Want to give back to others but always feel like you don’t have enough time? I want to share 5 easy ways to give back when you have little time, that have great impact!
“Charity is the gift that you give to yourself.” – I can’t find who said this quote, but it’s beautiful.
I’ve had a really interesting history with giving back and charity work in general. According to my parents, the very first time I gave back was when we were in Canada as children. We passed a lady out in the cold who was homeless and I remember being shocked, stunned and sad about this fact. I asked my mom for some money to give her. My mom gave it to me and my heart lit up when I saw the smile on this lady’s face. I don’t remember this incident perfectly, but I do remember feeling a deep level of empathy for this lady, a feeling that I know would help to influence the person I was to become.
When I was in high school, I gave back. A lot. I have a whole section on my resume for “Volunteer Work & Causes” and I always found anyway I could to volunteer. Whether that was working in soup kitchens, or teaching for free, counselling at camp or in other ways, I’ve spent the last ten years always giving back in some way. Some of my best memories have come from giving back, in fact. It’s never been for any kind of gain or because it was required, I’ve just always felt a love for people and wanted to help in anyway possible.
Here’s the thing about giving back – you can do it in so many ways. It doesn’t take a lot of money or time to give back. Sometimes hearing about how people have travelled far, or given up months for a charity project can make you feel like you can’t possibly give back. Not true.
- Shopping/Buying Fair Trade Products and Products That specifically give back Giving back in this way is just about picking up a different brand of sugar, coffee, tea, or other products you know and love. If you’re not sure what fair trade ( World Fair Trade Day for May 12, 2018 ) means, let me break it down because once I learned about it, it changed the way I shopped forever. I could spend a week explaining my love for fair trade products, so here’s a video instead. Straight from thelittlemarket.com , “ Fair Trade is an approach to international trade centered around equitable partnerships, transparency and respect. It seeks to empower marginalized producers by providing them safe working conditions, fair pay, and a means to establish a sustainable business free from exploitation. “. Long story short, when you buy the product, part of the profit actually goes back to the creator, inventor, farmer who or whoever worked to create this product. You can learn more about fair trade here . I hadn’t really explored about fair trade before Christmas of last year, and it changed my whole world. It also broke my heart a bit to learn I was supporting brands that were good for me, but were ripping off/not giving back fairly to those actually prepared that product. After that, I created some basic principles for myself. When buying sugar, tea, coffee and chocolate, I would ensure that it was fair trade. When you buy a fair trade product, you are helping a family who really needs it. A real person. I’m not telling you to dump anything and begin from scratch, but to be more mindful of some of your purchases. I started buying props from thelittlemarket.com and other fair trade sites and honestly, it feels good to know that it’s going to a great, great place. I love that The Little Market’s products are absolutely adorable because there’s a stigma that if you’re supporting a charity organisation, the product might be well, not so cute. Not so at all. I cried the first time I got my The Little Market products because I realised I was holding exactly where the carpenter was holding on this same ladle, and that a personal connection had been formed. I highly recommend reading more on thelittlemarket.com about their values and purchasing fair trade products wherever you can. P.S. fair trade products are available EVERYWHERE, in your local supermarkets, not just speciality stores. Remember those posts I did with Wholesome? It’s also because their sugar is Fair Trade and it’s a brand I trust. You can find great and easy to find products here on Fair Trade Certified and look out for the symbol. Here are some of my favourites to help – Shea Moisture’s Shea Butter Lotion, Wholesome Sugars, Organic India Tea, Jamaican Coffee FROM Jamaica (not certified, but is grown here in Jamaica ONLY and supports local farmers) P.S. If you check out my 2017 Gift Guide , there’s an entire section on gifts that give back.
- Be My Eyes I just heard about this app after it was featured on iTunes App Store, then again highlighted on Twitter. Be My Eyes is an app that you download where you can be a seeing person who volunteers to assist a blind or visually impaired person. It works via video chat and helps the blind/visiually impaired person in several ways using disability friendly settings for them. Something as small as “is this milk expired?” to “what does my pregnancy test say?” and all it takes it to answer the video, help the person, then move on. This reminds me that giving back shouldn’t be a limited term. There are so many other ways to help others out. I’ve signed up for this app and can’t wait to help someone on it.
