Occasionally around here we hold staff meetings to provide a little de-briefing on the progress and direction of this blog and to shell out plenty of thank yous. I don’t actually have a staff and my purpose is to serve my readers, so you are all my staff and are thus invited to the meeting- congratulations! Who doesn’t love meetings?
C’mon guys, it won’t be that bad.
New Ventures
First on the agenda, excellent news, I recently got hired to write articles for Mode.com, a kind of Buzzfeed-type site. So I’ll be able to make money online without persuading you to buy things! I’m sure we’re both happy about this development. I’ll be writing primarily relationship articles for them and thus sharing them here when topics overlap. You’ll start to notice them shared at the bottom of posts on occasion.
Here’s an article I just wrote called “How to Safeguard Your Marriage Against Social Media.”
Check out How to Safegaurd Your Relationship Against Social Media
Not going to lie, I got a little freaked out at how often Facebook is mentioned in divorce cases- one study found one in seven divorces! Yikes, be careful out there guys.
Second thing, I wrote this article about prayer for LDS.org two months ago and will continue on as a contributor to that site. And if you were one who shared that article- thank you!! I just found out that my article is the most shared thing from the entire LDS.org site for the past 6 months (that includes conference articles, news articles, videos, etc)! It was shared over 72,000 times. Crrrrrrazy. I never would have expected that. So excited I get to keep writing for them!
New Direction
(I almost started this section I’ve called ‘new direction’ by saying, “Don’t get excited, I’m not talking about the band.” Then THANKFULLY I googled a pic of them to include and found out this popular band all the kids are talking about is actually called ONE Direction, not NEW Direction. Who knew, right?
Phew that would have been embarrassing. End parenthetical aside)
So I’ve been listening to some blogging podcasts lately and they’ve given me all sorts of great ideas! So, just a head’s up, I’m going to propose a re-direct of the focus of this blog soon.
As I’m sure you’ll remember from you’re notes of our previous staff meeting, I mentioned the mission statement of this blog was to remind readers that they love their spouse. I like that mission statement, but I’m hoping we can move in a more specific direction. I’m thinking of focusing in on improving time spent together to maximize bonding with minimal time and effort since everyone is so busy and tired these days. Tagline title pending. This is all with your approval of course, so I’ll be asking lots of opinions in the next month or so over on our Facebook Community and would love it if you would chime in!
Also, I’m thinking of focusing in on a different theme each month instead of random posts most of the month with the occasional focused series thrown in. A few monthly themes I’m thinking of: parenting TOGETHER, communication, and daily, weekly and monthly rituals to strengthen marriage. Any other ideas?
In Case You Missed It
A few exciting things going on around here. In case you missed it, we just had an EXCELLENT series called Secrets of a Happy Marriage from Couples Married 25+ Years.
We heard interviews from four fantastic couples:
Stay In Touch. Don’t be a Stranger. Have a Fun Summer.
One more end-of-school-year reminder that if you haven’t joined my email group yet, you need to get on that! We’re discussing my marriage wins, epiphanies, news. We’re chatting, connecting. Plus, I almost always forget to write my bi-monthly email, so no worries of annoying emails overtaking your in-box! Sign up here: