Thank You And Goodnight

Forgive me; it's been more than three months since my last post.

I actually wasn't going to write anything to formally put Betsy Transatlantically to bed, but some friends on Instagram (hey there, Amanda and Laurel!) pointed out that it would be rude not to, so here we go.

As I explained to my sister over Thanksgiving, I'm closing this blog because, after my last post about arrogance and humility, everything I sat down to write felt incredibly self-indulgent. The past five and half years of blogging haven't been free of narcissism, of course, but I also put a lot of effort into being part of a larger blogging community and that, in a way, tempered my navel-gazing. It's been a pleasure and a privilege to have built relationships with so many of you over the years, but I can't maintain them through blogging anymore, either here or, as you might have noticed, on your blogs.  That our friendships continue to flourish elsewhere online (and, occasionally, in person) helps me recognize the future of Betsy Transatlantically as not much more than a vanity project.

Sarah, who knows that I love writing, suggested that I could do so without an audience. But another reason I love blogging besides the community aspect is because publishing my words demands more of them - and of me - than simply putting pen to paper. Drafting and editing posts for Betsy Transatlantically has encouraged me to work through my thoughts on all sorts of topics, and the knowledge that they'll be out in the public domain makes me hold myself to a higher standard of exposition.

Over the past three months, I have at times felt compelled to find a way to keep writing online without being a blogger. I can't do that here; it would be too easy to fall back into old habits. So this is goodbye for Betsy Transatlantically. I might start up a new site eventually and, somehow, I'll let you know if I do. But for now - thank you. Thank you to you, dear readers, and a thank you to this blog as well for all that it's taught me.

Unfollowing Brands, Following People

There are a lot of posts and programs out there that tell you how to grow your following on your blog, on Twitter, and on Instagram. Most of those talk about creating and curating your personal brand, so that everyone who sees something of yours will know that it came from you without even looking at the account handle. And, of course, a lot of people who listen to this advice want to monetize their social media presence.

First of all, let me say: if that's what you're trying to do, rock on. Get it, girl. Hustle, as they say. (I don't say that. But it is said.)

Second, I'll absolutely admit that I'm probably not your target audience if that is what you're trying to do, so you probably won't care about what comes third.

But here's what comes third: I just had an urge to go through everyone I follow on Instagram, and I ended up unfollowing everyone whose accounts I don't enjoy looking at or engaging with. Without agenda, almost everyone I unfollowed was either actually a brand or a person who has made an effort branding herself (or, in rare instances, himself). If I read a handle and couldn't think of a single personal thing about the account holder, I unfollowed that account.

I unfollowed accounts whose Instagrams look like they belong in magazine editorials.

I unfollowed accounts that don't post any "real life" photos.

I unfollowed accounts who make a overwhelming effort to grow their followings or satisfy sponsors.

Of course there are some exceptions to this. I still follow a few actual companies I love, companies that have great customer service both offline and on, like Room and Board, Rugs USA, Crane & Canopy, and Boden. And I still follow some internet friends who are also entrepreneurs and make a living online and by advertising online, like Kristen and Heidi and Lauren and Megan. But people - not social media managers, but private individuals - who commercialize themselves and filter out everything human... those are the ones who were unfollowed the fastest.

I don't care what your grid looks like. I don't care that your lighting isn't always perfect. I don't care that you only edit photos in Instagram and found out that people edit photos for Instagram in multiple apps before posting them to Instagram by reading one of those "how I edit photos for Instagram" blog posts.

I care that I know your dog twitches in his sleep because you posted that silly video of him chasing rabbits in his dreams. I care about the beef stew that you posted even though it looked disgusting because, in the caption, you explained that it's your boyfriend's favorite meal. I care that sometimes you take a photo of your shoes because they're cute and they make you happy, not because you're angling for a free pair or fulfilling a sponsorship agreement.

I care that your selfies are usually face-on, your eyes smiling straight into mine instead of staring demurely at some invisible point on the floor just under your left shoulder. That's the relationship I want with the people I spend time with online. The one where you're you, sharing yourself. Not your brand.

Minimalism on the Offensive

When we feel stuck, emotionally, we hope that making tangible adjustments in our lives will cause internal shifts. We get new jobs, we end relationships, we move to other cities or even countries - often, we make the biggest quantifiable changes when we feel we need massive qualitative change.

So I get the concept that emptying our homes will open up more space in our lives for ideas, experiences, and creativity. I do. But I don’t agree with the premise that this is the essential way to live.

That’s why the cult of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up frustrates me. I don’t reject the theory of the KonMarie method - that everything in your home should bring you joy - but I think that it’s way too easy for a strict reading of the book to go irreparably overboard in trying to create room for happiness.

As the recent New York Times article Let's Celebrate The Art of Clutter points out, "The stuff we accumulate works the same way our body weight does. Each of us has a set point to which we invariably return. Each of us has been allotted a certain tolerance, if not a need, for stuff; each of us is gaited to carry a certain amount of weight in possessions." Many of the most vocal proponents of domestic minimalism that I follow online have also historically been the most visible proponents of consumerism, either curated or spontaneous, and I can't help but imagine that the hundreds of dollars' worth of things donated or trashed will be re-spent as soon as the magic of purging fades.

Of course, a central tenant of Marie Kondo's philosophy is that your entire way of life will be transformed once you've conquered your home with her method, but I just don't think that'll be the case for most of us who are active in blogging and social media - not when trends change so quickly, new belongings are so cheap, and, to be quite honest, our attention spans are so short.

I also wonder what negative effects this organization, taken to extremes, has on our relationships and our social lives. I've seen tweets boasting of bare cupboards, explaining that a childless couple needs no more than two of each dining item. Instagrams display more empty walls than books or photographs on shelves; memorabilia is photographed and stored on a hard drive for reference (and then disposed of) rather than kept within eyesight for unproductive enjoyment. But what if you want to entertain? What if you want to bond with someone over a text you read in college, a picture of a place you've visited, a collection you've spent years amassing? As Gesci and Lola have eloquently discussed on Twitter, the ephemera of these memories are irreplaceable.

