On Balance
Hello! Welcome to another week of AWESOME. I had the best weekend and even got in a track workout wearing a t-shirt. February what?
It also was a race weekend for me! Marky and I headed up to Peterborough to do my first rogaine race as lead navigator. I will do a full race report later, but we had an awesome time on a fun course and weren’t completely lost.
Today, I wanted to approach an interesting comment I recently received that challenged my levels of balance, suggesting that my exercise was a bit obsessive and that it appeared that it was all I did.
Part of being a blogger is rolling with negative comments and not letting them affect you, but I take this one seriously because my goal with my blog is to project and promote health, both physically and mentally, resulting in positive self esteem and just general happiness.
Normally I don’t feel the need to provide a rebuttal to comments and let them go, but because this one was so counter to my core mission, I wanted to discuss it here.
A few comments:
Laces and Lattes is not who I am. It is a projection of who I am.
My nickname may be Latte among some of my circles, I may run a lot of races, I may drink a lot of lattes, but I am a lot more than what I write about here. I try to keep my personal life sheltered on here, which means that this is not an entirely true representation of who I am.
I work in marketing and I am all about brand building – this is brand Laces and Lattes and you will see this brand on my social media, my articles for RunWaterloo and Canadian Running magazine and even on my personal facebook page.
When I first began blogging, this was more of a life style blog and one of my amazing friends who is a PR wizard and sports agent called me one day and bluntly said “Unless you add value in some way, no one cares about your life. Pick ONE thing and niche out your blog.”
So I chose running and the rest is history.
I adore adventuring, running, exercising and exploring, but it is not all I do.
I could write about the thousand other things that I am passionate about, but my readership probably won’t care. For instance, I love writing, reading books, my career, electronic music, cooking, spending time with my friends and family, good coffee and cleaning but this isn’t about that.
I was explaining this dilemma to some of the members of the agency that I work alongside at my job in the same conversation where they had challenged me to learn to use SnapChat properly. (I seriously thought it was just a platform for rude photos so I didn’t want to get on that bandwagon.)
So, a new challenge arose. Laces and Lattes is a brand for me, but if you want a peek at the other side – where I eat half a bag of chocolate granola over the sink, work all night when I have insomnia instead of sleeping or lie on a couch for an entire Sunday afternoon, follow me over on SnapChat with user name lacesandlattes.
A preview of what you are in for:
Have a balanced week, friends.
Jen @ Pretty Little Grub says
I never though about using snapchat in that way. I like how you have branded yourself but I also really like seeing personal stuff. I think when people read blogs they need to realize we only show a portion of our lives and usually only the good stuff too. It’s not full reality.
lacesandlattes says
I know. That is why I never compare myself to a blogger based on just what I see online. We are so much more. 🙂
Christina @ The Athletarian says
I just love you, Jess! I, too, have recently come across negative comments about my lifestyle and eating. People make assumptions based on the little snippets they see a few times a week. We do things other than what we post about and that’s what people fail to understand. Sometimes I do weekend recaps but maybe there are eight more things I did that I don’t want to tell people about, you know?
It is what it is though. It will probably never stop so we just have to roll with the punches and ignore when we can!
lacesandlattes says
Haters gonna hate… 🙂
Ange @ Cowgirl Runs says
I’m LOVING using SnapChat as a way to show the REST of my life, the life that isn’t running and run coaching that I put online.
I’m still working on constantly refining my niche (dude, it’s scary to cut out all the talk about my cat!) but even still, I only show a very small portion of my life online.
lacesandlattes says
Aha! Well I am definitely following you now…
Jes says
Thank you for posting this! And it is also a good reminder that carving out that niche can take time too – especially when there are many things you are passionate about! I imagine the majority of your readership take it just like that – a snip-it of who you are but not a comprehensive representation!
I am loving your posts and feel super inspired to keep doing what I love when I see you out adventuring or discovering new foods or tools or run related info.
Thanks 🙂
Rebecca says
Great post!
There is a large portion of my life that I do not write about at all. It is no ones business what I do at school/work and really not what my blog is about. I have no intentions of being an education blogger. Still, my blog has started creeping around school. Someone even “googled me” before I went in to supply teach once and found my blog (could tell from IP addresses)
Haha, I just joined Snapchat for this exact reason. That and my Mom/school people are not on it.