5 Reasons Why I’ve Been A Terrible Blogger Of Late

Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

5 Reasons Why I’ve Been A Terrible Blogger Of Late

August 2nd, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 12 Comments »

Well. This is it. Rock bottom. I told myself I’d never do one of those “I’m sorry I haven’t posted recently” posts and here I am! I haven’t posted lately! I feel terrible about it.

Actually that’s not entirely true. I do have a few pretty good reasons why I haven’t been blogging lately and since I really want to get over this hump, I thought it best to wipe the slate clean, to buck up and share what all has been going down in my world. The good, the bad and the ugly. And then we can move on to bigger and better things without the rigamarole of having to explain where I have been. Here we go!

5. I got engaged! No, I’m not going to go all Sheryl Sanberg on anyone. I’m still the same hard-working girl I have always been. But I have to admit, that being in love can really take a toll on your blog – that is if you blog is not about love and relationships. Taylor and I just have the best adventures together and we spend weekends out of the apartment, on foot, exploring where ever we happen to be on any given day. And to tell you the truth, it’s marvelous. So at the end of the weekends, where I used to spend a few hours writing and queuing up posts for the week, now I’m mostly too tired to sit in front of the computer and so by the time the weeks starts the same cycle begins again.

4. Dollar, dollar bills y’all. I have a really amazing job right now that requires 110% at all times, no if ands or buts. Yes, I did have a job before (Answer With Action), but it’s all very different when you go into an office Monday-Friday and anyone who has ever worked for themselves or as a consultant would agree with me. I’m five months in now, time flies when you’re working hard! I started as Director of Digital Marketing at Lippe Taylor (and her sister agency ShopPR) at the beginning of March and it’s been absolutely amazing ever since. I lead a (growing) team and I was really looking for a place where I felt like my contributions and opinions would be valued and I have found that at Lippe Taylor. What’s hard is coming home when I have zero brainspace left. So it’s hard to get into the mode to sit and write. I’m working on it.

3. I am loving living in New York! I have wanted to live in New York City my whole life. I really have. I didn’t make it right after college as I thought I would – instead taking a year in Pittsburgh, pitstop in Boston, 5 years in Los Angeles, one traveling and volunteering (well documented here) and all of last year in New Orleans. I love every step of my journey and certainly no place outshines another. I love LA for LA and NOLA for NOLA. I know my version of “home” is different from some other people – for me home is where my friends and family are. It’s not so much a physical place but a state of mind. Living in New York means exploring and discovering new arts and cultural things to do, restaurants to try, long walks to take and spending a good bit of time offline. It’s been so important for me to balance working online and living offline and just taking some time for myself.

2. Fear. Writer’s Block. That what I’m writing isn’t good enough. The usual feelings of “not being good enough” that all of us have. I have a piece of street art I love that says, “Everything. Everything. Everything. Everything.” That’s how I am. I want to be everywhere and everything to everyone all the time. So not writing for a week, then a month, then longer, well it just ends up feeling like I have so much to get out of my system that I don’t know where to start. So frankly, I don’t start at all. It’s a hard thing to get over. I have been working on it. I recently took a class for 8 Thursdays through The OpeEd Project about multimedia thought leadership. Surrounded by the same group of women for 8 weeks talking about various forms of media, how to get our voices heard and sharing our collective experiences. I wrote for them, I wrote for myself, but it’s time to step back in and share some of what I’m writing.

1. I’ve gone old school and started journaling again. That’s right, pen and paper. Crazy times we live in! I really needed a place I would write without abandon and needed to get back to find that chi inside of me. I’ve kept actual paper journals since the 7th grade and written at some points more frequently than others but it’s something that has always been really important to me.

There you have it! 5 reasons I’ve been a terrible blogger of late, but honestly, I’ve been a pretty great offline person. Now it’s time to balance the two a little better. Does this ever happen to you? I’d love to hear any stories or tips about you got through a down-point in blogging and came back!

