blogging – Invented Charm

Hi friends,

I got an email today from my friend Megan asking me what’s up with the sale of my home. She’d gotten one of those cool little updates from a real estate app alerting her that there’d been a status change on our place. So, I guess it might be helpful for me to let you know what’s going on here in my world.

We are in escrow! Finally. After being on the market for a little over two months, we got an offer. I think the funniest thing is that we got an offer from the very first person who saw our house, and the very last. On the very first day we hit the market, we got an offer. While the offer ended up not working out, it put us on a great path knowing that there was interest in our home. Many potential buyers came multiple times to see the house, and we had open houses every weekend but one.

It was an incredibly busy time for us—I would clean for every showing and stage our home every time, and it took about two hours from start to finish. I sometimes questioned why I was so adamant about how my place looked—my mother in-law (a real estate agent) would tell me that most of the homes on the market do little to look presentable. But I’d look around at Rory’s toys on the floor, the pack n play and stroller that take up a ton of space, my ottoman covered in cat hair, and my dirty dishes and knew that I could not let my house be seen in this state. I typically pick up the house whenever I have friends over, so why would I invite strangers into my home without making it clean first?

After a little over 60 days on the market, interest seemed to wane, but lo and behold the very last person who requested a showing ended up making us a solid offer. YAY! Fingers crossed that all goes well and we close escrow as expected on January 11. We have a bunch of hurdles to get through, but so far we are on track.

What does this mean for the blog? Well, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted in over two weeks. A lot is going on right now, and I had to redirect my energy elsewhere, temporarily. I hope I’m back for good now and will try to resume posting weekly. I may need to take a break again during the actual move, but I’ll keep you updated as that firms up.

Upcoming blog posts: I want to continue with my house tour before we leave this place! I hope to share my thoughts later this week on “living intentionally.” I want to do some gift guides for the holidays. I’d like to share my plans for a minimal Christmas. I want to do a roundup of my favorite podcasts. I’d love to finish up all the drafts of posts I’ve got sitting in my inbox.

There’s so much to come from Invented Charm. Drop me a line if you have an idea for a post you’d like to see me cover. Thanks so much for your love and support!

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I wanted to take the opportunity to reflect on my first month back at blogging. I decided to plunge back into writing without much thought–I used to blog off and on, I love writing, and I missed it. I needed an outlet for my creativity and the thoughts swirling around in my head. To be totally honest, I wasn’t even sure what kind of blog this would be when I started it. I chose my blog name based on my Instagram and Twitter handle, and I thought it had a nice ring to it for a lifestyle blog. I idealized that this would be a place for me to write about travel, food, and fashion with humor. What this has actually become is a place for me to spew out thoughts on life, post amateur food pics, and my cobbled together attempts in the kitchen. I do hope that it will continue to evolve and I’ll find my voice and aesthetic. But for now, this blog is still searching for an identity.

Five Things I LearnedDuring My First Month as a BloggerPlus OneSurprising Outcome

Here five things I’ve learned during my first month as a blogger:

Let go of fear

It’s scary to put yourself out there for people to read and judge. I’ve always had this fear of being discovered as some sort of fake, which is why I try my hardest to be real. I don’t take myself too seriously, and I’m the first person to point out my shortcomings. I don’t want to misrepresent myself in any way, but I also don’t know how I want to portray myself on the internet. It’s tricky. I’m intensely private, but I so love the feeling of being open and expressing myself without fear.

Move past the overwhelm

There’s so much to learn and figure out when you’re launching a blog. Some things work, and others don’t. I try not to put too much pressure on myself to know everything right away. Graphics and photo editing have always been a stumper for me. I’m working on it, and with time I’ll hopefully improve. Actually, I know I will. There’s very little I’ve tried in life that I couldn’t master to some extent. But I have to be careful and limit myself. There’s got to be a balance so that I can still write, spend time with my kiddo, and learn the business and marketing side of blogging.

Don’t get annoyed

I don’t have this app on my phone, I don’t have that plugin on my laptop, I’m not signed in here. Ugh. It’s annoying to try and keep up with everything, and even worse when you make a mistake, or a lot of them as is my case. I’m really terrible at remembering hashtags, and all I can do is shake my head after I hit post and notice after the fact. But everything is a lesson if you’re receptive to learning and growing.

Celebrate small achievements

It’s so satisfying to set small goals for myself and meet them. I wrote a little bit about the daily goals I have and the apps and tools I use to remind myself to do them. I set a goal for myself last week to post three times and I did it. I did it on my first try! Woohoo!

Keep the momentum going

I have so much I want to write, and I can’t write fast enough to keep up with the ideas. What’s more, I feel like blogging has given me energy and confidence in other aspects of my life, too. I feel like there’s momentum to my creativity and productivity and it makes me feel excited for the future.

Plus one surprising outcome:

Writing uncovers who you really are

When I became a mom and after I left my job, I felt like I lost my sense of self. I didn’t know what my identity was anymore. I felt like I didn’t have anything interesting to contribute or feel worthy of happiness. I was in a dark place and I felt alone. This happens to a lot of people at many different stages in life, usually during some transition where everything that is familiar and comfortable changes or disappears altogether.

Starting a blog got me to think in a radically different way. Writing demands interaction with the world instead of experiencing it passively. I make time to read blogs rather than just clicking on a link when it floats by. I make the effort to talk to people, even though it scares me. Not much on the surface has changed, but even small steps have made a huge impact on my life. I have something to add to the conversation now, and my days are just a little bit more interesting than they were before.

Category: blogging

A Status Change

Five Things I Learned During My First Month as a Blogger Plus One Surprising Outcome