It’s 2018! For many of us, that means fresh starts. It certainly means that for me.
I’m sure you can relate to this, but 2017 was a serious challenge for me. Without a doubt, it was one of the toughest years of my life. Granted, when life gives you challenges, it’s only meant for you to grow. But you can’t deny how hard it is to learn those lessons and deal with the awful packages some of those lessons tend to come in.
If you’re like me and you’re glad you’ve made it out of the fire, congratulations! You’ve endured some tough stuff, which means you’re much stronger than you’ve probably given yourself credit for. You’ve learned some hard life lessons, dealt with unforeseen drama, and found more of yourself in the process. Now that we’re out of the forge of 2017 all brand new, let’s keep 2018 going in the right direction by mapping out exactly how you want your 2018 to go down.
It’s definitely important to keep your goals and life lessons handy because if you forget (and you will), you can easily find and review them to keep yourself on the right path. What I’ve done is make myself a laptop wallpaper that doubles as my 2018 goals checklist. My plan is to update this checklist throughout the year, so throughout the year, my wallpaper will have new goals added or old goals scratched off. (If you’d like to make your own, Canva already has a wallpaper-sized template with several layouts you can choose from, or you can use the blank template and make your own theme from scratch.)
If you don’t want to make a wallpaper or can access your thoughts better in journal form, I’ve made this short 2018 cheat sheet PDF. You can print out the pages and stick them in your notebook, journal, binder, pin them to your wall, or do whatever you need to with them to remind yourself of what you’re working towards and what you’d like to avoid. Click the image to download.
Just as a disclaimer–I’m not a psychologist or therapist. I’m just someone who has learned a lot in 2017 and felt a document like this one will help others jumpstart getting their lives in order for 2018. I’m gonna use this myself, since 2017 wouldn’t quit, even down its last hours.
2018 is a year I hope we can all look to as a time to get out from under our personal rubble and start anew. It’s time to get rid of bad habits, shake off bad influences and prepare ourselves for awesome lives ahead.
What are some of your goals for 2018? Share if you feel so inclined in the comments section below!
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Let’s be honest: One of the things that hampers indie entertainment blogs or just small blogs in general is being able to make money. The challenge creating a self-sustaining blog that can be used as a full-time career has certainly been one of my biggest challenges. But that’s going to change. Starting now, JUST ADD COLOR is openly seeking advertisements and sponsorships.
For advertisers
If you’re an advertiser, here’s why working with me will help you advertise your business or project:
• JUST ADD COLOR has a growing Twitter presence, with 2,164 followers and growing
• JUST ADD COLOR is part of a grassroots network of influencers reaching an intersectional, socially-conscious audience
• JUST ADD COLOR has a audience 69.5 percent female between the ages of 18-34, aka “millennials.” This is the demographic most likely to purchase items based on the value they provide to society on a socially conscious, meaningful way.
To learn more, visit my Sponsorships/Advertising page, where you can download my full media kit and purchase the package that works best for you.
For loyal readers
Now, for those readers who are concerned about how advertisements and sponsorships will affect the site, let me lay out how it will help me.
As I wrote above, one of the challenges in running a website is figuring out how to make money from it. As you probably already know, several people who have niche websites still have to have a full-time job to be able to pay for the bills, including me. But, while having a full-time job helps me keep a roof over my head, money in my wallet, and food on my table, it also takes away valuable resources (namely time and energy) that could be used for writing, promoting, and further enhancing my site. What sponsorships and advertisements can help me with is 1) give me a clear pathway to make JUST ADD COLOR my full-time job, 2) with the worry about money lifted, I’ll have enough time to write all the posts you love reading plus have even more financial resources I can use to fund the site and its various needs or projects (such as buying movie tickets or products for review, taking care of any website issues, etc.). In short, I’ll be able to devote all of time to providing great content without having to feel stressed.
In fact, here’s one way you as a reader can help me right now: Make sure to spread this blog post around to anyone and everyone you know who are looking for websites to partner and advertise with. Let them know that JUST ADD COLOR is open for business. If you can spread this to the folks in your circle looking to do business, then that’ll make my quest to make JUST ADD COLOR a fully sustainable site even easier and quicker.
Recently, I put out a podcast airing out some of my raw thoughts about this impending Donald Trump presidency. One of the biggest issues I’ve been dealing with, aside from how everything Trump might do could basically end life as we know it (only being half-sarcastic about this) is how I was going to continue the work I’m doing here on my corner of the internet, JUST ADD COLOR.