Rock the causebah,
Sloane

Exciting Announcement! Introduction to Lippe Taylor

March 12th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

I have such incredible news to share! I’ve recently accepted (and just started) as Director of Digital Marketing for Lippe Taylor, a marketing and public relations agency in New York that focuses on women and women’s issues.

I have long been passionate about women and women’s issues (including my new web project Help A Woman Out) and couldn’t be more excited to take my skills and experience to join the Lippe Taylor family. It’s an amazing agency with a great client base and I’m thrilled to be jumping right in, managing a team, and leading digital initiatives.

I have a lot more to share about Lippe Taylor and this new chapter in my life and I can’t wait to write more about it here. In the meantime, the full press release is below. Check it out. My mom said she learned things she didn’t know about me from reading it! And as always, thank you for coming along on this journey with me.

*****
Cause and Social Marketing Expert Sloane Berrent Joins Lippe Taylor Brand Communications as Director of Digital Marketing

NEW YORK – March 7, 2011 – Lippe Taylor Brand Communications announced a new addition to its digital marketing team with the addition of social entrepreneur and digital strategist Sloane Berrent as the agency’s new Director of Digital Marketing.

Sloane is a former Kiva Fellow and has been recognized for her leadership in women’s issues and cause marketing by CNN, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, Chronicle of Philanthropy, TechCrunch, Read/Write Web and Mashable and included in power lists She Takes on The World’s Women of the Year 2009 and Forbes’ 20 Inspiring Women To Follow On Twitter. Most recently Sloane ran her own digital strategy consultancy, Answer With Action.

Sloane will join the digital marketing team led by David Binkowski, who joined Lippe Taylor as EVP, Digital Marketing in June 2010 from MS&LGroup. “I am excited to welcome Sloane to the Lippe Taylor digital team where she’ll bring her deep knowledge and insights of social and cause marketing to our clients. Sloane’s career history of focusing on women’s issues and rights significantly bolsters our core strength of marketing to women,” said Binkowski.

“As we have seen tremendous growth in our social marketing business, we are filling our teams with the best talent in the industry. Sloane is just that! Her expertise in marketing to women makes her a perfect fit,” says Jim Joseph, President of Lippe Taylor.
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I process it differently now. Views on my travels in developing countries.

March 12th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. No Comments »

Above is a slideshow of my first day in Haiti with the Fairwinds Trading and the #heartofhaiti bloggers. What’s amazing is that each picture tells a story. A photo is really just a moment in time and from the second before to the second after everything changes. It captures how you feel just then.

So when I was thinking about Haiti and the difference in the experience for me versus some of the other women bloggers who haven’t traveled as much to the developing world I couldn’t help but have an important revelation.

I process it differently now. Developing countries have a different affect on me now than before.

I’m still struck from the moment we land at how different the developing world is from the developed. And I’m still in awe at the differences. But certain aspects I see differently. I still see the trash on the streets and the lack of infrastructure (old cars, building falling down) but now I see past that a lot more quickly.

My eyes now focus on the kids playing, the laughter of women gathered on a street corner, the way people are helping each other cross the street and carry heavy loads.

People ask me what draws me to the developing world and what I say is that it sets me straight. It reminds me of what’s important in this world – people. And I simply love experiencing new places, my senses alive and taking in every moment, every sight and every smell. I like testing my internal compass, I like finding a way to connect with people when I don’t speak their language. And I love being able to debunk myths of what traveling to developing countries is like to people when I get back.

When you look at the photos above, I hope you see the life in them. I hope you see the hope, creativity and progress. There’s more than the ruins, you just have to look beyond the obvious. In other words, process it differently.

My Cities 2010

January 4th, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 5 Comments »

I haven’t been as good at keeping this meme as some others I know, but nonetheless, starting in 2009 I kept track of the cities where I traveled and wanted to continue that list for 2010.