Yes, Marie Kondo argues that anything that brings you joy should be kept but, from what I've seen shared online, we're having a hard time defining that. She writes, "If you can say without a doubt ‘I really like this!' no matter what anyone else says, and if you like yourself for having it, then ignore what other people think." However, I'm afraid that many of us have a hard time ignoring what other people think in favor of simply liking ourselves, which is why we're reading a self-help book, and a method that lends itself to black-and-white interpretations makes it easier not to have to choose between the two. Perhaps not accidentally, this has become yet another way of proving to the world how committed we are to finding our true selves according to others' standards.

And there is a reason this book is shelved in the Self-Help rather than the Home section of bookstores: it's not about changing our spaces so much as it is about changing ourselves. A Wall Street Journal piece exploring the trend of tidying up quotes a publisher specializing in self-help books: "There’s a dreamy quality to it,” she said. “It’s a book that promises something that is almost beyond imagination. It’s magic.” That result of that promise isn't tangible, but the means are, and all you have to do is live minimally. The next step, of course, is more difficult. Once you've emptied your home of objects, you should fill it with the abstract. "Go ahead," suggests the unabashed accumulator writing in the New York Times, "call me materialistic. I’ll just wonder what you think you are made of."

We want the magic that Marie Kondo promises so badly, and I understand why. I see the appeal of Kondoing your home as a way of tidying your soul, and I also realize that there are thousands of people (probably less active on social media and therefore less publicly visible) following her philosophy who don't take it to the absolute limit. (As a commenter on a Racked.com post noted, "I didn’t find it painful to decide to part with stuff as long as I had plenty of leeway to keep things, too.") But I'm afraid that we'll spend so much energy being proud of ourselves for not having much that we'll come to define ourselves by what we don't possess rather than by what we do.

Commercial Style Blogging

I'm not really into fashion blogging.  I follow a few lifestyle bloggers who regularly publish sponsored (and non-sponsored!) outfit posts and I love them, but I've never been invested in straight style blogging or style bloggers.  Maybe it's because, despite the range of style bloggers, I couldn't find one whose body looks like mine.  Maybe it's because, despite the range of style bloggers, I couldn't find one whose office dress code mirrored my own.  Maybe it's because, despite the range of style bloggers, I couldn't find one whose way of mixing high and low budget pieces matched my financial reality.  Whatever the reason, I just haven't followed fashion bloggers' blogs.

I have followed some style bloggers on Pinterest, Instagram, and Twitter, though, which has opened my eyes again and again to how phenomenally naive I am about the ways that blogging - and bloggers themselves - can be monetized.  I remember being shocked when I realized that the majority of the pins I clicked on were affiliate links.  I was confused by Liketoknow.it at first, and then, once I understood how it worked, disappointed by the blatant commerciality as it completely removes any personal interaction between blogger as advisor and reader as student (for lack of a better word).  The straw on this camel's back, though, when it comes to style blogging, was when I clicked on a link in an otherwise innocuous tweet that, based on the language used, I thought would lead me to a blog post and therefore a personal story from the blogger.

Nope.  The link was a bit.ly address disguising an rstyle link that led me to an affiliate-tagged shopping website, put cookies on my browser, and made me feel totally used by the tweeter/blogger.  And - pardon my French - I thought, "This is bullshit."

I've written about this before, most specifically here and here, but I hate being manipulated by bloggers.  There is almost nothing on the internet that make me as angry as when I realize that someone with whom I thought I'd built a relationship is mostly interested in the clicks I give her and the cookies she gives me.

Don't get me wrong; I'm all for bloggers earning an income from something about which they're passionate, but I don't want to be tricked into a commercial transaction with someone who is, essentially, selling herself as a brand.

Am I overreacting, dear readers?  Is this just the way it is and always shall be, world without end amen?  I hope not, because I do get style ideas from these women - and, shockingly enough, I do sometimes buy things they recommend and I am happy for them to get commissions from those purchases!  But if this is the relationship they want... well, count me out.

On The Eve of My Fifth Blogiversary

Forgive me, dear readers; it has been three weeks since my last blog post.

I was actually toying with the idea of not coming back to Betsy Transatlantically at all after publishing The Disconnect of Authenticity.  Rather suddenly, I discovered I just didn't seem to need to blog anymore.  I mean, I knew I'd been trucking along for the past few months with less gusto than earlier in my blogging career, but I didn't expect to feel so blasé about possibly quitting.

Then I read a post about storytelling on Found Love Now What that helped me clarify what I want to put into and get out of Betsy Transatlantically.  "Without a doubt," Belinda wrote, "storytelling is one of my favorite reasons for dedicating time to this blogging space."

I realized, as I read that sentence, that I don't use this blog for storytelling anymore - not the kind of storytelling that I had practiced here for the last five years, anyway.  Her post provoked me to ask myself three questions:

What kind of storytelling do I want/need to do now?

Why and for whom am I telling these stories?

What's the best platform to do it?

As I explained on Twitter, I think the answers to those questions have to converge in a very specific way for blogging (as I have been) to be fulfilling and productive, and my answers simply don't lead me there.

Most importantly, I don't want to continue the diary-like storytelling that has been a hallmark of Betsy Transatlantically.  Belinda talked about how gratifying it is to look through her archives and see a record of what she's accomplished and how she's grown; I love that about my blog, too, but I don't feel I need to document my life in that way at the moment.  Maybe it's because Jon and I have settled into a comfortable, stable place both geographically and emotionally, but I'm just not compelled to record our activities in blog post form right now.

I've transitioned to primarily using Instagram when I do want to take a snapshot of what we're up to - it feels more spontaneous and informal than my blog, and that's incredibly freeing.  My captions on that platform are now more expository than they used to be, sure, but the interaction I have with you all there is more immediate and, in many ways, more enjoyable.

Once we take that sort of storytelling out of the blog, what remains are light posts - recipe experiments, home updates, and style picks, that sort of thing - and long-form writing.

So I wondered: is it okay for a lifestyle blog to bounce back and forth - infrequently, probably, because that's what my schedule allows these days - between those two poles?

Let's find out!

