It’s hard to blog…

Hello internet friends,

I’ve got something to admit… I find blogging hard… Okay, let me rephrase that a little… I find that the perfectionist in me finds blogging hard. I want my posts to be well written (never going to happen) and to have interesting/worthwhile content (also not likely). So, even though I always have a list of ideas for posts, I can never seem to get a post published… That is because all these ideas generally require me to complete some sort of task outside of the blog, and not only that, but it also generally requires me to document that task. Because of that, one of a few things normally happens to those tasks… either I procrastinate the task until I have enough time to document it “properly” as I do it (which never happens), or I just work at the task piecemeal and never document it, or by the time I think to document it I feel that it’s already so far gone that it’s not worth it anymore…

So, that’s basically what’s been happening over the last few months/years. I’ve had lots of ideas, I’ve been working on all sorts of projects and habits, but nothing has been documented enough or to my “standards” to allow me to blog about it.

The other side of it is that I sometimes feel pressure to be making this blog my life or my job or whatever… And honestly, as much as I’d love to get paid to write about the projects I do around my house, I am not about to quit my well-paying and enjoyable job to “sell” myself online. It’s just not me. But I wonder if that pressure (be it real or just in my head) has held me back from just being my normal flawed person here on the blog… I wonder if it has created this sense that my posts need to be worthy of being on a professional blog to be posted…

Anyway… all this to say that I am hereby giving myself permission to let go of any pretense that this blog will ever be a money making venture. I am giving myself permission to publish posts of half-finished, not perfect projects, and to post things that I didn’t think to document until I was either done or mostly done, because if I want to share it, I should!

So hopefully I will be able to get some posts done in the near future and get back to posting more regularly… with imperfect, but real, content.

Let me know if there are any other previous post topics that you’d like an update on…

P.S. Back in the spring of 2021 I was doing the mins-game… I abandoned that, so I won’t bother trying to finish that specific challenge up… but I have been doing lots of decluttering and I have a lot more to do, so hopefully I’ll find a way to post about my haphazard decluttering…

Advertisement

March 2021 Update

Hello my online friends… It’s been a while… again…

This post started initially as a draft in the Fall of 2020… And I never finished it, so it sat in my drafts until I started looking at it last month… And it has taken until the end of March to actually hit publish on it…

But, I have decided that one of my goals for 2021 is to once again return to blogging. This may start with a simple monthly update, but hopefully I will be able to go back to my multiple postings a week schedule eventually. I need the motivation and external accountability to help me tackle the projects and goals on my ever growing list.

So that all being said… How is everyone? What has happened since my last post?

On my end, it feels like nothing has happened since then… but at the same time it feels like everything has changed… Does that even make sense?

And that was 2019…

Hello Friends!

Somehow we are already midway through December.  2019 is ending pretty soon, and the excitement of a new year is ramping up.  I have many goals for 2020, as I always do at the beginning of a new year… But the big one is that I really want to get back in to blogging!  I miss it!  I miss reading blog posts, I miss writing blog posts, and I miss the wonderful online community of friends that I have basically abandoned for over a year now…

2019 flew by in a blur… Lots of things changed and I tried to resist that change and hold on to a lot of things that I felt defined me…  I am slowly realizing that I may have to change my ideas on what I think defines me as a person… 2020 is shaping up to be filled with more changes, and all the challenges that come with that (especially for someone who seems to resist change like I do).  There is lots to look forward to, but also lots that will be difficult and will push me outside my comfort zone.  Plus, 2020 will probably involve potty training a toddler… Not looking forward to that…

Back in March, when I thought I was going to start blogging again (hahaha!), I had many plans and ideas for posts… Most of which are not totally relevant anymore, and, since my brain is mush, my memories of those topics are quite fuzzy… But that’s okay, I’ll probably start with some simple posts just to get myself back in the habit and can work on remembering all the inspiration I had eventually…

Even when I was not actively posting anything here on my blog, my posts about my bullet journal have remained popular.  I am still bullet journaling, although it has definitely taken a turn from the pretty to the purely utilitarian.  I figure that an easy way to get back in to blogging would be to go over some of my recent bullet journal spreads and ideas.  I have a draft post for my “new bullet journal” that I started back in April of 2018… I’ve since been through at least one more journal, if not two… So there is lots of bullet journaling to catch up on…

Anyway, I hope that you all have a happy holiday season, and I look forward to catching up with all of you as I get back in to blogging in the new year.

-Jena.

