Since I redesigned my blog I have gotten a lot of great compliments on it. But a lot of my friends have asked how I keep up with writing.

I admit it can be very hard at times but you have to come up with ways to get over the blogging blues.

One of my favorite blogs, Style Me Pretty, just launched a supplemental blog called Backstage, where they write about the in’s and out’s of blogging as a business. The blog is a great read and recently Abby Larson wrote a post about Blogging Blues that I really wanted to share with you guys.

I’ve been noticing that a few of my favorite bloggers have been getting the burnout blues these days. And I totally get it. In this industry, it’s really hard to stay on top. To stay fresh and innovative and to approach each new day with a different set of enthusiastic phrases. And although I love what I do, the blogging blues can bite you when you least expect it. So today, I thought I would remind myself and all of you how to bring back that sparkle to the job that you know you love…you just might have forgotten why you love it.

1. Keep a gratitude journal. Sounds big time cheesy, I know. But writing down the reasons that we are grateful for our jobs, for our creative brains, for our lives…will remind us all as to just how lucky we are.
2. Take a break from the mundane and for one day, make it all about the fun. What does this mean? Well…if you are a florist and are bogged down in the business of being a florist, set aside one day to design flowers for your closest friends. Totally YOUR designs, influenced only by your love of your craft. For a wedding blogger this might mean spending a day with a cup of hot chocolate, sifting through all of your favorite vendor sites, finding inspiration in back copies of domino magazine, poring through galleries of your favorite weddings. Even reading your OWN blog to rediscover your voice, your passion.
3. Reserve a day just for housekeeping. It will be a brutal day…paperwork, number crunching, computer cleaning…but in the end, it will free up your brain space to get back to what you love.
4. Reserve a day just for brainstorming. Tait and I had a 2 hour meeting the other day to hash out all of the little details we needed to in order to move forward. It was hugely fulfilling and definitely reignited my motivation and excitement. Getting together a brainstorming meeting with your team will definitely bring back a little buzz. By encouraging everyone to participate (interns too)  in your session, you’ll inspire them, you’ll potentially discover a different perspective, you’ll get the fun brewing among everyone.
5. At the end of the day, shut the computer off, swear off emails and grab a glass of wine or a hot cup of tea. Take a moment to think about your day and to find the bright spots, the spots that make your stresses all worthwhile.

I know that these aren’t particularly mind blowing ideas, but these are little things that I do to give myself a pick-me-up. Of course, we all struggle with different parts of our lives. Running a family, keeping a nice home, maintaining relationships with our friends, running a business. It’s basically impossible to do all of these really well but it isn’t impossible to fall in love with the journey.

A few things I wanted to add to this list:

1. Don’t be afraid to re-blog. If someone wrote a post that you like, if it’s something you think your readers would benifit from, or if you feel like you have something to add to that post, don’t hesitate to re-blog the post. As long as you give credit to the original author and don’t try to claim the ideas as your own.
2. Read more. If you are feeling like you are in a blogging rut, read more blogs. And start reading blogs that might not fall into your “category” of blogging. Technically Random Sarah is my personal blog, but it focuses on social media and web 2.0. But I read a lot of food blogs, fashion blogs, friends personal blogs, tech blogs, local blogs. It helps me see what is out there and really reflect on how I am writing my own content.

You have to love your blog, if you don’t know why you are blogging maybe it’s time to take a break from it and reflect on why you started blogging in the first place. Let me know what helps you stay motivated to blog in the comments.

Well it’s about time!

(p.s. if you are reading this in a feed reader or via the email subscriptions, please take a moment to vist the site and let me know what you think of the new theme)

I have been wanting to give Random Sarah a face lift for some time, so I finally did!

I know many of you liked my old theme. But the good news is that you can download it for your own blog if you like!

The new theme keeps a lot of what I liked from my old theme (still Helvetica, my favorite font) But now the blog is my favorite color green! (You might remember that was the color of my wall in my old room in NYC, so I’ve been missing the color)

This new theme has a few fun extra features that I will be tweaking over the new few days, so please excuse me if something don’t look right just yet. If you scroll down you will find a section just for videos. (Not everything is playing correctly just yet, because they are not all formatted correctly) There is also a section at the bottom called “talking points”. This pulls up the posts from my archives that have the most comments. (I thought it was a really interesting way to highlight old content)

The theme also has a special tabbed module in the sidebar showing most popular posts, most recent posts, and recent comments.

The theme is originally supposed to be used as a magazine theme. It has other “magazine like” features. One in particular is a featured posts module at the top. (which I have not yet decided if I want to use) although it might be helpful in highlighting content from my blog, while still incorporating content from my tumblr.

I’m hoping that Random Sarah will be a place that shows everything that I am up to online. I will incorporating more content from my tumblr, and there is also flickr content in the sidebar. I also think this new theme will help me get back to providing some of the random content I used to post on this blog. It is a personal blog after all.

I would really LOVE your feedback on this theme, so let me know what you think!

Hey guys, it sure has been a while since I blogged here on radomsarah.com!

I have been settling into a new city and  a new job, not to mention helping crush cancer!

It sure has been a crazy few months, but I do really miss blogging. I never really stopped blogging, I have kept up a constant stream of content on my tumblr.

What I blog on tumblr is a lot like the kind of content that I used to post on Random Sarah. Random things that I find around the web that interest me. Over time I started to blog in a more focused way and tumblr became my outlet for all of the random stuff I found. But Random Sarah is where my twitter profile (and almost all of the other social sites I use) point too. When people are trying to find out more about me, they are dorected to a site that I don’t think currently reflects my level of activity on the web.

That being said I have decided that it’s time for a re-design of Random Sarah! I would really want this to be my home online, I want it to accurately reflect my activity online. I don’t want you to come to randomsarah.com and not see a post for a few weeks and think I dropped off the face of the earth!

As you can see, there doesn’t really seem to be any consistent design element, or branding across all of these sites that I use.

I am not 100% sure how I want this to look, of course I have ideas of my own, but I would really like to work with a designer on this.

If you would like to be considered for the project, or you know someone who has experience with wordpress and tumblr, please leave it in the comments. Or you can always shoot me an email at sarah.k.cooley@gmail.com