The Discontent of Authenticity

Death to the Stock Photo

Almost every time I scroll through Instagram, a question dances on the periphery of my screen. It’s one I find myself asking frequently when I sit down for a binge on lifestyle blogs:

When did sharing discontent become a requirement for proving authenticity?

A few years ago, we all decried the artifice displayed on social media. We were stuck in the hamster wheel of keeping up with the Jones but the Joneses weren’t just next door anymore – they were everywhere. Moreover, we realized that we were at fault for this, we in the blogging community. By posting only the inspirational and the aspirational, we were holding ourselves and our followers to a Sisyphean standard, a standard that was neither satisfying to work towards nor sustainable when (if) achieved.

(This was the era in which a new “comparison is the thief of joy” graphic would appear every time we opened up Pinterest. Remember that? I blogged about it in 2012 and again in 2013, as I’m sure many of us did then.)

We started posting anecdotes from real life - #wokeuplikethis selfies, Christmas decorations left up until February, coffee spilled across breakfast tables. We started being honest about the messier side of things, about leaving freshly laundered clothes in a pile because we hate folding, about making repeated dinners out of chips and hummus, about choosing Law and Order marathons over lacing up our sneakers for trail runs. And, for a brief moment, we found genuine humor in reality and didn’t try to make it anything more.

Somehow, though, that morphed into the commercial comedy of relatability. “Your life isn’t perfect,” we captioned our photos, “and neither is mine! Look how busy I am, a Must Have planner and a Cult Brand coffee angled just so on my desk next to a pile of Best Seller books topped by artfully scattered Expensive Designer bangles with an Etsy Famous print hanging on the wall. How normal I am, like you! How crazy is life!” Honesty (or at least something calling itself that) became a commodity on social media, and suddenly though perhaps not surprisingly we tumbled from there into authenticity, the buzzword that’s been batted around blogland for the past year or so.

Here’s what disturbs me: we stopped sharing simple moments of unstyled reality when we started being “authentic” and we started weighting everything that isn’t perfect with metaphysical malaise. Authenticity became a trope through which to communicate not just literal but existential mess; now to be truly authentic online, it seems, we have to be dissatisfied with where we are in life.

Of course, it’s impossible for bloggers to avoid examining who we are and why and how. Blogging is, at its core, a navel-gazing activity, and very few if any still claim to blog only for themselves at this point in the game, which means that our introspection is part of what draws our readers in and keeps them captivated. Our authenticity – how genuine and transparent we are, or at least seem – is a key component of forming relationships with our readers and we therefore egg each other on to discover ever more profound things about ourselves and to challenge ourselves to be even more fundamentally us.

It’s all too easy for us to slide from there into discontent. After all, we need to keep our readers interested in what we have to say; introspection is useless as an engagement tactic if we’re not finding aspects of ourselves to improve.

That’s why, I think, we hear so much about bloggers feeling lost in their own lives and we read so many pieces on how to “craft” and “design” and “curate” our futures. Bloggers are constantly declaring they want to intentionally – that’s another word that crops up repeatedly – find themselves and the path they’re meant to be on. (You often get a sense of faith in fate, either directly or indirectly, from these posts and captions and comments, regardless of how much hard work and overcoming obstacles is understood to be a part of the discovery of true north.) It's hard to admit we’re not where we want to be in our lives and I give the women who are honest about their struggles a lot of credit for sharing them in such a public way. But sometimes I get the feeling that we’re mining our lives for largely surmountable complications to coat in a rosy gloss of deeper meaning just so we can work ourselves up into a lather of “authenticity”.

That’s why I wonder: how much introspection is too much?   At what point does exploring who you are and why and how and where stop being productive?  When do you realize that you're going in circles or, worse, creating more identity crises than you're resolving?

I don’t know that I have answers to these questions. What do you think?

And Now, To Blog 2015

Nike long-sleeved shirt (similar) / race tank / Nike leggings (similar) / ASICS sneakers (similar) / Garmin

Oof, dear readers, I didn't mean to take nearly three weeks away from blogging!  But it happened and it was good and so I can't feel bad about it, even just to myself.  Every time I started to think about feeling guilty, I thought about how I hate it when bloggers apologize for taking breaks.  I mean, we all know that life is happening - that's why we blog and that's what makes our blogs full and vibrant, right?  At least, it does when we do actually blog.

But I'm rambling.  Let me tell you a little bit about what's been going on!

Jon started his new job the day after we got back from Christmas.  It's not what we thought he'd be doing (or what we planned for) but it's a job and, moreover, he's really loving it.  He's still consulting for the company in London that he worked with before he moved over, but he was going a bit stir crazy after three months of being home all day and he's thrilled both professionally and socially to be out in the world again.

Charlie, of course, is totally bereft; he no longer has a constant companion with him in the house.  However, we were lucky enough to re-secure the dog walker I used before Jon immigrated, and she's absolutely fantastic.  She's from an employee-owned and -run company called Brighter Days Collective and I can't recommend them enough.  (We've had a couple of substitute walkers from the same company when Whit has been away on holiday and they've all been great.)  I remember once, soon after I was laid off in summer 2013, Charlie and I ran into Whit walking another dog in the middle of the day when he and I were on our own walk.  He was so excited to see her!  That made me feel good.  If you live in DC and are looking for a dog walker or pet sitter, definitely check them out.

And I - well, I'm back into my normal work routine!  After the rush of end-of-year fundraising, which is always manic, plus being away from the office for two weeks and then returning as everyone else was either sick or off on their own holidays, I love that we're all back and the normal rhythms of the theatre have been rediscovered.  That doesn't mean things aren't busy, which they are, but they're the kind of busy in which I work well.

We are still navigating our new schedules; since Jon is doing shiftwork and I have my usual evening work events and, you know, we want to maintain our outside friendships, we're trying to practice flexibility and understanding!  The time we do get to spend together (awake) is at a premium, and we want to make sure it's quality time even if we're just relaxing at home.  A weekly date night is absolutely still a priority for us, though!  And, on top of that, I've started training for my spring races - a 10k on March 1, a 10 miler on April 12, and a half marathon on May 3 - and am still trucking on with Weight Watchers.  Phew!