 

And just like that… 2 months go by…

I was so hopeful when I posted that “Hello, Stranger” post at the beginning of March… Things seemed to be falling in to place, and I had found a bit of spare time to blog…

And then the little one got sick, and my husband went away on a trip, and I dog-sat for my sister for spring break, and we had to do some basement clean-up to get some work done down there, and my dog hurt his paw (he’s fine now), and… and… and…

And now, somehow, it is May.  April?  Not sure what happened to that month…

I’m still working on my new normal with work and baby and such… Trying to find the balance that will also let me blog, because I do really enjoy blogging.

Please have patience with me, I’ll figure it out eventually.  Until then, I’ll randomly pop-in to say hi, and hopefully post something interesting…

Baby Step 3, or 4, or Both?

When I started this blog, I sort of thought I’d be more in the personal finance genre, but, honestly, I don’t think I ever really fit that mould, and, if I had to classify my blog, I guess I’d put it in more of a lifestyle category… But only my lifestyle… not a stylish lifestyle… So maybe it really is just a personal blog… I don’t really know…

Anyway, the point being, I don’t really write about much personal finance other than my monthly financial update posts.  I do, however, read and follow loads of personal finance and FIRE (financial independence & retire early) blogs.  In the personal finance world, most people are familiar with Dave Ramsey.  While I have never actually read any of his books or attended any seminars or anything of the like, I have read lots of blog posts about his methods, and have visited his website a few times…

The other day I read a post (can’t remember where now, sorry!) about his 7 baby steps and decided to take a look at them for myself and see where I stand… So, here’s my take on our status with respect to Dave Ramsey’s steps:

Clothing Help?

There are a lot of websites and blog posts out in the giant “interweb” that preach on clothes shopping bans and capsule wardrobes.  I love the idea, but here’s the thing… Without really meaning to, I’ve been on an accidental self-imposed clothing shopping ban for years and years…  And I think I need to end it…

Radio Silence

If you’ve been reading for a while, you know that more often than not, if the blog goes silent for a while, it is because I am away for work…

So, I’m sure with the lack of posts recently you can guess where I’ve been…

Anyway, I’ve had a bunch of post ideas that I started, I just haven’t completed them, so hopefully in the next couple weeks I’ll be able to get my act together and put something with substance up…

Until then, I will once again leave you with some photos…

Safety first at the worksite!

Whoops…

So… Yeah… Today is a “blog post” day for me… And I didn’t write a blog post on the weekend like I was supposed to… And then I went away for work (currently away), so I don’t have anything written for today… The best/worst part is, that I had a plan for my posts, and for my February focus & monthly challenge… But I haven’t even been doing very well at keeping up with those… So I need to work on that a bit more before I can post about them… So, I really have nothing to post about today… Instead I’ll give you a couple photos from my work trip…

I hope you are having a good week. And hopefully I will have something with a bit more content for you on Thursday.

Happy Blog-iversary!

It has officially been 2 years since I started blogging!  (You can read my very first post here.)  I can’t really believe that I’ve actually stuck with it, although I can’t say I’ve exactly been consistent… But, there has never been a month where I didn’t post anything, and I am still really having lots of fun with it.

I never created this blog with the intention of creating a large readership, or worrying about my page views, but I would be lying if I said that it didn’t thrill me to see a post be popular, or to have a bunch of people comment on one of my posts.  And, whether or not it was my intention, my page views have dramatically increased over the past two years.

When I hit my 100th post last fall, I did a summary post to review some of the stats of my blog, so I thought it would be fun to revisit some of those numbers again, over a year later.

This is post #177.

So, I haven’t kept up quite the same pace as I did my first year of blogging.  But I’m not too concerned with that.  Life gets busy and sometimes it just doesn’t work out to get a blog post published.

Let’s go over the same numbers as last time…

Friends

I started writing this post almost three weeks ago now, when I had finally arrived home after about 3 weeks away for various reasons.  Amazingly, the day I started writing this post, Cait Flanders published a post that was so fitting to what I was trying to convey, I wondered if somehow we had some psychic connection (side note – I don’t really think that we do, it was just a strange coincidence).

Anyway, after reading that post, I was pretty much ready to abandon this post because Cait is such a great writer, there was no way that I could convey my thoughts in a way that was any better.  I’m also not sure this post will fit in to any of the existing categories on my blog, but since I haven’t really been home lately, I don’t have any of the typical things to post about… And on my 3 hour drive alone the other night, I got to thinking… That can be dangerous when you are alone sometimes, but after an amazing fun weekend with 3 of my good girl friends, it was all very positive.

I think I’ve posted now that I am an engineer.  Being a female engineer is still not super common, and during my time at university, there were only a few girls in my year.  Of those girls, for some reason, 4 of us seemed to stick together after graduation.  It’s not to say that we weren’t friends with other girls in the program, but for whatever reason, now that we have been out of school for 10 years, the 4 of us still manage to stay in touch and be good friends.