By Aliza Moorji and Bilal Lakhani
This is a story about a Brooklyn mother discovering a digital solution to the age-old problems of loneliness and economic reinvention.
Jenna Park, a mother of two girls, runs a bakery with her husband Mark. But her true calling lies elsewhere: Jenna is also a prolific Brooklyn blogger with an audience of 3000 readers a day.
“I definitely don’t hold back,” says Park, who was caught off guard when readers began stopping her on the street just to say hi. “I write what I feel. It’s very honest. And it’s very personal.”
Jenna started her blog, Sweetfineday, in April 2008, after her husband lost his job as a chef in the most punishing recession of a generation. It was then that both of them decided to venture out on their own and start a new business. Her blog was supposed to document the journey of their reinvention, both economic and personal.
“In the beginning, I had no idea how the blog would turn out,” says Park. Initially, the blog focused on her “experiences about living in Brooklyn, raising two kids in Brooklyn and starting a business.”
Somewhere along the way, she struck a chord and found an audience.
“I still write for me and not necessarily for an audience,” she says. “It was never my intention to get so many readers.”
Park believes that the reason she has managed to attract so many readers is because she is honest about discussing subjects like raising multi-racial children, loneliness in New York and the pitfalls of starting a business. She feels her audience is able to relate to her experiences.
Incidentally, their new business has also benefited tremendously from her blogging.
“Our business was built almost entirely on social networks and word of mouth,” she says. “And the blog has become a very important part of our marketing, not necessarily intentionally but it just has and we’ve gained a lot of customers in that way.”
In many ways, Jenna’s economic reinvention is nearing completion as her business settles down. You would expect someone in her position to celebrate her success. But Park feels otherwise.
“I’ve been feeling restless again,” she wrote in a recent blog post. “Oh, you know me…it’s nothing new, but I’m feeling like I need to do SOMETHING. A change – and I will be the first one to admit that this feeling is cyclical – but here it is again, for the umpteenth time. I have lost count. That feeling. Perhaps I am fickle. Or bored. Or unchallenged. Or restless.”
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