2015 is off to a great start.  I'm so looking forward to blogging it with you!

Far (Not Fast) in 2015

A few years ago, when we collectively decided that resolutions - not goals, which are totally different and worthy, but resolutions - were for the unimaginative, bloggers everywhere started choosing a single word to guide them through the year.

Of course, I followed suit. In 2013, my word was “metamorphosis.” In 2014, I chose “amicable.” The thing is, though, as I explained in a comment on a recent post by Kristen in which she expressed dismay at the prospect of being tethered to a single word for an entire year, picking one word doesn't have to preclude abiding by any others.  I saw my word as more of an anchor in an ever-expanding brainstorming cloud than an arrow going straight from point A (January 1) to point B (December 31). For 2014, here’s what that looked like:

I used the entire cloud to guide me through the past challenging year and, as the year wore on, I came to realize the extent to which it was intrinsically about helping me be better with and for and to others rather than about reminding me to be better in and of myself.  All those guiding ideas in the cloud went towards making me a more productive and agreeable part of the communities to which I belong.

That's not something anyone should ever stop working on, I don't think, and I know I've got so much room for improvement.  So I'm going to stick with this cloud in 2015.  After all, I don't want to go fast this year - I want to go far.

Goodbye, 2014

2014: what a year! It’s been quite a few years, actually…

May 2012: quit my job in London, got engaged, repatriated to DC from England
June 2012: moved in with my parents in the Maryland suburbs just outside of DC, started one job
July 2012: adopted Charlie
November 2012: resigned from the job because it wasn’t the right fit, ran my first 10k
December 2012: was offered another job

January 2013: started the second job
April 2013: moved out of my parents’ house into a studio apartment in the heart of Washington
June 2013: was laid off from the job as the organization began the process of dissolving, celebrated my five-year college reunion
August 2013: got married
September 2013: ran a half-marathon
October 2013: submitted Jon’s visa application, ran my second 10k

March 2014: hired by my current employer
May 2014: celebrated my ten-year high school reunion
September 2014: welcomed Jon (and his green card) to the United States as a Conditional Permanent Resident
October 2014: moved into a new one-bedroom apartment, ran my third 10k

I’m glad 2014 is over. It brought a lot of joy, obviously, in that it was the year Jon and I were legally reunited and began making a home together in America and it was the year that my career got back on track with a job I really love.  However, it also forced me to confront many realities I never thought I’d have to face and, in doing so, really challenged me to examine what makes me who I am. It took me three months to apply for unemployment benefits and Medicaid because I was too proud to admit I needed them at the beginning; I never imagined that I’d be included in government statistics as one of the long-term unemployed. I didn’t expect that being long-distance for more than two years would provoke introspection on what I can contribute to a relationship and what I need from my partner more fundamentally than it might have if we had been together, but it caused me to doubt my capacity to be one half of a whole. I was also unprepared for how my relationship with my parents, which was more dependent that it should have been in Jon’s absence, would change once Jon immigrated. And, to be honest, I underestimated the steepness of the learning curve as I navigated sharing myself and my space with Jon again after living alone for 18 months. On top of all of that, I treated my body really badly, gaining back the 25lbs I’d lost in the year before our wedding and essentially abandoning my running.

2015 will be different. It will be calmer, I hope, with much more stability. My fingers are crossed that there won’t be many changes, self-inflicted or otherwise, in my life, with the exception of a renewed investment in my physical health. (I’ve signed up for a 10k in March and a 10 miler in April already with my eyes on a May half-marathon, and intend to continue the momentum of the last nine weeks on Weight Watchers.) My goal for 2015 is that it’ll be a year in which Jon and I can put down roots so that when we do change in the future it’s with depth and maturity.

I’m reminded, as I write that, of a passage in A Wind in the Door, one of my favorite Madeleine L’Engle books from the Wrinkle in Time quartet. The context is irrelevant; the message perfect regardless:

"It is only when we are fully rooted that we are really able to move… Now that I am rooted I am no longer limited by motion. Now I may move anywhere in the universe. I sing with the stars. I dance with the galaxies.”

I felt utterly limited by motion in 2014. In 2015, I want to settle in and get comfortable - though never complacent - so that we're ready for change in the years following.  Here's to that!

DC-Area Blogger Photos with Sara

Happy Monday, dear readers!  Well, it isn't entirely - it's cold and drizzly in Washington, which is kind of yucky, and we have an event tonight so it'll be a long one.  But, on the bright side, today is the day I properly introduce you to Sara Conklin!

Sara is a friend from work (and, happily, a friend outside of work, too) who has a secret side life as a fantastic photographer in and around DC.  Sara took those two photos at the top of my Dove haircare review post from October, and Jon and Charlie and I went out to Rock Creek Park with her in early November for a family shoot in the foliage; I couldn't be more pleased with the albums she sent me from both sessions!  She's really good at giving direction, which I desperately need when I'm having my photo taken, but has a lot of fun with what she's doing and makes the process feel like a blast.

When Sara and I were taking the portraits for that Dove post, I mentioned that a lot of bloggers would jump at the chance to have professional (but natural-looking) headshots taken that they could use on their blogs.  I explained that new bloggers and smaller bloggers often don't have a lot of money to invest in our blogs, but we want to look polished regardless of whether we just blog as a hobby or if we're hoping to grow our blogs into something more.  One way to achieve that, I think, is by having a few good portraits we can use around our site.  The problem is that we aren't always sure how to find a photographer or describe what we're looking for.

And, because Sara's awesome like this, she very kindly offered to help us out!  She has a full slate of options, one of which is a 90 minute headshot shoot yielding 5 photos for $45, but she's offered to expand that session for us: $45, 90 minutes, one outfit change, and 10-12 photos emailed to you.  To arrange this, just email her at sara@saraconklinphotography.com and let her know that I sent you!

Crazy but Okay

I have a half-dozen drafts on the most random topics sitting in Blogger, but I really can't switch gears without first saying thank you.  (This does, in part, explain for the lack of posting over the past week!)  You didn't accept my first cop-out post on the word "hustle," and you shared your thoughts to encourage me to voice my own.  And then you wholeheartedly embraced my second post, full of insecurity and judgement, and you made me feel like I wasn't crazy - or, at least, if I was, it was the okay sort of crazy that you'd help me get out of.

