If  you’re looking to start a new blog, check out this list of some of my favorite blogging tools.

Blogging is, obviously, one of my favorite activities. Even before I had The LITMO Life, I created personal blogs in high school and college (obviously, never stuck with them because you can’t be hired by a snooty law firm if your whole life is on the internet!).

Since beginning The LITMO Life, I’ve had several people ask me how difficult it is to start a blog. The truth is: not difficult at all! All you need is a few simple tools to get you going and here, I’ll talk about my favorites.

WP Engine

WP Engine is the best place to host your blog if you plan on running WordPress (and most blogs these days do!). It’s super high performance, it’s made with high-quality blogs that have a lot of visitors in mind and it’s not super expensive. I didn’t start my blog out on WP Engine, but I should have, since I am just going to end up migrating soon!

WordPress

And of course, you need WordPress! WordPress is the platform on which this blog and, as mentioned, most other blogs today run. It enables you to quickly set up a gorgeous website and easily add new blogs every day. Even for the website newbie, WordPress is the god of website building.

Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes is my personal favorite for blogs. A theme is the overall look and feel of the site. For The LITMO Life, I use Divi by Elegant Themes and I use a few of their other tools, as well. For example, my pop-ups are created by their plugin called Bloom. Elegant Themes has a bunch of absolutely beautiful themes for any niche and they’re mostly really easy to use.

Google Keyword Planner

Now that you have your blog all setup, you’ll have to figure out what to write about! Google Keyword Planner will help you do research on what keywords people are searching for and how high the competition is on those keywords. Their algorithm is such that you need to be running ads to see detailed information, but you can still get some help even without those ads.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is a plugin for WordPress which helps you optimize your posts for a certain keyword (once you’ve chosen it after doing the research, of course!). It’s super simple to use – all you have to do is plug in the keyword and Yoast will tell you exactly what you need to edit to make your post rank highly for that keyword.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite is currently one of my favorite social media tools, though with me, that’s often subject to change. Hootsuite allows you to schedule your posts in advance (I use it for Facebook and Twitter) so that you can set a few posts to go and forget about it! Beats spending all day tied to your computer or smart phone.

Mailchimp

Mailchimp is my favorite tool for building an email list. With Mailchimp, you can easily set up automation, you can create campaigns to send to your subscribers, and best of all – you can do all these things in style! I’m a huge fan of Mailchimp.

Canva

Canva is for those of us who really suck at graphic design (like me) and don’t want to spend a ton of time learning photoshop. Their incredibly simple software helps create stunning graphics, whether it’s a logo or a pic for your blog or even an infographic.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is another tool to help you figure out what to write about. You can type in a word or term and BuzzSumo tells you what posts got shared the most for that word or term. It’s also really helpful when you’re out of ideas – don’t ever copy someone else’s posts, but let BuzzSumo help with inspiration!

Google Analytics

After using all these tools, you’re going to want to know how your blog is doing. Enter: Google Analytics. Google Analytics is perfect for number junkies who want to know exactly how their blog is performing, who is coming to their site, when, how old they are, etc.

Pinterest

The blog sharing tools aren’t just centered around Twitter and Facebook anymore. Pinterest is a great tool for anyone looking to drive traffic to their blog. You can also cruise through other people’s blogs on Pinterest and help find people to connect with in your field.

There you have it – my favorite blogging tools. So what’re you waiting for? Go get started on your blog today!

I wasn’t raised very religious, so I don’t know exactly what it means to have a crisis of faith. I always pictured something like a complete disconnect between everything you had been raised to believe and everything you were now experiencing. Maybe that’s wrong, but in my head, I viewed a crisis of faith as something that made it seriously difficult, if not impossible, to continue forward in your faith the way you did before.

After the past several days, however, I can at least start to imagine a little better what that might look like, because I’m having a crisis of country. Since the results of the election were announced last Tuesday, I’ve done very little. I’ve been cruising social media a lot more than I did before, I’ve been sleeping a lot, I haven’t been working out a ton and I haven’t been very productive.

In fact, it’s sort of taking everything I have even to just write this short blog post.

I’ve never seen as much hate and sheer stupidity in my life as I have in just the past six days. People whose opinions I once really respected, people who I thought of as intelligent human beings, people who I thought had an ounce of compassion within them, have been revealing themselves left and right as hateful, idiotic Trump supporters.

Add to that the incredible amount of individuals I see posting on social media about the protests, saying “this is what happens when you give trophies for participation” – I’m stunned. I’m stunned I’ve been spending my time and energy with so many people that either don’t get it or are actively trying not to.

The truth is, it didn’t feel right to me to just go back to posting about travel and gallivanting around the world, as though something huge and history-making hadn’t just happened in the country I call home. Now, the posts and articles I’m seeing are changing from just sheer shock and anger to “do something” posts – informative articles about how those of us that were unhappy with the results of the election can begin to make a real difference by getting more involved.

While I appreciate that there are so many people ready to get to work in this country, I honestly don’t know if it will matter.

For a while, in the days after the election, I was really angry. That anger hasn’t gone anywhere – in fact, it’s probably gotten worse each time I delete someone from my online world that I thought was a decent human being – but it does have an added helping of sadness with it, now.

I plan to attend some of the protests and I plan to place calls to my representatives. And I plan to do whatever else I can, while I’m here. And I plan to do as much as I can while I’m abroad. But that’s the important part: I’m still planning on leaving for my travels. And now, more than ever, I really don’t want to come back.

