“Recalculating”

Hey Everyone!

While, I don’t have as many followers on this blog as I do Comfy Girl with Curls, it just seemed right for this post to live here. (Okay, that made this blog post sound super epic, but it really isn’t, it’s just a little life update.)

Whether or not you’ve noticed, I’ve been MIA online since August. I’ve stayed semi-active on Instagram, and just started getting back to Twitter. But then again, I do have a program that automatically posts to Facebook and Twitter for me, so to be honest, you may not have even noticed my inactivity.

And I swear this isn’t even a product plug, but this commercial resonates with me SO MUCH that I get a ball of emotion in my chest every time it comes on TV. (Even though I don’t drive, let alone have an interest in buying a car).

Okay no, I’m not pregnant, or walking out of my job, or anything like that, but I find the idea that life is never exactly as you plan it to be (and that that’s okay) to be incredibly relevant. (I mean the commercial was targeted towards millennials, so what can I say?)

This year, I set some pretty lofty personal goals, and I had all the strategies laid out to attain them. Now that 2017 is officially over, I’m looking back on my lists and plans, and I am trying to figure out where the whole year went, and where exactly I lost steam.

I kicked off the start of 2017 with a new job–a 9 to 5 after years in retail.  I had set the intention of using my consistent schedule to pursue my aforementioned goals. I was so eager. The momentum and excitement of this new-found time–weekends off, what?!–propelled me into seriously picking up writing and editing again; it had me working to complete edits on my WIP, and begin another project. It motivated me to further develop my existing blog’s brand, to create a second blog (this one), and to create a Facebook group for black bloggers. I also began writing blog posts for a really cool startup company, and on top of that, I started to do more photoshoots with friends, further dabbling in both photography and modelling.

Let’s just say, that’s a lot to pack into weekends, and evenings after work. Slowly, I found myself becoming overwhelmed. I couldn’t keep up with all the commitments. I found myself over-promising and under-delivering to both myself and others. After some time, I dropped the paid blog post opportunity, and my creative writing projects dropped off to the point where I hadn’t touched them  in months. I (kinda) kept up with blog content until end of August/early Fall. That was when life had me recalculating.

Not to give you my entire life story, but Fall hit me with a whole lot of life changes. In retrospect, it’s kind of funny; in Summer, inspired by a close friend of mine, I had dubbed the upcoming months as “The big, scary, Fall”. On August 22nd, I had proclaimed, and I quote, “I’m gonna make shit happen, take active steps. Do things that scare me, but will propel me forwards!”. The irony is that the three months that followed this declaration were definitely my most creatively unproductive months, but somehow still super big and scary. I got a promotion with a whole lot more responsibility, I got engaged, and I moved, all in the course of a couple months. All of these things were amazing life changes, but they weren’t necessarily accounted for in my 2017 goals. (Okay, maybe the second one was 😉 ).

Now, in 2018, I’m recalculating. I’m redefining my priorities, and am not going to juggle everything at once. I’m also not going to stress out when life throws me in a new direction. For now I’m laser-focused fewer goals. The first, is finding a literary agent.

Wish me luck!

Feature photo @ CreateHer Stock