Connections, confidence and calm - what I took away from Blogtacular 2018
Last year I went to my first Blogtacular conference. I had been working on Blue Jay of Happiness for six months (and a previous blog for 8 years prior) and thought it was about time to immerse myself into the blogging community. At that point it was still just a hobby for me. At the 2017 conference I had two epiphanies. One was in Sas Petherick’s self-doubt workshop where I…
The writing process
Recently on Instagram I posted about feeling on fire creatively after getting to write some articles that made me really proud. Talking about it prompted a couple of questions about writing, and more specifically - the process of writing. I thought about it, and while I’m not sure I have a particular ‘process’ when it comes to writing, I thought it may be interesting to note down how I go…
Connecting with your audience
Whether you’re a maker, a creative entrepreneur, a blogger or anyone else trying to reach an audience, one of the trickiest things to do is connect with them. At first, it can feel like you’re shouting into an empty void, being met with nothing but silence. And of course, that silence is deafening. It makes space for your inner critic to rise up and take centre stage. Tapping the microphone…
Taking a break
Well, this feels nice. I’ve just had my first bath in mine and Dan’s new flat, am sat in my super fluffy dressing gown and writing a blog for the first time in…. oh. Just over a week… Is that it? Must admit, feels a lot longer. In the run up to our move and during the move, there was so much to do I knew I wouldn’t be able…
It’s oh so quiet…
Hello friends! I wanted to post very quickly to let you know that things may be a little quiet on the blog this week and next week. Me and my partner Dan are moving to a lovely flat in Guildford on Friday and I’ve struggled to get any blog content written and pre-scheduled, so I decided to take my own advice, be kind to myself and take a mini blogging…
How to cope with vulnerability hangovers
Brene Brown calls vulnerability “our most accurate measure of courage”. Being vulnerable means opening our hearts, pouring out the contents and waiting to see what the world has to say. A pretty terrifying thing, right? So it’s no wonder that after we do this, we feel scared, a little bit sick and shaky. We get a vulnerability hangover. We wonder why we did it, panic over what people will think…
Instagram tips, tools and resources
Around this time last year I was working furiously behind the scenes to get Blue Jay of Happiness ready to launch on January 1st. At that point I knew I wanted to return to Twitter (I was an early adopter but hadn’t been active there in a few years) and I wanted to put some actual effort into my Instagram account. Back then I was using Instagram as many people…
Creating value in your work
If you’re a blogger, a business owner or just someone who wants to grow their online presence, you’ll probably have spent some time looking at how you can do this. There are approximately one million, billion, trillion articles out there telling you how to “grow your audience” all spouting various advice. Some of this advice involves sales funnels, others simply tell you to sign up to their overpriced e-course. Some…
Blogging: then and now
Blue Jay of Happiness has been going for 10 months now, so in the grand scheme of things, it’s a very young blog indeed. But, I’ve actually been blogging for 9 years. Almost a decade (sheesh). For today’s post, I thought I would talk about how I approached blogging then, why I decided to start completely from scratch and how I approach blogging now. If you’re interested in blogging, are…
What are you doing it for?
This post follows on from my last post on creative frustration. When I was writing about how frustrated we can get during the creative ‘process’, I thought to myself “why do we put ourselves through it?” Why don’t we just stop… and carry on living our lives, frustration free? Because, quite simply - we can’t. I remember when I was at uni one of our lecturers Seamus (amazing Irish man…