So that’s my crisis of country. I’m sure really soon The LITMO Life will go back to being about the joyful side of travel, but for the past few days, it hasn’t felt right. I want to do the work to make the country I’ve called home my entire life a better place – from afar. Because I don’t want to live in it anymore.

Maybe that’s unpatriotic, or maybe it’s just self-care. When you get burned out from a job, you’re told to take some time off, nurture yourself, and find your center. Maybe leaving the country is just that for me, and I’ll find in a few months that I miss it and want to come home. Or maybe I’ll realize that this wasn’t the place for me from the beginning. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t believe in blind loyalty to anything.

The only thing I do believe in, however, is trying to make the world a better place for the people that are still in it. So I’ll do the work – but it won’t be from within the borders of the country.

No part of me feels a desire to stay in this country that is filled with hateful, idiotic Trump supporters. People that can’t understand the basic logic of “supporting a racist means supporting racism.” Or people that can look me in the eye and tell me their views on Trump’s “policies” of the economy were more important to them than standing up for women and minorities.

So back to the title of this blog post – how do you deal with a crisis of country? I have no idea.

Featured Image: Gage Skidmore/Flickr

Wondering how to deal with stress while traveling? The truth is, it’s not a one-size-fits-all proposition, but there are a few (non-traditional) things that really help!

It’s no secret that I’ve dealt with my fair share of stress since starting my journey of full-time travel. I’m a Type A, high-tension former attorney, so it’s no wonder I have a hard time calming my brain down.

Traveling is wonderful in a lot of ways – for me, the most important way is that it’s immensely freeing. I can do whatever I want whenever I want. This also ends up being a huge negative: I realized I like having a bit of structure and it’s harder to maintain that structure when your environment is always changing.

In the interest of maintaining my sanity (which is tested on a very regular basis when traveling full-time and thinking about things like fitness, friends, and money), I’ve developed a few particular strategies to keep sane. These aren’t just relevant to a life of full-time travel, though, they are relevant to any kind of travels.

Keep in mind: some of these tips are like the trite (yet effective) advice you’ll hear other places. But some of them are pure fucking genius.

1. Meditate

I’ve spoken before about my use of Hal Elrod’s Miracle Morning method, and the inclusion of meditation. People constantly talk about meditation because it works – no question about it. But meditation doesn’t have to mean sitting perfectly still with your legs crossed on a soft mat in the middle of a peaceful room. Meditation can be as simple as shutting your eyes for a few minutes and just letting your brain be still. Whatever small amount of time you have to devote to it, do it.

2. Don’t neglect physical exercise.

I know – it’s more advice you don’t want to hear unless you are a workout junkie, but the truth is – you have to work out. You have to. Give yourself some time to bitch, cruise Twitter once or twice and then get your ass to the gym or outdoors. It’s not about being thin. It’s not even necessarily about being fit. It’s about the way physical exercise will affect your mental well-being. Just do it. Just DO it.

3. Hydrate

Did you know that if you feel fatigued, with a headache and exhaustion, you may just be missing some water? It’s true: all of the symptoms I just mentioned can be caused by just some mild dehydration. It’s crazy how crappy you can feel just by not drinking enough water. Somewhere on my U.S. road trip, I realized that I wasn’t feeling super well and I started drinking a full glass of water first thing every morning. It doesn’t sound like much, but it helped me start the day right and kept me drinking water all day.

4. Occasionally, tell people to fuck off.

This is some advice you probably won’t find in those “let’s all love each and be stress-free” websites and magazines. Occasionally, you’re going to need to tell people to fuck off. It’s just a fact. People can be annoying, and while you’re traveling full-time, you’ll often find yourself in situations where people treat you like garbage, for some reason. Whether it’s a company representative that has kept you on hold for over three hours when you’re stranded in a city because of a mistake they made or a frienemy from home making snide comments about your new life. Sometimes, people are great. And sometimes, they deserve to be told to fuck off. So tell them.

5. Do some drugs.

Do you ever notice how it’s perfectly acceptable to joke about drinking wine at the end of a long day – like it’s not also an actual drug that can impact you negatively in a lot of ways – but it’s not acceptable to joke about doing other drugs? Now, I’m not advocating you go out and do some heroin (really – don’t do that, ever) but I am advocating you find your own drug. Maybe it’s an actual drug in a state where that drug is legal. Maybe it’s just an activity that you love – like running or cooking or reading. Don’t get addicted if it is an actual drug, but for fuck’s sake give yourself something more than stereotypical alcohol. Fuck the advice about unwinding with a glass of wine – go find your drug.

6. Create small rituals you can maintain over time.

Traveling full-time means you won’t be able to create big rituals for yourself. Things like going to your favorite coffee shop down the road or eating lunch with your colleagues every day. But don’t lose the comfort of rituals completely: create small rituals that you can do anywhere. Maybe it’s just traveling with your favorite tea and travel mug and drinking it every morning. Maybe it’s even just watching the same show on your smartphone on Netflix once a month. Whatever it is, find something small that works for you and keeps you sane.

7. Avoid the news sometimes.

I love being informed and I think it’s important that we all stay informed about the world around us. That said, sometimes people are fucking awful. And they do awful things. Sometimes, to stay sane, the only thing you can do is shut off NPR, pop on some Justin Bieber and forget the world.

So these are my methods of staying relatively low-stress. They may not work for everyone. But try some of my strategies – I guarantee you’ll be glad you did.

What are some unusual things you do to de-stress?