Sleepless Nights

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  • Showcase Tasmania: Blueberry Boost Tea

    The weekend before last, I was down at Salamanca Market collecting cheese from Grandvewe Cheesery. Frogpondsrock and I had just left the Grandvewe stall when it started to rain, heavily. With a hop, step and a jump, we leapt into a nearby tent stall to shelter from the rain.

    The tent belonged to Carl Sykes from Blueberry Boost Tea and he got the giggles at us, as we stood there drying off and reading the ingredients on the teabags he was selling. One thing led to another and I found myself trying his tea, before discussing Showcase Tasmania and asking if he would be interested in being part of it.

    Carl has a blueberry farm down at Oyster Cove in Tasmania and along with selling his blueberry tea, he also sells dried blueberries and blueberry jams. A fifth generation Tasmanian (ner ner, I’m eighth gen) he is passionate about Tasmania and Tasmanian products and we spent a while discussing what I do and why I’m doing it.

    I ended up with some blueberry tea to bring home and try, plus a few names of people to contact to see if they’d like to be a part of this. A worthwhile encounter all over!

    Blueberry Blend Tea is delicious and claims to help improve blood circulation, amongst other things. I can’t vouch for this specifically, but as someone who has a core body temperature similar to a lizard in winter, I will say that it is a delicious warming tea and I like it.

    I made Nathan try some and even he liked it. He’s not a huge fan of herbal tea, but I’ve caught him drinking it a few times now, which in my opinion is a great recommendation.

    Blueberry tea contains dried blueberries, blueberry leaves, spearmint, cinammon and raspberry leaves. I’ve found it is quite good at settling my stomach of a morning, as well as an excellent tea for right before bed.

    You can buy blueberry tea online here, or if you’re Tasmanian, you can visit Carl at the Salamanca Markets on a Saturday.

  • 6 Things I Learned at the #PBevent

    I’m sure by now that there are a multitude of recap posts from the Problogger Training Day, but hang in there because mine is going to be better than all of them. Probably.

    I learned a lot of things and had some other things that I knew already cemented into my brain properly. It was a great day and I was exhausted by the end of it, but the networking drinks and the possibility of ice-cream pepped me up enough to network. I don’t claim to have made any sense however, I was so exhausted I felt a little trippy.

    – Passion is everything.

    People want to hear about your passion. Sometimes they don’t care about what your topic is and instead hang around for the way you’re writing about it. Passion shines through and is incredibly important. You might not think that what you love is interesting to anyone, but usually it is.

    – Blogging from the heart, VS Blogging smart.

    You need to do both. There is no VS here. Successful blogs are built by people who manage to meld these two things together. People love personal touches, but you also need to be clever about how you interact and present yourself. Your blog needs soul in order for people to connect with you, but also technical cleverness (design, marketing, useability) for people to stay around.

    – People love storytellers.

    I keep telling everyone that we are all storytellers, but I’m not sure people believe me. People are storytellers, using different mediums to tell their stories. Readers LOVE stories and blogs that I read the most are the ones with the stories woven in and around the content. Maybe I don’t care about what you ate for breakfast, but if I’m drawn into your story, you can tell me about it and I’ll enjoy it. Even blogs filled with technical tips often have a story or two thrown in. Readers love it. Tell more stories.

    – You can do anything you set your mind to.

    Maybe I didn’t learn this specifically at the training day, but it seemed like it was a common theme. All of the speakers, all of the success stories – they all had an idea and then worked to make that idea reality. Very few people win lottery and are magically rich, even fewer people are instantly successful. Work out what you want and then work to make that happen. Keep trying until it happens.

    – Successful people build their own momentum.

    This feeds into the above tip. You’ve got to build your own momentum. You can’t keep hanging around waiting for a PR company to dump things in your lap. You have to work for opportunities and make them happen yourself. You want a first class trip to New York? Write yourself a proposal and start sending it to businesses that are a good fit with you. You have to make it happen yourself and stop expecting magic and fairy tale endings.

    Networking is the most important thing you can do for yourself.

    We all know that networking is important, but sometimes we forget just how important face-to-face meetings are. The networking and talking that you do at events is more likely to land you a job or sponsorship than 100 proposals sent out. It doesn’t mean you stop sending proposals, it just means that you have to go out and meet people too. Inevitably the old saying “It’s not what you know, but who you know” holds true.

    If you attended, what did you learn? If you didn’t, what is the most important piece of advice you would give another blogger?

    {photo credit Simon Pollock who is not only a great photographer, but incredibly funny as well}

  • Relegated to the naughty corner in the airport

    At least, it feels like the naughty corner, at the far end of the airport, down a long flight of stairs and in a warehouse type thing. I’m flying out of Melbourne in 90 minutes and this is the first time I have seen this part of the airport, or had a quiet moment to write. Not that you can call an airport quiet.

    The Problogger event was such fun and I’m going home with my head full of new ideas (not the magazine, that would be scratchy) and things to implement.

    Not to mention the three or so hours of recordings that I need to listen to and take notes. I’m not sure that the kids will let me do that for a few days however. As always, the networking before and after was amazing fun and I got to meet and talk to some amazing people. Not linking here because it’s too hard on a tablet.

    I’m rather looking forward to seeing my children, even if Isaac refused to speak to me on the phone this morning (he’s punishing me for leaving  in the first place, when he insisted that “You haffa stay home wiv me mummy, you not haffa go on an airy plane”) and Amy is just interested in what I have in my suitcase for her.

    So, Internet, that had been my last few days, give or take some things I have no doubt forgotten to tell you.

