I am today.

Pondering a post. Just another day in the office…

I first started writing online in 2009 while I was finishing up my masters degree in Kinesiology.  I was creating static content for Art Intercepts, but began dabbling in blogging to express more opinion-based topics that I wanted to discuss with other dancers.  I kept a little private blog between myself and my friend Erin as we traversed life, and One Crafty Lady was born upon her moving to Africa to work for the Peace Corps.

Even though I’ve been writing ever since, I didn’t really start calling myself “a writer” until this summer.  I guess I didn’t feel like I could because writing has generally been a hobby, an extra-curricular, something I do for fun.  People that play volleyball in their spare time can’t exactly call themselves “volleyball players” on their Linked-In profiles, right?

Over the past three years I’ve gone through four blogs (not including the two I have now), a couple hundred posts, and about 600 tags.  I’ve also created 3 columns on other sites (with a fourth pending), 2 magazine articles, and a gaggle of guest posts.  It feels really weird getting pitches from other writers and publications; it feels even weirder when you find out you’ve been added to someone’s press list.

You mean, people care enough about what I have to say to send me their press releases?  How cool is that?!?  I’ve either created a reputation of “crazy and incapable of saying no”, or I am now doing professionally what I like to do personally.

Isn’t that kind of everyone’s dream?  

Writing has become an important aspect of my voice in the dance community, my professional life at UIC (each of my 300 students is required to keep a fitness “blog” on our internal class site), and my personal life.  What started out as a hobby is now a huge part of who I am and what I do, regardless of whether or not I get paid.  Because writing permeates all those other aspects of my life, I guess I kind of AM getting paid – essentially.

I’m embarking on two rather big projects: one with friends and collaborators in the blogging community and one on my own.  Starting these (yet to be announced) projects, in conjunction with presenting at Dance/USA with a panel of dance bloggers this summer sealed the deal.

I’m a writer.

When is it okay to give yourself the title of writer?  When you have the confidence to own it.

…and I do.

A quick moment for gloating

When I first wake up in the morning, I usually take a big stretch, scratch my belly, and check my feeds.  I browse Facebook and Twitter and update my Words With Friends.  Occasionally I glance at the news.  Then I eventually roll out of bed and get my day going.

So this morning was extra special when I pulled up the Huffington Post’s Arts and Culture page and saw this:

That’s me, the headliner, dishing about naked dancing.  ON THE HUFFINGTON POST.

Maybe you didn’t know that this isn’t my only blog… I also write about dance on my own site, as well as here and here. And did you happen to catch the guest spot I wrote here?!?  And it just so happened that my recent post on 4dancers.org was pitched to HuffPo and they liked it.

Anyway…

Had I known all it would take was talking about modern dance in the buff to get in at Huffington Post, I would have done it a lot sooner.

In any case, I’m simply tickled to be part of the the team of esteemed bloggers at HuffPo, and couldn’t resist taking a minute to brag.

A quick plug showing some lovin’ for Bloglovin

Much like Mailchimp is the sarcastic, hipster version of Constant Contact, I recently came across Bloglovin as an alternative reader that’s equally witty and totally user-friendly.  I won’t faun over it like I did Workflowy, but if you’re looking to coral all your favorite blogs in one place, this might be the reader for you!

 Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Cheers!