And I know it seems sort of silly to give this much weight to these two posts that, really, aren't about anything terribly deep, but sometimes I feel like we lifestyle bloggers are all walking on eggshells whenever we want to talk about what we're doing not in a vacuum - that is, what we're doing contrasted with what other people might be doing.  It's hard to walk a mile in another's shoes when writing a blog is, inherently, a naval-gazing activity.  (Yikes, there are a lot of mixed metaphors in there, aren't there?  Oops.)  But I wanted to say thank you because, as usual, you helped me be more open-minded about "hustle" and everything that comes with it.  You reminded me to look not only for what people are trying to say despite what I'm inclined to hear but also to be patient with the insecurities and judgements that others might have and to accept them as okay - crazy but okay, just like me.

Thank you, dear readers, and happy Sunday.

It's Not You, It's Me (Hustle Edition)

I didn't mean for Wednesday's post to be a cop-out.  Honestly, I thought that it - the second paragraph in particular - could stand on its own.  But you don't let me off that easily, dear readers, and so I'm back to re-enter the conversation about what "hustle" means to each of us.

However, I want to offer a disclaimer before I say anything else.  (This is part of the reason I didn't publish any of my original drafts on the subject; I'm a huge proponent of disclaimer-free blogging!)  But here goes anyway:

My understanding of "hustle" has much more to do with me than it does with the people who use the word/concept, even if they are, in fact, using it in the way I understand it.  There are plenty of people - people I respect and admire - who identify with the descriptors I'll use below who don't use it in the way I read it.  And for the people who do... well, it's my choice to follow them on social media, and I have the power to stop following them.

The other disclaimer, especially for those who are relatively new to Betsy Transatlantically, is that I have a desk job and I love it, and sometimes I get tetchy about what seems like an overwhelming consensus from lifestyle bloggers that the be-all and end-all is entrepreneurship.  (I actually blogged about this exact thing two years ago and the follow up to that post, published in October 2012, turns out to presage this one a bit.)

So, admitting a great deal of insecurity and a tendency to overreact, I will tell you that when 20- and 30-something women who own their own businesses or are building a freelance portfolio talk about "hustling," I hear judgement.  I hear, "I work harder than people who have bosses and timesheets and commutes and offices that are outside their homes because there is no barrier between my personal life and my professional life like there is for you.  My work is more important to my livelihood than yours is because my income depends entirely on my imagination and my ambition, and you don't need to have either of those things to draw a salary.  I can't satisfy my innate need to create if I don't do something new and exciting every minute of every day, but you are just a cog in the wheel and you don't have to be innovative to feel fulfilled.  Hustling makes me special, and you don't need to hustle so you aren't special."

I told you this has more to do with me and my own hang-ups than it does with the people who use the word "hustle" to describe what they do, didn't I?  Because of course all that is ridiculous.  I work hard, my job demands creativity, my professional identity is intertwined with my personal identity, and there aren't a lot of people out there who could (or would want to) do what I do.  I know that.  I do.  But when millennials who freelance and/or work from home talk about their hustle, I bristle.

Yikes.  I'm a little embarrassed to have admitted all of this.  But there it is, dear readers.  That's what I hear.  Feel free to tell me I'm being absurd - or, if you didn't last week, tell us in the comments what you understand when you hear "hustle" in a contemporary non-athletic context!  I think I need a reality check.

In My Life In Ten Years

While scrolling through Twitter yesterday, I noticed that Helene is hosting a Blog Every Day In October linkup.  Today's prompt is to write a letter to yourself in ten years, and I originally planned to get really deep and philosophical about it.  (I even rifled through my bookcase for my copy of À la recherche du temps perdu from college.  It wasn't there, for which we can all be grateful.)  It's possible I was overthinking my post, because I found myself at a total loss when I sat down to actually write the letter.

After all, who knows where I'll be in ten years?  I'm actually not so different now from who I thought a decade ago I might be at 28, but becoming that person mostly stemmed from choices I alone made.  The next ten years will be full of decisions that Jon and I arrive at together, and we haven't yet delved into the specifics of a lot of where and who we want to be when.  I mean, we're on the same page in an abstract sense, but we don't have a clear two - or five- or ten-year plan.  (Jon, to be honest, isn't big on that sort of thing.  I am.  This is going to be fun.)  So what can I tell myself in ten years, knowing only that I'll be where I am with Jon alongside me?

The Beatles usually help in these sorts of situations:

Rosh Hashanah: Renewing and Changing

In Hebrew, words are founded on roots made up of three consonants that contain the essence of the words' meanings.  Those roots blossom into a wide variety of words when vowels, prefixes, and suffixes are added, and much biblical interpretation is inspired by the relationship between words that share a root.  For instance, the first word in Genesis is beresheit, which means "in the beginning." The root of beresheit is the letters ר א ש (reish aleph shin), which means "first" or "head."  This might sound familiar from yesterday's post, as ר א ש is also the root of rosh, as in Rosh Hashanah, or "head of the year."

I mentioned in that post that shana, "year," comes from the Hebrew word for "repeat."  However, the root of shana, ש נ א (shin nun aleph), also leads to the word shinui, which means "change."  As we begin a new year, we take stock of where we've been and how we want to continue, and we're faced with the opportunity to decide if we want to repeat or change our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Said Rav Yitzhak, "There are four actions that alter a person's destiny: giving tzedakah, crying out to God, changing one's name, and changing one's actions." And some say, moving. - Talmud Rosh Hashanah 15b

The rabbis at Sixth & I, the synagogue I attend, explain the above passage of biblical commentary like this:

"And some say?"  The Rabbis don't question Rav Yitzhak's first four suggestions, so why are they ambivalent about whether packing up and moving could truly change a person's future?  In many ways, physically leaving a place is the most straightforward way to alter one's circumstances.  Why do they doubt moving's efficacy as a spiritual tool?

