Woo-hoo! Back in Skinny Jeans celebrates her 3rd birthday and post #2,043. Wowza! We are so grateful to still be going strong and better than ever. Really, because in interweb time 3 years is like 24, we added one more than dog years.
This week is going to be all about celebrating, dancing like Ellen, and having a good time. I am so grateful to you my readers that every day, M-F, there will be some fabulous giveaways we will be gifting to lucky readers this whole week from the wonderful folks at Joe's Jeans, Steaz, and Sephora. Here's all the giveaway details.
So, here are some of the highlights of what I've learned in 3 years of blogging:
- Living authentically is sooooo much easier and stress-free than living under the thumb of the Ms. Perfect image. In 2006, I made a New Year's resolution theme for the year to "Lead an authentic life." What that meant was that I was going to be me, be truthful, and be real, good and dark. Living authentically is much easier said than done. The hard part was the beginning because now that I was conscious, I quickly started to see where I was not authentic particularly with my feelings and worry over hurting other people feelings or avoiding them being mad at me. But that initial hard part was not as bad as living under the Ms. Perfect Girl tyranny. "I'm free at last, free at last!"
- The BIG test to this living authentically theme was put forth in January of this year when I came out in a 3 part series about a bulimia relapse to my readers. Here I was one of the top bloggers in the healthy living category telling everyone how to live healthier, and yet behind the scenes I was doing something quite contrary. I nearly put BISJ down last January because of the hypocrisy I felt, yet I thought I'd come clean before doing that to see where I stood with my audience. Not only did you all blew me away with kindness and support, my traffic went up 30% for the next few months after that. I made a deeper connection with so many people and helped others feel less stigmatized about their own situation. I got picked to speak at BlogHer08 about coming out via blog about highly personal topics, and in the audience of that panel was one of the people representing Oprah's digital network whom BISJ is now a part of. Good things can come of hard but genuine authenticity.
- Establishing boundaries is crucial to healthy blogging meaning keeping your sanity, safety, and privacy in tact. Being authentic and sharing real life stories is wonderful and it's the reason people love blogs, but there is such a thing as TMI and emotionally over loading your audience. I've learned to break up the content here at BISJ and do what I call the Trail Mix strategy to content. I'll have the nutritious nuts and fruits posts which are hearty and packed with soul goodness, and then I'll add in the M&M's and gummy bear type posts for levity; light, entertaining, and fun junk foods because life's too short to be serious all the time.
- I will never blog a weight loss journey again. In June of 2007, I started blogging about dropping 25 lbs and sharing the "messy middle" part of the weight loss success story. I did Weigh-In Wed posts where I reported how many pounds and inches I lost for the week and what I did regarding food, exercise, and emotions. I did drop the 25 lbs by Jan 2008, and nearly a year later, I have kept all the weight off. I think diet blogging can be very helpful, but it can also be detrimental. For me, it was a good learning experience, and I would not talk anyone out of doing it, but I would offer my advice to help you have a positive experience.
- I started to vary my content away from my body and into more general healthy living topics and what others are doing because I discovered that for me, it is not a wise long term decision to build a blog business around my body. The topic of weight loss is fine which I stopped for awhile to focus on "evolving" but brought back because since BISJ ranked high in weight loss search terms I figured I might as well be a voice of reason in a topic that can get very unreasonable and unhealthy.
- Blogging has brought me more joy and inner satisfaction than I have ever felt in my whole life, and I'm not exaggerating. Those who know me personally can tell you that without a doubt that I am happiest doing work in the blogosphere and that my eyes light up when I talk about blogging. Along with all the amazing times I've had blogging, I've also had some pretty hard challenging times, but it's still good because all those hard times were tied into something that was mine, not someone else's, and helped me become a better person. I'm doing what I love, making meaning, money and helping many. The future is a bright shade of happy!
Let's get dancing to a song that very much speaks to how I feel about blogging, Sheryl Crow's "All I Wanna Do" 
Today's giveaways will be qty-1 pair of Joe's Jeans to first winner, qty-1 Steaz Organic Teaz gift basket to a second winner, and qty-1 Sephora by OPI bottle of "Skinny Jeans" nail polish to a third winner. Winners will be picked randomly. So, 3 people win but only one of the prizes ie. Mary wins jeans, Bob wins Teaz, and JoJo wins nail polish.
To enter to win, you must submit a comment about one thing you've learned during your time blogging or one thing you've learned about living authentically.Only one comment per person. Comments open until midnight PST Sat Nov 22. US residents only. {Much apologies global folks.}
