Soooo….I took a little blog break last week. Did you notice?
The month of January is typically a slow traffic month for bloggers. If I was just doing all this purely for the fun of it, I probably wouldn’t check my traffic, and wouldn’t even know, so wouldn’t be sad when I realized that my traffic was so low, I barely broke even. If you read my posts about the secrets of blogging as a business that I shared a year ago,  you’d see that I’ve now turned this into a business. A business that I LOVE and is so fun for me, but nonetheless, a business that I have to check numbers and stats each month.  I spent so much money on site stuff in January, and with low traffic, I barely broke even. That can be depressing!
I like to keep it real around here, and share the insides of my brain, so there you have it. I was feeling LOW. I realized all of this just before I took a weekend trip to Miami, and I came home just feeling like I needed a break. For 2 days, I didn’t even go to my computer, which is HUGE for me! I enjoyed some time lounging in my bed with my ipad and reality TV. That felt good. Then it felt lazy. Then on Wednesday, I got on the computer to do some behind the scenes stuff, and figured I’d finish out the week doing that. Well, I’m still doing it. All that will never be done. This whole blogging game is never done, which is fun and stressful at the same time.
Also, I’ve done a horrible job of staying away from the computer when my kids are home, which is my goal. Now that all of my kids are in school from 8-3 each day, it should be enough time to do business stuff, and let it go for the rest of the day, but it always seems to be calling me back. Can I hire someone to kick me out of my office each day at 3, and lock the door, and hold onto the key for me until 8am the next morning? Or maybe I can just gain the will power to shut it all off, and finish it the next day.
Don’t worry, I’m not closing shop, just trying to prioritize everything on my plate the best I can.
I’ve got someone working on a website “face lift” for me, and I’m pretty excited about it! I purchased some training on how to do a few things differently, to improve things around here, and I have to watch a few of those webinars on my own time (which I’m horrible at). Â I’ve constantly got 25+ tabs open on my computer, and when I go to close them, I think, “dang, can’t close that one yet, still need to XYZ with it.” Â A lot of it has to do with going back to old posts I’ve written, and changing a few details here and there to make them more searchable and shareable and tweaking to look their best.
I’m working on something fun and exciting to everyone who subscribes to my newsletter. I’ve had two options for a daily and weekly update, but I’m consolidating to just do a newsletter, which will be sent out 1-2 times a week, and it will be like an exclusive CLUB of all of my besties, getting secret stuff that no on else gets. SOOOO, if you want to be in my bestie club, get a head start signing up below or my sidebar!
THEN….as if that isn’t enough, I’m bummed that I’ve totally fallen off of the eating well/exercising habit. I’d been doing so well for a few years, and then I started teaching early morning seminary in August and was too exhausted to even go for a walk with my neighbors. Once I got the hang of my new sleep schedule, my mom passed away, and I allowed myself to eat whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. 6 months and 10 pounds later, I find myself trying to figure out exactly what will be my new healthy living normal. I looked into a few different personal training options, and they are EXPENSIVE! Once again, it all comes back to will power, and needing to just reset my brain again. Feeling stuck and frustrated.
But I had a GREAT Valentine’s weekend with my fam, and even had our early morning bible study seminary class over Saturday night for my first attempt at a FONDUE night! It was so fun! I’m going to write up a post about activities for teens, because I’ve done a lot of research and have found some great ideas that we’ve tested out.