- FreeRice.Com My brother told me about this app. Freerice has two goals: Provide education to everyone for free. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free. They have games based on different subject areas – think English Vocabulary, Geography, Math, Sciences etc. and you play them. For every right answer, 10 grains of rice are donated through the World Food Programme. What an incredible website. If you have a free hour, you can spend it playing on freerice.com, learn something new, and give back at the same time.
- Charity Miles Do you was, run or bike? Then Charity Miles is for you and for me. Their whole mission is “get fit and make an impact.” All you need to do is to download it, chose a charity and get moving. For every mile you log, you help to earn money for your chosen charity. This is an incredible and free way to give back while helping to improve yourself, too.
- Using Amazon Smile Amazon Smile features the same products, prices and shopping features of Amazon.com. The only difference is that when you shop through smile.amazon.com, Amazon will donate 0.5% of your purchase price to the charity of your choice. I love this method because it takes nothing out of you to give back to your charity, and it adds up. I’ve spent a pretty penny on Amazon and to know that it’s going back to the charity of my choice makes it even better. I currently give back to a Partnership Against Domestic Violence – PADV. Since February 2018, All charities on Amazon Smile have received $80,134,317.33 USD. This is the perfect example of how your small step can make a huge difference.
Friends, I am so excited to be writing this post! It’s been a long time coming, and has been requested from you all ever since I became a full time food blogger. I’m going to be taking you through what it is that I do in general, some details about how I make money, and then detail what a day in my life work wise looks like as a full time food blogger. I don’t want to take anything for granted that you know any details of what I do other than share recipes, so I’ll try and explain as much as I can. I’ll probably be constantly updating this post with more relevant information for you.
I couldn’t authentically begin this post without saying, please read this with an open mind. I get a lot of people who try to fit what I do into a traditional box to try and justify it, but it’s just impossible to do so. Questions like “so do you just sleep all day?” “what do you actually do? Could that really be a full time job?” “you’re so lucky – I wish I was that lucky!” used to really drive me up the wall, and sometimes they still do. A lot of people assume, that working from home means you don’t do a lot of actual work, but it’s 100% the opposite. Working for yourself/at home usually means, and especially in my case, that this career choice is pretty much 24/7.
I never used to work this many hours as an attorney-at-law. From the moment I open my eyes to the moment I close them, I’m on the clock. I’ve made some huge adjustments this year to force myself to prep myself for the day properly, and to take some hours in the night winding down, but it’s pretty hard to do. Emails are a constant thing, and everyone in our world operates like we do. I get emails at 11pm-1 am all the time, sometimes instantly urgent, and get questions from you guys all the time since you’re all over the world. Of course, I love it. I love it so much. I love answering questions, and getting photos, and often times your heartfelt emails bring tears to my eyes. I want to do this or some version of this every day for the rest of my life.
Firstly, let me get shortly into how I became a full time blogger. As an aside, in my case that means that Jessica in the Kitchen LLC is my full time career, that I own the business, and that I am the creator of the recipes and content that you find on the blog. You might know if you’ve been a long time reader that I started Jessica in the Kitchen in 2014, but I’ve been blogging since 2010. I began to take blogging seriously right around the time that I rebranded to Jessica in the Kitchen, so I think it’s fair to say that 6 years of experience and 2 years of extremely hard work whilst in law school then working as a lawyer helped to lead me to the decision to become a full time food blogger. I always knew that it was my calling to help others, and knowing that I was helping hundreds of thousands of readers through my healthy recipes really inspired my decision. Getting emails from readers that my recipes helped them to lose weight, control their diabetes or finally find healthy recipes for their healthy toddlers and more were just constant signs that this is what I was meant to be doing. Of course, I began to start making money from my blog too, so that was also a sure sign that I could turn that money into a salary one day soon. In March 2016 I went full time, and it’s insane that two years have passed already.
What are some of the hats that you wear/jobs that you do?
Here’s the thing: “blogger” is a catchall word. It means CEO, founder, editor, creator, recipe developer, recipe stylist, photographer, videographer, social media manager, producer, customer care everything and so much more depending on the type of blogging that you do. In general I work every day, including Sundays, but I’m trying to take Sundays off. Here’s a general overview of the things I do based on a regular day.