They may have realized what many of us also know to be true—wherever a person goes, she takes herself with her.

 This is the struggle of the High Holy Days: in order to change our circumstances, we must, most often, first change ourselves.

To that end, here is a suggestion for your new year: Aspire to "move yourself" as the Talmud suggests—not in external circumstance, but in perspective.  Be like Hillel, who said, "Do not judge your friend until you've stood in his place" (Pirkei Avot 2:4).  Stand in the place of those around us, both close to us and far from us; try to inhabit their perspective, transcend our own boundaries, and in doing so find justice and joy.

This is, without a doubt, a challenge for all of us.  It is daunting to step out of our comfort zones, to approach issues from another's viewpoint, and to entertain the idea that a differing opinion can be valid.  But change does does not come from a place of stability.   It comes from doubting, from debating, from exploring.  It comes from movement.

I included a quote from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 at the top of this post because we're in the midst of Banned Books Week in the US.  (Ironically enough, this novel about books being banned has been censored repeatedly since it was published.)  Keeping the spirit of Rosh Hashanah and that of Banned Books Week in mind, I hope you will take advantage of this window of opportunity to assess the year that has passed and the possibilities for the one ahead.  I hope you will examine how you might challenge the world around you as many of the books on the banned list have done.  I hope you will seek out the second side of the question and in doing so, as the rabbis say, find justice and joy.

My Blogging Writing Process

after last week's storm

Since I came back to blogging in March after a month off, I've toyed with the idea of shutting down Betsy Transatlantically - or, at the very least, making it dormant, a static scrapbook of four years of my life.  The friendships I have made through blogging have transcended this medium and, thanks to Twitter and Instagram, I've realized that you no longer need to be an active blogger to be a part of the blogging community.  In some ways, blogging has become about so much more than just having a blog, which in this case is a good thing.

However, it is how I define blogging at its most basic that keeps me from quitting: blogging for me is about writing.  I've enjoyed the other aspects of blogging over the years but, at this point, I'm secure in the knowledge that the sort of readers I want are those who come here for my writing (and for occasional text-light posts about my life).  Where else would I be able to flesh out my thoughts on the role that music plays in political activism or my feelings about finding a home in the Anglican Church as a Jew or my musings on what it means to be a good wife?  The place for that is here.

A few weeks ago, Lisa tagged me in a "My Writing Process" blog tour - this seems like an appropriate time to dive into those questions, so here goes!

1. What are you working on right now?
I'm drafting a few posts on making my apartment feel less like a rental.  Unless Jon gets a job somewhere in the DC area that requires we move for commuting ease, we've decided that we'll stay put, saving money in our studio, until we can buy our first home.  Now that I've been in the apartment for over a year, I've figured out what works, what doesn't, and what investments of time and energy are worth making the space feel like ours more permanently.  Believe it or not, these posts are turning out to be composed of more text than images!

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre?
My voice is the only way my writing differs from that of other bloggers I admire.  (That sounds supremely arrogant - I hope you know what I mean.)  I'm not as colloquial as some and I'm not as funny as others and I'm not as motivational as yet others, but we're all blogging from a place of deep respect for the craft of writing and, at the same time, from the heart.

3. Why do you write what you do?
A theatre director once told me that he thinks it's crucial for new work to be developed in front of a paying audience because it can only truly evolve when it's public and when people who aren't affiliated with the show have chosen to participate in its growing pains.  I feel the same way about writing; it's why I blog rather than keeping a journal.

4. How does your writing process work?
My more nuanced posts usually go through several drafts, sometimes spanning a few weeks, before I hit publish and even after they're out in the wider world I'm tempted to constantly refine them.  But my "lifestyle" posts are often written in a flash as inspiration strikes!

A huge thank you to Alicia for her Jaybird Community Facebook page, which hosted a discussion about Manda's fantastic post on her own blogging; that post and comments from Erika, Amanda, Ashley, and Erin were in the back of my mind as I wrote this post.  I tag all of you to continue the tour  - let us know if you do!

Edited to add: Erika wrote her post the other day - she was originally tagged by Lisa, too!

Two Years Ago Last Friday

Union Station; Washington, DC

Two years ago last Friday, a taxi picked Jon and me up from the flat in Finchley.  I spent most of the ride to the airport on the phone with 02, arguing about the cancellation of my phone plan; while it was a frustrating way to spend an hour, I was secretly glad to have the distraction.  Jon and I already had enough sad and silent journeys under our belts, holding hands and trying to think of new ways to say goodbye, and I wanted to stave that off for as long as possible.

Two years ago last Friday, I dried my tears and blew my nose and calmed my hiccoughs as I walked through security at Heathrow, away from my fiancé and towards the home I'd left behind years earlier.

Two years ago last Friday, a dour American immigration official at Dulles took my passport and, when I answered his questions, broke into a beaming smile and cried, "Welcome back!"  In response, I sobbed.

I've cried too many times to can count since then.  It's occasionally felt like I'm being tested as I make a new life here in DC without Jon; as I've said before, sometimes this chapter feels like limbo.  But, more often than not, I do fit here, in this life and in this city and in this chapter.  It's been an adventure to rediscover my hometown - anyone who has been in Washington for more than a decade will tell you that it's practically unrecognizable from when I was in high school, though the bones are the same.  It's been a pleasure to get to know my parents essentially as peers, as wonderfully generous and beautifully flawed people who, I'm proud to say, I'm much more like than I would have wanted to admit when I last lived here.  It's been satisfying to have found and furnished an apartment and made it a home for the three of us to live in for (possibly) the next few years, though it's just Charlie and me right now.  It's been self-affirming to survive the wrong job, the right job that then ceased to exist, and unemployment, all of which led me finally to the place my career (and, I say without hyperbole, my heart) wants me to be.  And it's been comforting to not only have engaged with dear old friends while maintaining friendships from London but also to have made fantastic new friends, women who are as kind and funny and irreverent as any I might ever hope to know.

(It's also been character-strengthening to take on Homeland Security and the State Department and to stand strong against delays and misunderstandings and complications.  For those of you who are interested, I've put in a calendar of our visa progress on the right sidebar of this blog and will update it as things progress.)

