Episode #7: #DogMom Life in NYC & Freelance Writing with Sophie Vershbow
Sophie Vershbow runs social and influencer marketing at Eventbrite and is a freelance journalist based in New York City.
In this episode, she tells us about her journey with fostering, how she adopted her Instagram-famous dog Simon from Hearts & Bones Rescue, and why she just started calling herself a writer after 50 bylines.
We also discuss:
- Why Simon loves the Upper West Side
- How Sophie started her career as a freelance journalist
- The importance of pitching and practice for writers
- Fostering pets as a way of resetting and grounding yourself
- How she handles negative attention on social media
- And more!
Tune in for a conversation about fostering and forever homes. Then join the Juniper Community to meet more pet parents like you!
Stream The Podcast Here:
Highlights from the episode:
- Sophie 3:41 — Fostering as an intro to dog parenthood — I tell everyone to foster. I think not only is it just the most rewarding personal experience you can ever have, but it is the best way to pick the dog that you wanna actually have in your home. If you're someone like me who had only had one very specifically senior dog that I live with, which really wasn't representative of the overall dog ownership experience, I learned so much about what was and was not going to work for me.
- Sophie 10:12 — The rewards of fostering — Some of the fosters break my heart. It is sometimes an utterly devastating experience, and that is just something you go in knowing that's gonna happen sometimes. And yeah, it's just part of the process, but it's so rewarding. And you watch the dog go to their new home, and that just washes it away.
- Sophie 15:16 — Joy on social media — The Internet is such a complex place. I spent a lot of time on the Internet. I am a social media gremlin. And I think you can't get rid of the bad stuff and you have to just put good stuff into the universe and make it a little bit more of a positive place, which I genuinely believe it can be. And I think that's why people like Simon.
- Sophie 21:04 — Pitching freelance pieces — You just gotta pitch. You just gotta write. You just gotta practice. Because at the end of the day, that is how I got almost everything I have ever written has been on a cold pitch.
- Sophie 35:34 — Internet harassment — I try to skirt away from the dark side of it, really, because I just have no interest in participating. The Internet is not the real world, and people who wanna fight on the Internet instead of taking actual actions to make the world a better place in the real world just don't really have any interest to me.
Thanks to our sponsor: Optimeal
🦴 We love Optimeal and we think your dog will too. Get 20% off their natural pet food with the code 20JuniperPet or at this link.
What’s a Rich Text element?
The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.
Static and dynamic content editing
Static and dynamic content editing
A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!
How to customize formatting for each rich text
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.