Creating a Blog Post, Cooking, Photography and Videography
Creating a blog post is of course one of the more common and crucial parts of my career. Let me break down the steps. First, we come up with the idea for the post. This is usually done from forecasting trends/looking at what’s in season. Then Gav and I have a meeting where we discuss upcoming blog posts, Youtube videos and short videos. We make a long list, then narrow it down. Then I conceptualise the recipe, and Gav buys the ingredients. Sometimes it’s based on a recipe I’ve done before, sometimes it’s completely brand new. I test it out, and if it goes well, I’ll test it again and run with that recipes. Otherwise, I test it out until I get it right. Then I make it again for the blog post, with complete precision and with cleaner cuts for the photos of course. Gavin sets up the set where we shoot at, and then I style the recipe.
I then do the photography for it. Sometimes I also do step-by-step photography too. I usually take about 40 photos per shoot. After that I edit the photos, and write the blog post. That includes ensuring that my blog post is up to my SEO standard (Search Engine Optimisation) so that it’s written in a way that you guys can properly find it on Google. This includes ensuring all photos have ALT tags, I have accurate descriptions, the blog post title is relevant based on research on Moz Explorer or Answerthepublic.com, and a long list of other things I tick off for each post. Then I schedule the post, and it goes live, is shared on my social media pages, and gets made by you guys.
If there’s a video involved, we lay out all the ingredients into smaller bowls, then Gav sets up the shoot for a video instead. I would say that overall, that this entire process spread out takes about 8 to 9 hours, or 13 hours with video, including video editing time.
First things first, income. My dad put it perfectly – a blog is like a newspaper. I create new articles, have sponsors, and daily readers. I have ads on this site, and I make money from readers who view these ads or click on them. Believe it or not, I even think about this. I worked with my ad agency to block meat ads, so if you see one, be sure to tell me! Sometimes they slip through and it isn’t their fault, either, nor is it mine.
Working with my VA/Designers/Blog Technicians/Outside
Vacation/Lifestyle Photos/Work Trips
Another question I get asked sometime is how does work evolve while we are on the road or on “vacation”. Let me first define work trips and vacation. They tend to meld into one. Whenever Gavin and I travel, we usually take lifestyle photos that end up getting used as photos of me on social media or in Out of the Kitchen blog posts, including travel posts. So things like eating out at vegan restaurants are usually for content, including live content on snapchat and Instagram stories, and other tourist like stuff that are done for content, also. Being a blogger, even a food blogger, tends to be a lifestyle kind of job, and I know a lot of you guys have asked to see more of what I do outside of recipes, which I happily share.
Sometimes we take out of town trips to get away but also to get some great and original lifestyle content. Other work trips include to conferences, long meetings with brands, or freelance work, and on all of these we are still blogging or sharing or some other form of work. Even when we intentionally go on vacation, it ends up being a mixed trip. I don’t leave my laptop at home, ever, and on work trips we have time set aside to go blog work. I do plan to always take the week in between Christmas and the New Year off, so that’s the only full week of the year that I have completely free of work (I have to delete the apps from my phone or I’ll use them!).
What a Day Looks Like
Option A
9:00am – I wake up and do my morning routine then get into work. One note here. YES, I wake up at 9:00am, sometimes 9:30 am . I debated sharing this or not because for some reason, people immediately assume that means this is a lofty life and I’ve gotten a lot about it over the last two years. No. I deserve sleep, and I need 7-8 hours of sleep every night. I used to guilt trip myself into 6 hours then crashed, and realised that I can’t live my life for anyone else.
10:45 am – Turns out there’s a script code that’s causing a ton of 404 errors on the website. It’s hilarious how much random errors can happen on a website. I jump on Skype to message my blog technician, who warns me to not touch it because I might screwup my site. Er, I’ve done this before, so I listen to her and leave it alone. Everything else is up and running and today’s post went out smoothly. My VA Kerri has scheduled it on twitter and Facebook so I share it to my Tumblr page, and to Insta stories.
