With every like and message, we receive the approval we so desperately seek. We ask people to follow us and like our page! Instead of feeling slight disappointment when we lose a follower, we question what’s wrong with me?

This topic has been talked to death, but I still feel like we’re missing a big piece of the puzzle. People often reminisce about the simpler times. But they’re forgetting one thing.

You’re in control of how you live your life.

While it’s unlikely we’ll ever go back to front porch sitting and land lines, you can set up your digital life to foster happiness.

Remember in middle school when your biggest concern was making sure you weren’t on the evil popular girl’s bad side? You didn’t need to be her friend, you just didn’t need for her to be your enemy.

Stop making approval the enemy in your life.

We seem to forget about the physical world directly in front of us. At any given moment, there are people around you. And those people choose to be near you, spend time wth you, and love you. And instead, we’re glued to these tiny devices full of our digital dopamine dealers.

We forget who and what matters. Instead of seeking the approval from the people in our lives who love us and are invested in our futures, we open that door open to the general public.

[ctt template=”4″ link=”naYgF” via=”yes” ]You are never going to make everyone happy. And in trying, you’ll make yourself miserable. @JoElizabeth[/ctt]

And that misery stems from our addiction to approval, from our inability to recognize that these momentary hits of dopamine aren’t actually improving our lives but instead hurting it.

Brene Brown has an excellent exercise for dragging yourself out of the approval addiction spiral.

1. Cut out a 1 inch square of paper.
2. Write down the names of the people whose opinions matter the most to you. Remember, you can only write as many fit on that piece of paper.
3. Refer to it whenever you start to feel yourself spiraling.

It’s an incredible visual reminder that we are often so busy seeking approval from those who don’t even know us. I can assure you this exercise is not only grounding but inspiring. How many times have you been in the middle of working on a big project only to see that someone else is doing something similar? Or how often do you stop dead in your tracks, giving up before you’ve really even started, because of a critical comment someone made about your process?

This exercise reminds you of the people who actually matter. When you feel the need to seek approval, seek it from them, from the people who love you enough to be harsh when necessary but not for sport.

In totally unrelated news, welcome back to JoeyHodgesWrites.com. I’ll address this in a post coming soon!

We’re going to stay with my parents for a whole week while we get the new house sorted out.

I sat on the other end of the phone confused.

Huh? I asked. Why would you do that?

Oh, you know, she said, we don’t want to live amidst the boxes and chaos.

I chuckled then realized oh wait…not everyone moves every 1.5 years. For most normal people moving is hugely stressful. The Great Unknown. It’s ranked right on up there with divorce and death of a loved one as one of life’s great stressors. Lucky for this friend (and for you, dear blog readers), I’m a right old pro.

Jonathan and I have moved five times in the last 6.5 years. We’ve got this thing down to a science. Buckle up, friends. This is going to be a long one. Go ahead and bookmark it and pin it, you’ll want to hold on to it for when life throws a move your direction.

The Great Purge.

The first thing you should do when you find out that you’re moving is a great purge. Go through your belongings room by room. Sort everything into keep, toss, donate piles. This is a great time to pull out that book everyone lost their shit about a few years ago The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Or, if you’re like me, you can just decide in the moment whether it’s really worth lugging your old high school papers around with you from house to house. Moving as frequently as we do, you start to lose attachment to unimportant things. We are far cry from living simplistically, but we’re probably one move away from not having anything left.

Keep Rooms Together.

When we moved from Athens to Charlotte, I stupidly packed all like items together. Meaning: all the bedding from our guest room and master bedroom got packed together. All the pillows from every room went into the same box. Every book we owned got put in the same box despite the room it lived in. That meant that I had items from literally all over the house in random boxes. DON’T DO THAT!

INSTEAD: PACK ONE ROOM AT A TIME AND KEEP THAT ROOM TOGETHER. Don’t worry about what makes sense to pack together. It’s okay to put the books from your nightstand in the same box as your master bedroom TV remotes. Obviously, take proper precautions. Wrap your fragile belongings and pack smart (don’t overload boxes), but stop thinking that all your books from all over the house need to be packed together.

Over-label everything!

I’m the crazy person who basically writes a novel on each box. But hey, I’ve never suffered through a move without knowing exactly where my coffeepot or my underwear is. In HUGE BOLD LETTERS write which room the box belongs to. Think ahead: will every room translate exactly? For instance, we had a loft in our Charlotte house but we weren’t going to have a loft in the Buies Creek house we were moving to. So instead of LOFT, I labeled that box FRONT LIVING ROOM. I’ll explain this further in a few minutes.

Underneath the room label, jot down a list of the most important items in that box. If you know that you can’t go to sleep at night without Netflix on, make sure you label which box your TV remotes, Roku, and TV cables are in. I tend to have a “must have” box for each room. That lets me know all my crucial can’t-live-without items are inside and if I don’t accomplish anything else, that box needs to be unpacked.

Keep your clothes on the hangers.

Especially if your move is local, keeping your clothes on the hangers will make a huge difference in your unpacking process. To do this, wrap a large trash bag (the big black ones fit the most) around the base of the clothes while they’re hanging. Pull the drawstring tight over top the triangular part of the hanger and tie it. When you get to the new house, simply hang the bag full of clothes up and remove the bag! “Unpacked” in seconds!

Keep your stuff in the drawers.

So you all know that your furniture will be lighter and easier to move if you remove the drawers. It wasn’t until my third move that it dawned on me. Why pack up the contents of the drawers if I’m taking the drawers out to move the furniture anyway? Remove the drawers, move the furniture onto the truck, replace the drawers, tape them shut. When you get to the new house, remove the drawers, move the furniture into the desired room, replace the drawers. Boom. Unpacked.

There is no science to loading the truck. It’s a real life game of Tetris. Go with it.

Your type-A hyper organized brain is going to tell you that all those boxes from your bedroom need to go on the truck in order. Stop. Breathe. Let go. Your shit needs to get on that truck in whatever way it fits. I don’t participate in this process. We either enlist the help of our burly man friends, or we hire movers. Either way, your stuff will get on the truck on way or another. If your husband is telling you to back off and let them work, back off and let them work. If you WANT to participate, more power to you. Pack it on carefully and strategically. It WILL fit one way or another. Don’t get precious about it.

Unloading the truck: put each box &/or piece of furniture into the room it belongs immediately.

I know logically you’re thinking okay let’s just get this shit off the truck so we can return it. Those U-hauls aren’t cheap, I get it. But you’re just making more work for yourself and prolonging the process. If you’re carrying a box that says guest bedroom, bring the box to the guest bedroom. It takes just a few extra seconds, but it saves you time in the end. Trust me. As for the furniture, make quick but sound decisions. Have an idea how you want the furniture laid out ahead of time and put the furniture where it belongs. Instantly, that empty house will start to feel more like home.

Assemble & dress the beds as they come off the truck.

I learned this trick from professional movers. As your bed comes off the truck, stop what you’re doing. Grab the box that you carefully labeled “Master Bedding” because you’re so smart, and dress the bed as they’re assembling it. The first thing I ever do in a new house is make sure the master bed is made up. Whether I get to anything else at that point isn’t important…I have a bed to sleep in.

Assign roles: divide & conquer.

Chances are, you aren’t doing this move alone. My husband and his buddies (or the movers) are responsible for unloading the truck. While they handle that, I tackle the unpacking. This is where your labeling will come into play. Because the boxes will already be in the room where they live, and because you so carefully labeled them, you can unpack quicker. I make sure to handle the master bedroom (clothes, mostly), the master bathroom, and part of the kitchen if nothing else. In the kitchen, focus on your must have items first (coffee pot, silverware, plates and cups). For the record, your plates & cups will likely go straight into the dishwasher–so it’s wise to know where your dishwashing detergent is.

You’ll be surprised how quickly the house starts to feel like home with the master bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen mostly unpacked. With each box in the room it belongs, when you have a free second here or there, quickly unpack a box. Put out your picture frames and redress the bookshelves.

Okay. I’m sure I’m leaving some things out, but you definitely know more about packing smart now than you did before reading this post. That means I’ve done my job here. Happy packing, friends!

Breaking my own rules, I took a work meeting for Tuesday. I figured I’d call my mom while I was getting ready. We hadn’t spoken in a few weeks and I wanted to finalize Thanksgiving plans. The voice on the other end of the line wasn’t my mother’s. What’s wrong?

We’re not exactly sure. We have the EMTs here with your mom right now. They’re taking her to Rex.

I cancelled my meeting and jumped in the car. A three hour drive stood between us, and I wasn’t wasting a minute. It wasn’t until I was halfway into the drive that I realized I was still in my pajamas. Whoops.

As I drove, I thought about the year. Losing a parent shifts your universe. It has the ability to suck you down and drown you in darkness. But my world wasn’t dark. My year, though difficult, was full of light and cheer and love. We found strength in numbers. My family, once seven, was still whole. It was still strong. We bend, we shift, we adjust. We love and we lose and we survive.

Thanksgiving 2015

The drive felt like it took forever, but I finally made it to Raleigh.

Relief flooded the room when the cheerful doctor cruised into the room announcing a kidney stone. We won’t spend another holiday with a sick parent.

This year, our traditions change, and that’s okay. The day will still be filled with laughter and love, with a few important voices missing from the chaos. But we survive together. The light always wins.

Happy Thanksgiving.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, though. Bath bombs are freaking expensive. And when you’re taking baths every single night (guilty over here, they’ve practically replaced showers all together), you’re looking at about $50/week just for baths. Unacceptable. That’s more than my coffee habit.  Whoops.

So Kim and I got to chatting. How cool would it be if we could make our own? Well, we did the research and put the recipe (adapted from here) to the test. And guess what? It’s totally possible!  It’ll cost you a fraction of a Lush bath bomb, give you a fun activity to do with a girlfriend, and it’ll make your entire house smell heavenly. Win win win!!

Bath Bomb Recipe:

Yields 2 bombs
*You can easily multiply this recipe to make more bath bombs. We just made multiple batches since we wanted to use several different oils.

Bath Bomb Ingredients:

 How to make the bath bombs

• If the mixture falls apart while you’re removing the mold, don’t worry. Simply toss the mixture back into the bowl and start over.
• If the mixture cracks, you can “mold” it back together by pressing it into shape with your hands. Just don’t squeeze too hard. That makes a mess 😉

What Bath Bombs Did We Make? 

So it’s been floating around blogland a bit that people miss the old way of blogging, and I can’t help but agree. Remember six years ago when blogging was a glimpse inside someone’s life? I see people questioning why it’s not like that anymore, and honestly the answer is quite simple.

Six years ago there weren’t 1.2 million different ways to share a snapshot of your life.

I sat down this morning ready to share what’s been up in my corner of the web when I realized y’all already know. 

If you follow me on snapchat (johodgespodges), you know I rearranged my office and finally put up track board. You also know that I’m getting sick but trying to pound out the miles because I set the goal to run 25 miles this month, and I’ll be damned if I don’t make it. What you don’t know is that my husband made fun of my twitter bird drawing then proceeded to erase it and draw one himself. I will say, his looks a lot closer to the actual bird.

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Okay, so I’ve been pulling myself out of a bit of a system breakdown lately.

Confession: I’ve never been the kind of person to procrastinate. I like knowing what I need to do and when I need to do it, and I definitely don’t like leaving things to the last minute. That’s when my Anxiety Ninja comes out to play, and I hate that bitch.

So I like to keep her locked up. Preferably in a dark closet where no one visits her, because I’m mean like that. Okay, I think I’ve gotten a bit off topic here…moving on.


The reason I fell into system breakdown mode is because I stopped making planning a priority and by the end of the day I’d suffer from what some might refer to as decision fatigue.

Basically, my brain is freaking tired. If you follow me on twitter, you already know that by the end of the day I can’t even be trusted to make a decision around what to eat for dinner.

The way I combat this in my daily life usually is to take the decision away from the moment. That’s why I’ve always been a big fan of planning. I just like knowing things.

I like to think of it as designing my day. While I try not to deviate from the daily plan, everything is loose and flexible. This habit has become especially handy now that I work for myself. The system breakdown I’ve been suffering through lately could be a very easy and comfortable place to unpack my bags and live. I don’t want to do that.

So how do you take the decision out of the moment? Well, here you go.

At the end of July, football wives around the world kissed their husbands goodbye as they walked out the door for the start of training camp, the beginning of another season.

July 31st was an important day in the Hodges household, too. It officially marked an entire year without football. For one whole year, I’ve known when my husband would be coming home. I didn’t eat my meals alone, and our Saturdays were filled with laziness and coupley things. All things I longed for all five years we wore the football title.

Normalcy. Regularity. Stability.

While in it, people used to ask me all the time how we did it. I’ve written about it before, about how my marriage was untraditional and why I was okay with it. And I’ll be honest, I wondered what it would be like to be on the outside. To rely on dependability and not have to do everything on my own.

Our year without football has been one of the hardest years of our marriage to date. A year full of transitions, shifting responsibilities, new beginnings and broken hearts.

It feels weird to confess this to you, but I miss it; the world I wasn’t ever sure I wanted. What woman wants that life? 

I did more than just get used to it, I grew to love it. Mid-November breakdowns and single wife dinners aside, the world of football is filled with hope, determination, excitement, hard work and lessons learned. 

Once in it, I never really saw our lives without it. In fact, remembering our marriage pre-football is hard for me. For almost exactly one year, we cruised the onramp to marriage without football, and it felt like everything we did that year was leading us to pigskin and scoreboards.

Filling the space football used to consume in our lives has been harder than you’d imagine. We made room for it, all of it, in our marriage. When people say they’re married to the game, that’s a real thing. Silly as it might seem, there’s more to football than four quarters and referees. There’s family and understanding, community and a sense of belonging.

For one whole season, my husband hasn’t been Coach, and I haven’t been Mrs. Coach.

And we’re still figuring out what that looks like.

To those wives knee deep in it, already missing their husbands as they eat their dinner alone and crawl into bed solo, I’m standing with you in spirit, missing every minute of it, cheering you on.

I’m going to be really honest here. Until recently, I didn’t think I was worth all that much. That might be a harsh thing to admit, but if I felt that way, chances are someone else does, too. And I think it’s important for me to share this story if that’s the case.

Inadequate. That would be the one word I would use to sum up my total teenage and young adult existence. I was never the prettiest. I was never the smartest. And I most certainly wasn’t the most successful. In the great game of comparison, I came up shit every. single. time.

I accepted that life, that role. It never occurred to me to challenge it. Not good enough.


I started seeing other people doing the things I wanted. That only fueled the downward spiral. How come they could have those things but I couldn’t?

Until one morning I just woke up and thought, no. This isn’t going to be my life anymore. The limitations I felt weren’t real. They didn’t actually exist. They were all in my head, perceptions developed into a false reality. The only reason I couldn’t have the things I wanted was because I wasn’t doing the things I wanted.