Hey guys, today I am participating in the 12 days of love letter writing that More Love Letters is putting on.

More About This Amazing Movement:

1. What is the 12 Days of Love Letter Writing? We are creating 12 Love Letter Bundles for 12 individuals (all requested secretly by someone in their life that cares about them) across a 12-day span. From December 5-17, we will highlight an individual in need of some extra encouragement in the form of handwritten notes and encourage people to script a letter and send it to our PO Box to be bundled up and mailed off the person.
2. What is The World Needs More Love Letters? The World Needs More Love Letters is a community of “love letter writers” who write and leave letters across the map in hopes that the right people will pick them up. We leave them everywhere: books, coffee shops, coat pockets, trains. Love letter writers document the letter writing and dropping through photographs, blog posts, and social media.
3. What is a Love Letter Bundle? Once a month, we take an extra special letter request and we mail it out to our email subscriber list. Those on the list then have 10 days to script a love letter for the individual in need and mail it over to PO Box 2061, North Haven CT 06473. We then bundle up the love letters and mail them over to the unsuspecting recipient with a letter from MoreLoveLetters.com on top to explain just why they are holding a pile of stationery from strangers in hand.
4. Helpful Links

• The 12 Days of Love Letter Writing
• Join the Love Letter Email Alert List
• The Love Letters Blog
• The Story of The World Needs More Love Letters

My Love Letter Request

I was sent my love letter request just over a week ago and here it is:

Shelley & Nelson

We received a letter request for Shelley and Nelson, a couple dedicated to a daily fight alongside their 7-year-old girl who has Leukemia. The letter request below says it all:

“Nelson and Shelley have the kind of love little girls grow up dreaming of. Nelson is outgoing; Shelley more reserved. Both have kind, honest eyes and smiles that light up their faces.

Nelson is currently in the reserves, and is an airline pilot. Shelley is a stay at home mom with the grace of a TV housewife, but with a fire inside of her that shines through. If you met them on the street, you would have no idea the journey they are in the middle of.

Proud parents of 3 kinds under the age of 7, their the oldest has leukemia and is facing a nearly impossible battle. This isn’t their first go-around with this terrible illness. They are raising a loving family in as ‘normal’ a way that they can.They are constantly upbeat, but you can see that not all of the lines on their faces are from smiles anymore. Nelson and Shelley could really use a boost of outside love right now.”

My Letter:

I decided to write my letter on my “Keep Calm and Be Merry” Christmas cards that I bought this holiday season.

Now I would like to ask my readers to participate by writing a letter to Shelley and Nelson as well! It can be something as simple as a quick note of encouragement, letting them know you are thinking about them this holiday season.

If you would like to write a letter please have it in the mailbox no later than Tuesday, December 13! You can send your letter to the following address:

More Love Letters, PO Box 2061, North Haven, CT 06473

Thanks in advance lovely readers! I am sure finding this bundle of love in their mailbox will make Shelley and Nelson’s holiday season much brighter. XO

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Questions of the day: Have you ever written a special letter to brighten someone’s day and/or received one?

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So despite the fact that I don’t mention it as much anymore I am still doing lots of freelance writing. Usually anywhere from one to five stories a month for two local magazines put out by the daily paper here. Remember when I posted this blog about my first magazine article?

I don’t post links to all of my articles because some of them are kind of boring, but I’ve had the chance to write two really fun articles over the last few months. Both of these came from ideas I pitched to the editor and I wanted to share them with you guys.

Veggie Moms: Click on the images below to read the PDF OR go here and flip to page 6!

Running Away: This article was too big to upload SO go here and flip to page 24 if you’d like to read it!

Obviously these are both topics that are near and dear to my heart so I had so much fun writing both these articles. I hope you enjoy them if you check them out! I am super proud of them

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Question of the day: If you are a vegetarian do you plan on raising your kids that way? If not, do you plan on raising your kids to have the same eating principles/habits that you DO have?

Time for another featured career! Here are the careers I’ve featured in the past:

• High School English Teacher
• Project Manager and Senior Designer
• Account Executive
• Broadcast Reporter
• Sport Development Officer
• Nurse
• Newspaper Editor
• Social Media Specialist
• Event Planner
• Software Developer
• General Manager in Retail
• Kindergarten Teacher

As always, email me if you’re interested in being featured!

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Today I am featuring Allison from Lemonade Life (Fun Fact: Allison and I share a wedding date except hers is in 2011 and mine is in 2012!) Allison also works fully from home, as shown in her office photo below

1. What is your official job title and what exactly does your job entail?

My official title is Assistant Editor at DiabetesMine.com. At DiabetesMine, we cover the breaking news in the diabetes industry to help educate people about diabetes. We cover breaking news in diabetes research, we interview celebrities with diabetes, researchers, and folks making a difference, and we review new products, books and other tools meant to help people who live with diabetes. We also regularly feature guest posts from people in the diabetes community who have a unique way of looking at things.