11:00 am – I have a call with Pinterest. I’m a part of Pinterest’s Creator Collective, which is an amazing and exclusive group of content creators that work and correlate with Pinterest. Am I excited about being a part of this?! Beyond belief! It’s a great and successful call and we end it by saying our “can’t wait to see yous” about their conference next week.
11:30 am – I get back to my emails.
12:30 pm – Time to head to the kitchen. I grab a quick snack, and head to the kitchen to prepare a recipe for next month’s recipes, which is a Vegan Pulled Pork sandwich, along with some turnip fries because I hear they are an amazing low carb fry alternative. The Vegan Pulled Pork sandwich goes off without a hitch and tastes bomb, so I set up the styling for it and photograph it. The turnip fries are a total disaster. Not only do they burn, but they do not taste like fries. They taste like roasted turnips Maybe I’ll try again? Maybe not. In between, I’m sharing the step-by-step process on Insta stories, responding to quick questions while things cook, and writing down the recipes in full detail.
3:00pm – lunch time! Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is out so I allow myself a full episode while eating the sandwich.
3:30 pm – I do a quick one minute meditation again to centre myself back for work. I make a few work calls, including I try to get a button for the conference I’m speaking at on Saturday, unsuccessfully. I reply to a few more emails. Can you tell emails are like, an endless void?
4:00 pm – it’s blog post time! I sit down to put together a blog post for a post due next week. In between a get a DM from a reader who made a mistake in my recipe and is wondering how to fix it. I message her back with a solution and get back to the blog post. After writing the blog post, I ensure it’s up to my SEO standard I insert the photo of the long pin that my designer made, and scheduled the blog post. Blog posts usually take around 2 hours. This post took me 4 hours to write.
6:00 pm – Right about now I’m probably tired, and need a booster. That might include taking a quick 15 minute nap, or a short mindfulness break.
6:30 pm – my designer Norel sends over some images and I have to open the email immediately because it still gets me insanely excited. I love them . After that an idea strikes and Gav and I have a quick meeting, in which we adjust some of the ideas for June, and he reads over my blog post for me to check for errors. There are always errors, side note. We decide to go ahead and discuss a couple other business related topics, such as going over analytics, then realise we need a separate meeting for that, tomorrow.
7:30 pm – I have a late night meeting. Meetings for me usually take place on Skype, or are phone call meetings. It’s this late because of a time zone difference. It goes really well and I make plans accordingly for the upcoming days.
8:00pm – 9:00pm – We’re finally converting our recipes from a plugin to the beautiful built in format that my designer Katelyn designed for me and that my developer Brandi brought to life. It’s taking forever since we have tons of recipes, and Gav and I are both spending hours on it daily, for the last two months. It’s monotonous and a new form of torture. Update: all our recipes are now on the built in format!
9:15pm – dinner time. I know that this is late . We eat some leftovers that are in the fridge, and I eye Gavin as he eats his Vegan Pulled Pork, wishing I hadn’t devoured mine immediately. He makes some plantain for both of us. All is well in the world!
9:45 – 11:00 pm – I continue with the recipe conversions begrudingly. I am counting down to finishing them forever. Update: all our recipes are now on the built in format!
11:00pm – 1:00 am – I edit some photos for my designer and upload them so that she can work on them, and answer about 5 more emails. I check our Google Analytics to see how performance on the blog was today. I also finish editing a video that I was working on earlier.
1:30 – 2:00 am – bedtime!
Option B
This is a great example of a typical Option B day, because Option B day is the day nothing on your to do list happens due to putting out fires all day. Just kidding, not the entire day. But this usually means something unexpected/disastrous has occurred and the entire day’s plans have to be diverted for this.
In conclusion, being a full time food blogger is an amazing career to have. Some days are long like above, some days are shorter. The work is constantly flowing because I’ve put in all the hard work, and continue to every single day. Honestly, there are times where I feel like why but I am so grateful that it’s almost too much work, instead of too little. I am grateful that my “problems” are these. I also hope that this post helped to open up your mind to the next time you hear someone is a full time blogger – so that you can automatically assume that they are working just as hard or even harder than you are in your job, since we’re all doing our best here.