I had spent 2009 without a permanent location traveling and volunteering so one of the biggest things I wanted this past year was continuity. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would give myself a meager 5. The key is that while I FELT more at home, I physically still traveled quite a bit. Sometimes I loved it, ok, most of the time I loved it. One of my mottos is after all “have passport will travel!” Still, I did crave little things, like the ability to know where I would be one week to the next. The ability to take a four week tennis or sushi-making class and attend each week (that never ever could have happened in 2010). At the same rate, I traveled almost exclusively for work and for fabulous professional opportunities and for that I’m eternally grateful to be at a place in my career where my expertise is requested and valued in different markets. Plus a few trips were for weddings and birthdays with friends and experiencing those special days with those that I love was amazing. Last, there was an annual trip with my mom and little sisters (this year we went to the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador) that always brings a smile to my face and the start of an annual humanitarian trip that Taylor and I are going to be taking (this year was Ghana).

All in all, an amazing 2010 of travel. The phrase we coined at NOLAlicious is “heart of a native, soul of a tourist.” Truthfully, I feel that way about most places I am. I’m always curious to go and see and explore no matter if I’m at home or in a brand new place. Without further ado, my cities for 2010:

January:
* New Orleans, LA (as a homebase, I’ll only mention it here in January. I do want to add that I moved apartments in New Orleans March 1st so I have two places to count as my own).
World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland as the MySpace & Wall St. Journal Citizen Journalist.

February
Why leave New Orleans? Election, Super Bowl, Mardi Gras!

March
Austin, TX (RISE Austin and SXSW)
Los Angeles, CA (Spoke at CalTech)

April
Pittsburgh, PA (Received award from my high school)

May
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador
Chattanooga, TN
Luray, VA

June
New York, NY (Spoke at Philanthropy Day NY)
Pittsburgh, PA (My grandpa’s 90th birthday!)
Palm Springs, CA

July
Seattle, WA (SummerMash)
San Francisco, CA (SummerMash)
Alexandria, VA
Washington, DC (World Bank Synoposis & SummerMash)
Luray, VA
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The Year That Was: 5 Annual Review Posts You Should Read

January 3rd, 2011, by Sloane Berrent. 5 Comments »

Photo courtesy of Taylor Davidson

As December came to a close and January kicks in, I looked around for inspiration on how I could structure a post summing up the year that was or looking forward to the upcoming year. Especially since I just wrote about having a bit of a block about how best to do this. I often find myself with tabs open across my browser and when I did this exercise just now I found a few really moving posts that I wanted to share because we can all use some inspiration to get into the right mood for 2011. Right?

Here are my favorite posts from some of the best of the best and why I love them.

1. Danielle LaPorte’s it’s been very real, 2010: a white hot retrospective

Words with resonance. Testimonials that made me glow. And a couple surprise wildfires. Here’s a glimpse.

Danielle rocks. She has a way of writing, of creating and of being that just makes me excited. Her simple post of highlights from the past year show me that this “summing up the year that was” can be simpler than I thought while still deeply gratifying.

2. Felicia Day’s Five Things About 2010

I know I’m the guiltiest of all for setting unrealistic expectations for resolutions (Last year on my list were: Learn Chinese, and Trapeze Lessons. Huh?) but this year I decided to, before making a list, look back on 2010 and figure out what things I actually LEARNED as a human being.

Felicia took her year and summed her accomplishments into lessons she learned. I love this! It allowed an entire year of experiences, hardships and triumphs to be put into five lessons. Too often I think we do something and move on without thinking about the consequences or what we learned from the experience. Felicia encouraged me to think not about specific experiences, but what I learned from them.

3. Gina Trapani’s 2010 Lessons Learned

Don’t waste your time on stuff that doesn’t matter. I learn and re-learn this lesson every single year, and I swear the universe will continue to flog me about the head and shoulders with it till I get it right.

Gina is brutally honest with herself and poignant in how she writes about it. I really related to her reflections on having thought life was going to go one way and instead it went another way. I admired her honesty, but also her ability to unabashedly take credit for her success. That’s hugely important and a good reminder to step up and step into what I did well last year.
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