The first half of this week was spent in Indianapolis, me working from coffee shops while Ryan was in his work’s home office for a big meeting. I found that I work totally differently, depending on what coffee shop I’m in! Though it’s not glamorous, to be honest I seem to work best in Starbucks! Maybe it’s because there’s lots of seating, so I can feel like there’s plenty of space between me and the next person. Plus I’m not paranoid there about anyone being annoyed at me staying for hours.
I tried out a new coffee shop, Kaffeine Coffee, near downtown Indianapolis on Tuesday. It was a really great space to work and has awesome coffee! But I was really distracted and my back was hurting from sitting in the same spot for so long, so I spent more time working from Ryan’s Airbnb (I was staying at my sister’s house).
We had several meals with my sister’s family, and we ate at Repeal, a BBQ restaurant near a trendy area called Fountain Square on Tuesday night. The food options worked well for my gluten-intolerance, with lots of meat and veggies. I really enjoyed being in the city for a few days and I wasn’t really excited about coming back to small-town Ohio. I just love the feeling of being in a place where there’s always stuff going on and new places to go!
Blog Updates
Time and Content
I worked on the blog around 33 hours this week. I spent most of my time this week writing content and working on our Pinterest following. We are making progress in both! I reached 31 posts this week, ¾ of our goal for launching!
I’m finding that food-related posts are the easiest for me to write. I use Pinterest for lots of my inspiration on types of content to write. It’s pretty easy to notice trends on Pinterest, so I’ve written several articles based on topics that are popular but haven’t necessarily been covered well from a certain angle. Then I write from that angle.
For example, individual recipes using turmeric are all over Pinterest, but I haven’t seen any pins with a collection of recipes using turmeric – so I wrote a post on 20 anti-inflammatory turmeric recipes.
As for Pinterest, our followers count is still barely going up. We’re at 36, with several followers only following one of our boards. But, our number of impressions and repins is growing almost every day. I had one pin get 226 saves, which is way more than I’d ever had! I wish I knew how that happened but I didn’t do anything special.
Blog Name
We’re certain at this point that we will change our blog’s name. We still haven’t totally settled on what we’re changing it to, though. Our best idea came from a funny moment in the car when I said, “I wonder if we could come up with a title from one of the quote pins I saved on Pinterest.” Ryan didn’t know what I meant so I started looking at my “Quotes” Pinterest board and said, “This is a bad example, but something like this…”
“Like we could call it Uncommonly Well.” I wasn’t really being serious. But then suddenly we both were like, “Wait a minute.” And we realized we actually liked it! Then it grew on us. We feel like it fits, because it encompasses any and every area of wellness in life, and the desire to go beyond the norm. We both got a little excited, then that excitement died a little when we shared it with a couple of people who didn’t love it. But our excitement is building again and we’ve received more positive feedback. So we’ll see what happens!
Design
Because of uncertainty about the name, we haven’t progressed at all on the design. The designer needs to know our blog’s name and vision in order to make a logo. I dealt with some disappointment this week when I realized it still might be a while before we can launch. I had to apologize to Ryan and ask his forgiveness this weekend for getting frustrated and not trusting his judgment!
Trust
This all comes back to trust, one of the biggest things we are learning right now. I get to to trust Ryan, that even when I wish we would push things forward more quickly, he is being wise about ensuring we are ready for each step before we take it. I can tend to be a bit impulsive, whereas he is calculated. We are so good for each other!
I’ve also been feeling a bit more unsettled this week about writing all this content and putting in all these hours, when the posts are just sitting dormant in my Google Drive doing nothing. Ryan doesn’t even have time to read them right now. Will my hard work ever pay off? There are no guarantees. I am so thankful I have the opportunity to do this in the first place!