Two years ago last Friday, I started a new chapter.  It's important for me to remember that this isn't a time of purgatory but rather of pilgrimage.  Soon Jon will be here and we'll start yet another, but, tears aside, I'm not passively waiting for him to arrive.  All of these little moments of belonging, even without Jon, make up quite an active life.  It's a challenging life, a full life, and a beautiful one.  I'm moving forward, as are we all, in a succession of little moments, and life is good.

Happy June, dear readers.

linking up with Belinda for her monthly Life is Good project at Found Love, Now What?

Disclaimers and Confidence

A few weeks ago, Bailie published a post titled Disclaimer Free Blogging that really resonated with me.  She wrote, "I kept thinking that my points were valid and I should not hide behind little words in italics at all. I do not do that in real life so if I have a blog to share my view of life with the world why should I shy away from posting the things that are on my mind... Confidence can be hard to come by in this age of having such a close and unique look into so many various lives but we need to remember that we all have something to offer."

I've noticed this more and more around the internet in the last few months - explanations, apologies, and justifications at the top of meaningful blog posts.  There's been a huge push in the last year or so towards an acceptance of "authentic" blogging, which is great, but it seems like a number of bloggers aren't actually comfortable being imperfect on their blogs and so they shield their vulnerability behind defensiveness.  It makes me sad to read a post that begins with a near renunciation of the content that follows because it makes me feel like the blogger either doesn't trust me or, worse, she doesn't trust herself.

Blogging should build confidence.  It's an opportunity for us to develop our voices and to discover communities of like-minded friends; we should be able to publish what we want how we want.  I don't think it should ever be necessary to post disclaimers on our own blogs, no matter how personal or controversial the topics we write about might be.  That doesn't at all mean that we should feel obliged to post personal or controversial thoughts - I like Bethany's take on perceived perfection online, where she reminds bloggers of the appeal of the pretty and polite - but, if we feel compelled to by something inside ourselves, we should do so with confidence.  I'm sure I have written my own disclaimers over the past four years but, going forward, I'm going to follow this flowchart if I'm tempted to add a one to a post:

If I wanted to be funny, this would be the perfect place to add a disclaimer - something along the lines of "this works for me but it might not work for everyone and that's okay" - but I really do want to know: what do you use to guide what you post and how when you blog about intimate or tricky subjects?

Working 9-5 (And Keeping It Off The Blog)

I share my life somewhat indiscriminately on this blog.  You know about our visa frustrations, my approach to healthy living, and what I believe as well as what it means to be a Jewpiscopalian.  I share a lot, and you know me pretty well.

One thing I don't share is my career.  I used to, and you may remember reading posts from the first few years of Betsy Transatlantically's existence that revealed quite a bit about who I was from 9-5, but I don't anymore.  In fact, this past summer I scrubbed my archive of almost all posts regarding my professional life and I rarely mention it at all anymore on this blog.

I thought of this yesterday, when I posted an Instagram of my desk and deleted an inappropriate comment I'd left in response to Val's compliment .  The thing is, beyond little snapshots of my day - desk photos, all logos carefully hidden; selfies, when I'm dressed up for meetings or when I try out a new hairstyle; and packed snacks that make me feel terribly responsible - I learned the hard way that it isn't prudent for me to share my thoughts on what I do, where, or how.  Though I never specify (and never have specified) where I am employed, you could figure it out if you tried hard enough, and I do not speak for my employer on this blog nor do I have permission from my colleagues to blog about them either directly or indirectly.

I made my peace with that from a diplomatic standpoint, but it's still frustrating.  It's most obviously frustrating because I love sharing my life with you on this blog and my career is a huge part of my identity.  The secondary reason it's frustrating is because I love arts and culture and I wish I could share the best of what London and Washington have to offer but, given that I've worked at musical and theatrical organizations, performing arts venues, and cultural centers in both cities as well as in New York, I'm not sure how I'd do that while keeping my professional identity distinct from my blog identity.

Does that make sense?  I hope so.  Anyway, I know this was a post about something I can't post about, which is sort of pointless at the end of the day, but I wanted to explain it.  Thanks for reading.

A Postscript on Monetizing

via

Dear readers, you have left me over three thousand words worth of comments on Monday's post on relationship capital and I am beyond honored.  I have a post scheduled for next week about the audiences I imagine when I draft various types of posts but, in short, you are my ideal audience.  My heart swelled every time I opened an email from Disqus with your thoughts and I had to scroll down on my phone to read the whole comment because you gave the topic so much time and energy.  Thank you.

I will respond to all them them (on the post itself, so we can continue the discussion) as soon as I can, but please do indulge me in this postscript first!  I was focused on writing about how relationships and monetization intersect that I didn't clarify something I should have: I have no problem with the monetization of blogs.

Many of the posts I've published over the past year or so on blogging have dealt with what I've called "hobby" bloggers; I don't know enough about the mechanisms of professional blogs to address them and, as I said on Monday, I have less of an emotional investment in them.  However, it cannot be denied that hobby bloggers are, en masse, generating income from their blogs - and more power to them.  Again, as I said on Monday, very few of us would turn down the opportunity to make money from doing something we love, something we'd be doing for free anyway, and many bloggers are discovering hidden skills that lead them to build their own small businesses.

However, as soon as a blogger makes the conscious decision to monetize, be it from sponsorship, with affiliate ads, or through media networks, she takes steps towards being a professional blogger and makes the concurrent decision to view me not just as a reader but as a consumer.  That doesn't make me any less willing to support her, but it does mean that my pageviews and clicks directly contribute to the financial success of her blog and I think that does give me - and all other readers/consumers - the right to hold her to a higher standard.  If a blogger monetizes in a strategic way, her blog becomes a business; it's therefore disrespectful to her readers/consumers to throw out "it's just a blog and I do it for myself" to explain amateur behavior online when she makes money from our interactions with her. We're all learning and growing in our own ways, everyone makes mistakes, and I love that the blogging community is so encouraging and flexible, but this isn't high school. When a blog generates income from its readers/consumers, the relationships change and the responsibilities are greater.