After doing a lot of thinking, soul-searching, talking, and a little “HOW AM I GOING TO GET THROUGH THIS?!”-based crying, I decided I’ve got to do what I’ve been doing, which is talk about representation in entertainment. That’s what this site is founded upon. A lot of what happens in the entertainment sphere echoes what happens in society. In fact, I just learned that in Ava DuVernay’s The 13th states that the KKK’s penchant for cross burning only happened after D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation came out. If that’s not a direct correlation between life imitating art, then I don’t know what is. So talking about entertainment’s influence on regular life is something that is going to continue and something that has to continue.
However, we all need some levity, so please think of JUST ADD COLOR as a safe space for discussion about popular TV, movies, games, comics, etc. I’m working with a lot of POC geek outlets to utilize some of their content to help fill in the gaps I might have in my entertainment coverage (because I don’t play all of the games or read all of the comics on daily basis). I’ll also make sure to post some more articles concerning some of the recent comics and books I’ve bought recently. And, since looking back at happier times is something we all need to do from time to time, I’ll definitely pull from happier moments in history, such as analyzing the surprising pro-black woman anthem that is Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back (yeah, I know, I talked about my hatred of the aught’s obssession with big butts, but Sir Mix-a-Lot takes the butt obsession from a different perspective than today’s love of butts, I think).
I’ll also preach more about unity here. In these times, we need to deal more in unity and less in division. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll sugarcoat any intra-race racism, for instance, calling out non black POC discrimination or fetishizing of black people, or when black people express discriminatory/fetish thoughts against other non black POC. But on the whole, I’ll focus on how we as the marginalized can and should work together to preserve our quality of life under this new regime.
This is the current plan for JUST ADD COLOR going forward. I’m hoping you can help me flesh out my plan and coverage; if you have anything you’d want covered, let me know either via Twitter, Facebook, or by emailing me at monique@colorwebmag.com
Are you a regular reader of JUST ADD COLOR who would love to put in your opinion about popular issues affecting diversity in America? Are you a new reader who wants a shot at becoming a published writer? JUST ADD COLOR is now accepting guest posts!
JUST ADD COLOR is run by one person (me), and while I do my best to showcase as many issues as possible, I’m also just one person who is sometimes limited by my own worldview. A black cis woman can’t be an Asian disabled bi man or a Middle Eastern trans woman. That’s where you come in.
If there’s an issue pressing on your heart, an issue you feel has been neglected by the media, or TV and film reviews you want published for the world to see, use JUST ADD COLOR as your platform! Send me a pitch at monique@colorwebmag.com with the subject line “JUST ADD COLOR/PITCH:”XX” (with “XX” featuring the title of your post). All guest posts are unpaid, but you can use this opportunity to get your footing in the blogging world and exercise your writing skills to advance your writing career!
If you know someone who would love a chance to publish a guest post, please share this post with them! I can’t wait to read your posts!
Welcome to 2016! JUST ADD COLOR (originally known simply as COLOR) has seen its first full year in operation, and to head into its second year, there seemed to be no better way to ring in the new year than with a brand new magazine. COLOR BLOCK Magazine aims at giving you even more quality content, available for free download.
This year, JUST ADD COLOR will give viewers tons of content, lots of fodder for discussion, and hopefully it’ll give you some new ideas for how you think about the state of race and culture in entertainment. It’s not traditionally thought of as a “civil rights” issue, but representation in films and movies is, in fact, a civil rights fight. I’d say its one of the biggest, yet most underrated, civil rights fights, and the more people we have educated about the importance of representation, the faster we as a society can move towards an future in which everyone can see a version of themselves on television.
I hope 2016 brings tons of good things to JUST ADD COLOR and COLOR BLOCK Magazine, and I hope 2016 brings tons of happiness and cheer to you, too. Happy new year!
Click the link the sidebar to read the first issue of COLOR BLOCK Magazine! If you like what you read, share COLOR BLOCK Magazine with a friend!
As you might have noticed, COLOR’s been a bit stagnant as of late. There’s a reason for that. There are some changes coming.
COLOR posts a lot about Hollywood and movies and TV and media of that nature, but since I’m in a writerly household, I’ve realized that COLOR could and should cover more about writing opportunities, since like the entertainment world, the writing world is full of racism, discrimination, and blocked opportunities. There are too few writers of color in an industry dominated by white cis-gender men. Thankfully, there are beginning to be more opportunities for writers of color to make it in their chosen profession, and The Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) is one of them.
