Wanna know the benefits of starting your own blog? You get to treat it like it’s your only child and celebrate its birthday like a basic bitch. Listen, chicks get a whole MONTH of celebrations so just LET ME HAVE THIS, alright?! In case you haven’t heard…it’s the 7th birthday of The Salty Ju. I could refer to it as my blogiversary but The Salty Ju is a persona and I may not have suffered through hours and hours of grueling vag-ripping labor to birth her but I HAVE spent the last seven years dedicated to cultivating this brand and devoting more of my time creating fresh content than I have at any job I’ve ever held. SEVEN YEARS. Unpaid I might add. In fact, one could argue that I actually lose money each year because I pay WordPress an annual fee to secure my right to blab all over the internet whenever I damn well please. (My Venmo is open to donations.)
So anyway, you’re probably wondering why I brought you all here. The truth is, I never miss an opportunity to talk about myself and since last year’s Salty Ju Birthday was basically just an appreciation post for making it through 2020, I thought it might be nice to reflect on this past year because even though this blog is inconsequential to everyone’s life but mine, some cool shit happened this year!
Salty Stories, Yo
Exactly 1 year ago, I finally bust outta the ole parents house (perhaps third time’s a charm) and hit the ground running as an independent woman (read: living off of government money and stinking of desperation for a job.) This turned out to be a recipe for SUCCESS for The Salty Ju. It turns out you’ll share just about anything on a blog once you hit rock bottom in life. What’re the consequences going to be?! Part ONE of that was establishing “Salty Stories”, a fun lil segment where I write deeply personal essays that paint me in a real vulnerable light and invite you all to laugh at my misfortunes. IT’S HOW I COPE! And I did a whole lot of coping this past year. Anytime something ridiculous occurred that made me want to cry, or something irritated the shit out of me and made me want to rage my face off, I put it in the blog, baby. Starting with my tall tale of the time an assassin at Supercuts ruined my head for my Gam’s funeral right up to my middle finger to dressing professionally for work, we had ourselves a year in embarrassing story time! Feel free to catch up on any you might’ve missed below.
- 10 Things I Would Go Back and Tell Myself at College Graduation
- Thirty-Two Out of the Blue
- Death & Taxes at Walmart
- Bend Over and I’ll Show Ya
- A Blubbering Whale of a Tale
- One Year as The Jersey Ju
- Things I Googled In My 30th Year On This Earth
- Taylor Swift Trivia For One
- Stay Grounded
- The Seven Year Itch
- Abolish Biz Casj.
- Moving Still Sucks Balls
Hype House, Party of 1
Part TWO of that IDGAF if people judge me mentality came in the form of videos. I’m not going to call them TikToks because that paints a picture that I’m setting up a tripod in public places and doing the renegade to the hottest song of the moment. And that is the opposite of what I spent this past year doing. TikTok may have been the main platform that I shared my idiotic videos on, but considering the fact that I just googled “TikTok dance” just to make that joke, I am most CERTAINLY not a TikTokker. Plus that app is dumb as hell and I still haven’t figured out how to do anything useful on it a whole ass year later. So instead, I’ve downloaded 100 other apps to get the job done. Either way, the key takeaway here is that exactly 2 weeks after moving into my new apartment, I was so excited to not have any judgmental onlookers in my home as I film 900 takes of me lip syncing a song, that I blew a fuse trying to create a dramatic storm effect for a 17 second video (see “Celine Dion Made Me Do It” above for full recap.) And really, it all just spiraled from there. If I thought something was funny, you can bet your bottom dollar I was playing the role of a 1 person non-union film crew to bring that idea to life for your social media screens. I don’t even want to venture a guess into how much time I spent filming myself dancing, singing or making cocktails by my lonesome. Let this be a lesson to all that content creator is a mindset. If you believe it, you can create it! Please enjoy a smattering of me doing my best Spielberg via stupid internet videos this past year. (I can’t post every single video so I’ll sprinkle in a few and you can scoot on over to my Tok for the rest.)
Baby’s First Published Piece
After writing a book last year and realizing that not a soul on this earth would publish a nobody’s memoir, I decided to dabble a little harder in the “professional” writing game. Put a little something on the scoreboard, so to speak. I buffed up on writing satire and lo and behold, managed to get published by someone other than myself, sending my big head into another stratosphere. And I’ve had a case of the yips since then. It’s all about balance in life and if I were to end up being published on a regular basis I think I’d just get out of control, so it’s really for the best that these two pieces were my shooting star moments. Maybe one day I’ll strike again but right now I’m busy workshopping some ideas, editing my book, and writing a rambling useless post celebrating the birthday of my blog. Suuuuuper bogged down. Either way, getting published legitimized me (in my own brain) and I casually began to refer to myself as a comedy writer to strangers I crossed paths with. It felt right until I harmlessly dropped it in the interview for my current job and I then had to endure everyone on this planet introducing me around the office as THE comedy writer. When a Zoom call full of librarians stare at you like “oh you’re a comedy writer, tell us a joke,” the title really loses its zest.
Prepare for Global Domination
And LASTLY (if you’ve gotten this far, you a real one) after spending a no-shower Sunday revamping my entire blog, designing amateur graphics via my homeslice Canva and reorganizing all of my content so you can revisit my old classics (you’re welcome), I got an Instagram DM from across the pond. Turns out a kindred spirit ALSO took the time during quarantine to dive into the fiery hot garbage that is the Real Housewives franchise and try out new cities. While I immersed myself in NYC and New Jersey, this gal went for Beverly Hills and upon googling the drama, stumbled upon my little corner of the internet. Once upon a time (before I realized how time consuming it was) I was in the TV episode recapping game. Now that I’ve spiffed up the blog, you can find all of my old TV blogs divided by show under the Television tab! How CONVENIENT! AnYwHo…this was by far the coolest thing to ever happen to me and I promptly screenshotted it to everyone I’ve ever met. If I may quote my new fan from across the world:
I just wanted to say thank you from an Irish girl living in the UK for making me laugh during a global pandemic.
My First International Superfan
Booyah, Grandma. Who would’ve thought 6 years ago as I feverishly jotted notes while watching TV, created an outline before bed and made sure I wrote the recap at work the next morning to publish by 9AM that someone would still be laughing at it this many years later. OI…sounds to me like SHE’S HERE, SHE’S THERE, SHE’S EVERY-FUCKING-WHERE, THE SALTY JUUUUUUUUUUUU, THE SALTY JU.
So, as it turns out the “Seven Year Itch” doesn’t have to just refer to crabs. (This is what I assume the phrase was invented for until we eradicated pubes from our lives.) It was a productive year of shaking things up for your girl and I’m excited to forge ahead into “The Ocho.” If you’re reading this right now or have read, shared or laughed at one single thing I did this past year, I want to just smooch your face off with gratitude. Sure, I can easily cackle at myself and be entertained all the live long day, but having people to share it with and bringing giggles to your life is actually what dreams are made of, Lizzie McGuire style. GRAZIE MILLE!
The Salty Ju 