20th Anniversary Countdown: Guest Post #7

In celebration of my 20th Blogiversary, I'm having guest posts every week in the lead up to the big day. 

Please welcome Lisa!

Lisa is a mom of two little boys who lives in Minneapolis. She has a full-time job in the financial field, gives great picture book recommendations, and manages her way through a very busy life with a chronic health condition called rheumatoid arthritis. She's been blogging for quite some time and it's fun to dive into her archives from when she was a single lady through when she got married and then had babies! She blogs over at Lisa's Yarns and you should go visit her there!

Hi, I’m Lisa of the blog Lisa’s Yarns (named as such because it’s meant to be a platform to share the stories/yarns of my life (a la the phrase spinning yarns)). Similar to NGS, I’m a Midwesterner who also adores reading and books. When NGS asked me if I wanted to guest post, I had a lot of different ideas for a “20 things” list but ultimately went with the 20 ways blogging has made my life better.

1. It allowed me to form friendships without geographical constraints. There are people I call friends who live around the world.

2. In that same vein, it helped me find my fellow enthusiasts for things such as running, reading, and Paris.

3. Blogging and the friendships I formed got me through a very lonely period of my late 20s/early 30s when most of my college friends were getting married and starting families and I was very single.

4. … blogging also got me through a challenging, lonely year when I was relocated to Charlotte for my job and then diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis (which is a crappy autoimmune disease that tends to impact my joints). I haven’t gone back and read many posts from that year because they are painfully raw but writing about my experience was very cathartic.

5. It’s given me an opportunity to explore places I might not have otherwise gone. For example, when Phil and I stayed with Kyria for a weekend back in 2016, she took us on this awesome hike down to Stinson Beach where we enjoyed tacos in the cutest little taco stand. How could we have come up with a cool plan like that on our own unless we had a local by our side?

6. I also went on some very cool running-centric trips because of blogging. I ran the Victoria, BC half marathon and a trail half marathon in Berkeley, CA.

7. As someone who doesn’t identify as being artsy by any stretch of the imagination, it’s given me a virtual scrapbook of life. If something big happened since I started blogging in 2008, it’s probably been documented on the blog.

8. It has given me a platform to share the books I’ve loved with my readers!

9. I’ve also gotten a lot of book recommendations from reading others’ blogs, like NGS!

10. Thanks to my blog, I can refer to myself as a writer (even though I struggle to really embrace that as part of my identity).

11. It has allowed me to share some finance-heavy topics on the blog, like annual spending posts, ethe decision to pay off our mortgage, and how we conduct our quarterly financial review.

12. It’s helped me process the loss of several important people in my life, such as my grandparents.

13. It also helped me process the end of several dating relationships… which are another set of posts I haven’t felt compelled to re-read because of how raw they were.

14. If someone is traveling to a place I’ve been, I can simply send them the links to the posts I wrote about that location. Mostly recently, I sent a bunch of Maui posts to Kae since she’s going there in June.

15. Because of blogging, I was a bridesmaid in 2 weddings and had 2 tables of bloggers at my own wedding (although most in this photo are no longer blogging. Whomp whomp)! [Note from NGS: Look at that gorgeous wedding dress. I feel like I should go back and read a recap from everyone who got married.]

16. I can crowdsource ideas from people I know and trust. The most recent example was when I was debating getting an Apple watch. I hemmed and hawed over this but then thought – why don’t I just ask Elisabeth! I knew she had an Apple Watch AND I knew that they were very thoughtful about spending money so I asked for her thoughts and it gave me the confidence to pull the trigger on the purchase.

17. Blogging has introduced me to women that I think of as sort of adopted/surrogate big sisters. Two that come to mind are Nicole and Jenny. They are just a bit older than me but in a different stage of life and I appreciate their wisdom and perspective on things! I feel like “what would Nicole do” could/should be a mantra in my life and I feel a special kinship with Jenny because our oldest sons are both named Paul (which is not a super common name these days!) and she lives in a very musical household which is something I can relate to since I was very musical and even taught piano as a high school job! 

18. I also get a lot of recipe ideas from blogging – most recently I was inspired to make the curry chickpea salad that so many were raving about. I never would have heard of it otherwise!

19. Blogging has also introduced me to people in my own city. A woman that lives in my neighborhood and has similar-aged kids found me through my blog. What a small world we live in! We have met up in person several times and she’s such a delight.

20. Lastly, blogging is a hobby that I can do no matter what is going on in my life. I certainly post far less than I did during my pre-kid days but I can usually write 2 posts/week – often from my phone (which I know blows NGS’s mind!), and I try to keep up with others blogs as best as I can because that back-and-forth dialogue within comments can forge really meaningful friendships! [Note from NGS: I can't even look up restaurant recommendations on my phone - I have no idea how Lisa writes entire posts on hers!]

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Have you ever been to a blogger wedding? Made that curry chickpea salad? Met people in your own city because of blogging?