My job entails a wide variety of things. I usually work on two to three posts in a given week and also coordinate with our guest bloggers to make sure material is sent in. I manage our social media profiles on Facebook and Twitter. I also attend a variety of diabetes events, and we’re including more and more video posts as well, so I spend a lot of time in iMovie! Plus, I’m always on the look out for the latest news in diabetes. Gotta keep my ear to the ground!

2. How did you end up on your career path?

I have been writing about diabetes since I was in high school. I launched my first diabetes website when I was 16, and it was called CureNow. I wrote about diabetes cure research and people who were advocating for a cure. After that, I did freelance writing for different publications and worked on a few different diabetes websites.

It was always my side gig though. After college, I worked at a PR agency doing consumer lifestyle PR, specifically with digital media like blogs and social media. But I was really passionate about health, so I decided to jump over to do healthcare PR, again, in the social media space. That actually ended up not working out: I got laid off last July.

Luckily, I had known my boss, Amy, for years and she was looking to bring someone full-time to help her with DiabetesMine. I was fortunate that the stars aligned and she brought me on board as assistant editor this past January!

3. Describe a typical day in your work life?

There is definitely no typical day in my life as an editor, but I’ll try!

In the early morning, I check email and respond to any urgent emails. Then I get to work writing the upcoming blogs posts. I usually check a variety of diabetes blogs throughout the day to see what people are writing about. I also monitor Twitter to see what news or topics crop up during the day. It’s always good to keep up with what people are interested in.

The afternoon is mostly spent researching and writing, and also reaching out to folks for upcoming posts or other projects we’re working on. Several times a week, I will have an interview or conference call. Throughout the afternoon, I also post links to our new posts on Facebook and Twitter. I also check on the comments regularly to make sure to answer questions in a timely manner.

I usually work until around 5:00 or 5:30, which is when my fiance comes home from work. Sometimes I’ll get back on the computer for more work in the evening, after Erik goes to bed. I am a night owl and I also don’t have to get up as early as he does. Some of my best writing is done at night! Plus, that’s when a lot of people in the diabetes community are online, so it’s a great time to chat.

4. How is working from home different from working in an office? Better? Worse?

It’s a lot quieter! Which can be a good thing and a bad thing. On one hand, I don’t have annoying conversations going on around me, but at the same time, I don’t have anyone to talk to during the day so it gets lonely. Luckily, my job involves lots of communication, either on the phone or online, so you guys definitely keep me company. I love not having a commute, but at the same time, it can be hard to “turn off” work. It’s so easy to just spend a couple more hours in the evening working on something.

Once or twice a week, I work from Starbucks. It’s two blocks from my apartment and it’s nice to have some of the hustle and bustle as white noise. I’m also interested in the concept of co-working spaces, but so far I haven’t found anything near where I live. The closest spaces are in Manhattan, which is a thirty minute train ride during rush hour. It wouldn’t be something I would want to do every day. Maybe once or twice a month.

5. Do you believe it’s true what they say: “find something you love and you’ll never work another day in your life” – why or why not?

That’s true in a sense. I definitely don’t dread Monday the way I used to! I think it’s unrealistic to think you’ll love every aspect of what you do. For instance, I love filming the events that I go to, but editing video is time-consuming and tedious. It’s definitely work! But it’s work that I’m happy to do because at the end of the day, I am helping people live better lives with diabetes and that makes it totally worth it.

6. What is something about your job that surprises people?

I think what surprises people most is that it’s actually my job! Most people don’t know professional bloggers, so it is definitely the thing people are most “Wow!” about. It’s funny. I also think it surprised people how much time and work goes into a single post. We publish a new post every single day, but they often take several days to do. We don’t just sit down the night before and throw something together. We set high standards for ourselves and don’t want to let our readers down. We put a lot of time and energy into making sure we get as much info into our articles as we can.

7. If you could describe your career in one word, what would that word be and why?

Community. The diabetes community is huge and amazing and I am so blessed to be a part of it. I may not like this disease, but I love the people who have it. And I am very lucky that this is my job and that my purpose is to help people live healthier lives.

8. How do you envision your career growing and changing over the next 5 years? 10 years?

I have no idea! There’s really no “career path” at DiabetesMine, since it’s just me and Amy. There’s no ladder that I’m climbing, unlike PR agency life. There is always the option of moving to another digital publication, but I don’t foresee that happening right now. If anything, I see DiabetesMine growing and changing, and me being right there to see it happen.

Although, they do keep telling me the cure is coming in 5 to 10 years so you never know… (That’s a joke, by the way, the cure for diabetes is not coming in 5 to 10 years and anyone who says that is a moron).

9. Anything else you’d like to add?

Learn about diabetes! It’s not your grandma’s diabetes. We have tools and technology that let us leave much more “normal” lives, but it’s still complicated, hard and messy and that’s why we need a cure. While we can eat pretty much what we want and do pretty much what we want, it takes so much time and effort. I just hope that people understand that just because it looks easy, that doesn’t mean it is.