    How are you?

  • Showcase Tasmania: Grandvewe Cheese

    It’s no secret that I am a huge fan of cheese, any which way I can get it. I prefer the slightly more expensive cheeses however, and when you’re on a tight budget, cheese falls off the list really quickly. It’s unfortunate that way.

    As big a fan of cheese as I am, I’ve come late to the game with sheeps milk cheese, only tasting it for the first time when I was at MoVida with Kathy and Mum. I was a little dubious, knowing that I dislike the overtly strong flavour of goats milk cheese, but I was not let down and it was great. Suddenly, I was a convert and quickly hunted down some sheep milk cheese at the Vic Market that weekend to bring home on the plane with me.

    When I started my Showcase Tasmania series, I was adamant that I had to have a cheese maker on board and when I sent my exploratory email to Grandvewe, I was really hoping that they liked my idea and wanted to be part of it. Luckily my pitch worked its magic and this weekend I headed down to Salamanca Markets to collect some cheese and chat to Grandvewe in person.

    I really would have loved to have had the time to head down to the actual Cheesery at Birchs Bay, but I couldn’t. By all accounts, the Cheesery is fantastic and you can read a little bit about it on the website here. Definitely something I want to visit one day!

    I tried three different cheeses for the sake of my research and honestly, I love what I do. How many other people get to nibble on cheese and biscuits, all while claiming that they’re working?

    The Primavera is a lovely crumbly mostly hard cheese with amazing flavour. This one was the huge hit family wide, with the children stealing all of the cheese off my plate and leaving me empty biscuits. It wasn’t my fault that I then needed to cut more to replace it.

    I made Nathan try some, knowing that he would probably like it, but also knowing that he wouldn’t try it unless I made him. He doesn’t like specialty cheese as much as I do and you’ll never catch him eating brie or camembert for breakfast, let alone sprinkling a blue through salad. He looked at me after tasting it and said “Wow, that has to be the most perfect tasting cheese.” It was great, but also, then I had to share.

    Note to self: Do not insist everyone else help you with the cheese tastings.

    I was a little worried about tasting a blue cheese – I like blue cheese, but it can be overwhelming. I shouldn’t have worried at all, when it was sweet and sharp all at once and very very moreish. This was my favourite cheese of the three and I spent more time than I probably should have telling myself Just one more biscuit.

    You’ve been warned, it is fantastic. Isaac was also a big fan of the blue cheese, having slightly more adventurous tastes than his father and sister. I was happy to celebrate the fact that he was eating something that wasn’t milk or jam sandwiches, even as I grumbled about sharing.

    And finally, the White Pearl. I was warned by a friend to eat this cheese quite quickly and she was right. The shelf life is not long at all and so I would suggest eating it on the day that you buy it. I spread mine on slices of crusty bread and refused to share. It was divine, soft and creamy. If I’d had more salad ingredients in the fridge, I would have tossed it through salad leaves and cherry tomatoes.

    Grandvewe is the only sheep milk cheesery in Tasmania and one of only a couple in the country. On top of that, they are certified organic, with a range of organic cheeses.

    Their cheese can be bought online and posted to you (which I highly recommend for those of you not in Tassie!) or you can check out the mainland distributors here.

    Now all I need to do is work out how I can expand my budget to include more Grandvewe cheese, without sending us to the poor house supporting my newly found addiction.

    *photos from Grandvewe’s website.

  • Blogging: I’m doing it wrong

    I shouldn’t be writing a post right now. Haven’t you read the posts telling you when the best time to post is? Saturday afternoons are bad. So are Fridays. And Mondays. And Thursdays. And Sundays.

    Tuesdays and Wednesdays are okay, but only if you publish them at the right time of day; before breakfast, or during the lunch hour – not at 5pm when people are getting home from work, or mid morning when everyone is busy.

    No. You can’t post things whenever you like.

    And okay, I get that there are optimal times to publish thing and I GET that sometimes traffic is higher and lower and if you want to “work the system” then you need to tune into these times and play the game. The problem remains however, if I only post at optimal times, then I’d never write anything.

    I’m a bit sick of the system and I sure as hell don’t want to play the game anymore. Blogging isn’t a game to be tweaked, it’s STORYTELLING. I don’t want to tread on people to get to the top. Maybe other people do, but I’m not that person.

    I’m doing it wrong.

    I’m not scrabbling up a ladder, or jostling for position, or elbowing a baby in the head in the race to get to the front.

    I can come to terms with this.

    I’ve been “doing it wrong” for my entire life and look where that has gotten me. I have beautiful kids, a partner that I’m marrying next month and a life I love living. I think I can safely say that doing it wrong is what I do best.

    ***

    I got caught up in the PR noise, chewed up and spit out.

    It wasn’t until I sat down to really work out why I was feeling so blah about blogging that I realised: I had been basing my entire self-worth as a blogger on the pitches that landed in my inbox. Absolutely ridiculous.

    I had been pressing send/receive, waiting for things to fall in my lap. Hoping that interesting things would happen and pouting when they didn’t.

    Now that I’ve realised what was bothering me, I can let it go.

    I should be basing my self worth on how I feel about things, rather than on what emails land in my inbox, or how many comments and retweets I get.

    And frankly, I feel pretty good about things lately. Showcase Tasmania is doing really well and I’m loving it, there is a huge opportunity on the horizon and when I stop having panic attacks about it, it has the potential to be really huge (and really fun) and this is my blog and I can post whenever I like.

    I think I can safely say, if this is doing it wrong, then I probably don’t want to be doing it right.