I occasionally scroll through a well-known lifestyle blog that included a post recently about why she blogs.  It was a bit of a rant, really, against bloggers who blog for money.  She writes for fun, she insisted, and that makes what she does pure; the money she makes is just an "added bonus" that doesn't affect her content.  (Bonnie wrote a great response to that post, if you haven't seen it and want to read it.)  All of this text, however, was next to a dozen sidebar sponsor buttons, a large branded ad, and announcement of her affiliation with BlogHer.

It's great that a blogger can make money from her blog, whether it's enough to reinvest in growing her blog, enough for occasional shopping splurges, or enough to quit her job and devote herself entirely to her blog and her blog-inspired small business.  However, when a blogger begins making money from her blog by design rather than by accident, she becomes responsible to her readers/consumers and can no longer dismiss unprofessional conduct, whatever that may mean, with comments like "it's just a blog and I'm just a blogger."

I love supporting other bloggers, but, honestly, if a blogger makes money from my investment in her blog, I expect more than that.  Based on your comments from Monday, I might be preaching to the choir: I think many of you do, too.

Thoughts on Relationship Capital

As a reader, I mentally divide blogs into two main categories: professional blogs, which are usually unambiguous in their self-identification as businesses, and all other blogs.  Professional blogs are based on the fantasy of readers having a relationship with the bloggers who write them - as everyone knows by now, that's the foundation of those blogs' successes.  We readers feel we know the bloggers personally and we therefore trust them when they endorse products or brands.  (That's why we feel so betrayed when the bloggers behave contrary to our ideal, like when Joanna Goddard plagiarized her own article for Glamour from 2009 in a blog post on Cup of Jo three years later.)  But at the end of the day, professional blogs are businesses and we readers are consumers.  Nothing more, nothing less.

The relationship that readers have with bloggers gets a little blurrier when we wade into the "all other blogs" category, though, and I think this is why: we're all open to the idea of making money from our blogs.  Even those of us whose blogs serve as extracurricular outlets would be happy to accept a free product in exchange for a review or a check in exchange for a branded guest post.  There are plenty of us who are keen to keep our blogging a hobby rather than a job, avoiding the external pressures and reordered priorities that monetization brings, but very few (if any) would turn down a potentially lucrative opportunity if a brand reached out to us.  I'm not saying that no one has integrity when it comes to blogging, but most would agree that there's nothing wrong with being compensated for something you would publish anyway.

Now, as a blogger, I mentally divide the income a blogger can generate from her blog into two main categories: advertising, which is usually bought by a company or arranged by a media agency, and sponsorship.  I think that advertising is relatively straightforward and, again, the bottom line is that we readers are understood to be consumers by both the advertiser and the blogger.  However, sponsorship is more complicated because it imperceptibly leverages personal relationships for financial gain.

Before I go any further with this line of thought, I want to make it very clear that I don't think all sponsorship programs on all blogs are bad.  This post wasn't inspired by any one blog or any one approach to sponsorship.  I've sponsored a few blogs with only one dissatisfying experience, and I am very glad I tested out my own sponsorship program for a few months (although, as you know, I ultimately decided that the kind of sponsorship I wanted to offer was unsustainable in the long run).  Plus, I do still sponsor other blogs from time to time when a blogger or a project presents an opportunity that I want to support.  So maybe this post is a bit hypocritical, but it's the result of four years of figuring out how I like to blog, four years of watching other blogs go through their own growing pains, and four years of trying to keep up as the blog world evolves - though, as I write this, I realize that many of these observations come from the past year alone.

It seems like increasing numbers of bloggers jump into sponsorship because that's an easy way to be taken seriously and to start monetizing.  (As Amanda commented on my post from last Tuesday, "It makes me feel sometimes like I'm not a "legit" blogger because I don't offer sponsorship.")  When you sponsor other blogs, you expose yourself to new and bigger audiences, you borrow a platform from which to introduce yourself, you buy the opportunity to cohost giveaways, and you gain followers, all of which then allows you to explore other ways of earning money from your blog including - to bring this full circle - offering your own sponsorship options.  The difference between advertising and sponsorship, though, is that advertising is purely transactional.  Sponsorship is based on the premise of a relationship, both between you and the blogger you're sponsoring and between that blogger and all of her readers.

Whereas everyone knows that professional bloggers make money off the fantasy of relationships with their readers, the rest of us have (or once had) real relationships with our readers and those intangible relationships get complicated when money is involved.  Honestly, I start to doubt the authenticity of relationships when they come with a dollar sign.  Again, I'm not saying that everyone who offers or buys sponsorship is faking it, but I am admitting that I've gotten a bit jaded over the past year or so.  It started with the relentless advance of Passionfruit across blogland, making it possible for the purchase of sponsorship to be entirely devoid of interpersonal communication.  Then came the flood of tweets announcing new sponsors - @blogger1: thrilled that @blogger2 is on my sidebar this month :) this girl is the best! - and I would notice again and again that @blogger1 had never interacted with @blogger2 on any social medium before that moment.  I began to doubt endorsements; when @blogger3 shares a post that @blogger4 has written, is it because @blogger3 really does think that @blogger4 has some fantastic suggestions for how to spend a weekend in Berlin or is it because @blogger4 gets a certain number of shout-outs as per the sponsorship she bought from @blogger3?

I told you.  I've gotten jaded.  I'm sorry.

There probably isn't an answer to this issue.  In fact, I'm not even sure what the question is.  After all, I'm totally in favor of blogs monetizing.  Why not earn a little from doing something you love?  Many of us pour time and energy into our blogs that could be used to generate income elsewhere - why not here?  That absolutely makes sense to me.  But, given how I invest emotionally in the blogs and the bloggers that I love, I'm increasingly uncomfortable with how relationship capital is thoughtlessly spent on monetization.  I'm afraid it's getting harder to maintain purely qualitative blogging relationships when we readers are so easily leveraged into consumers with a quantitative value.  I feel like sometimes I'm getting played, and I don't know what to do about it.

Am I the only one who feels this way?

postscript (and promise to reply to all comments in full as soon as possible!) here