7:00 a.m.

I am usually awake by this time. My most productive brain time is in the morning. I have ADHD, and I tend to treat it using coffee. I make myself a cup of coffee and go to my office. While I drink my coffee, I read my emails and plan out my day.

8:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

During this time, I write my blog posts for the 7 websites I run (which includes this one). To be the most productive, all quick posts that require little research are written first followed by those that need more time. After writing, if I still have time leftover in my 2 1/2 hour slot, I will plan ahead my months using my content calendars.

10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.

Work on my latest writing project. It depends on if it is a novel, article, or short story.

12:00 pm to 1:00 pm (Lunch break)

1:00 pm to 2:00 pm

This time is for errands or cleaning around the house. I generally use the afternoons for those things that do not require a whole lot of concentration. Errands. Cleaning. Organizing. Brain power is for those tasks that need it. Everything else is just getting it done. Or working on it.

2:00 pm to 5:00 pm

In the afternoon, I work on my other businesses, like sewing. I will go into my sewing studio and work on sewing or new projects. If I don’t have anything that I’m currently working on, I may write, but mostly it is sewing. Sewing is one of my happy thoughts, so I enjoy doing that last in the day. It’s right up there with reading.

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I don’t always read fiction books. I do include books that I think will include useful information to help me improve my writing. I currently have several books on crafting scenes in my queue to read and I started with this one: Setting: How to Create Authentic Settings that Readers can’t Get Enough of by Justin Herzog.

I haven’t made it far into the book that is only 59 pages on my Kindle Fire Tablet, but so far it reads like an ELA Common Core textbook where it talks about the influence the setting has on the characters and plot. As a former teacher, I already know this. Yes, the struggle is real.

All of that aside, I do want to offer some advice when it comes to reading while writing. Always be in pursuit of improving your craft. Read nonfiction books about writing. Read fiction books in the genre you want to write. Seeing what other authors are doing in their writing can help you with your own.

In my last book, Romancing Mr. All-Star, I read a lot of romance, even some spicy romance. While I read these books, I thought about how the author crafted their characters, and what I found was that it improved my Show, Don’t Tell. I can see this when I compare it to my earlier writing. When you begin writing, you will probably be rough around the edges. Your writing may not read like perfect prose. This takes time and revisions. Revisions is not editing. It’s reading and changing for clarity and story continuity. It’s improving your piece until it is perfection. And what you may find later on down the road after you learn a few more things is that you probably could have improved that piece even more, but you didn’t have the skills needed back then.

In my current book, I’m hoping to improve some of my writing and provide a more interesting story.

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And for some reason, I keep getting these reading app ads on my Facebook with snippets from the werewolf romance genre. I think it is because I watched through one of the ads for the Reel Short episodes for “Fated to my Forbidden Alpha,” and now that’s all that seems to pop up.

There is an upside and a downside to this. The upside is that I’ve run across some really good writing. The downside is that I’ve run across some horrible writing. Misspellings, poorly phrased sentences, and some of it looks like it was written by a child. No description. No imagery. Lots of missing words.

What I want to know is do they sell any of that trash?

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Sorry for the MIA. So much has happened since my last blog post. I lost my domain name. Apparently some foreign retail store now has it. They are benefitting from the traffic that I had worked many years to create. I’m mad about that, but I refuse to pay them for the return of my name. I’m still the original Martha L. Thurston.

I was homeless for a course of time, and currently still displaced, although we are in a temporary home.

My son was also in a motorcycle wreck. That in itself was devastating when I think back to how I was told about it. It was as though he was dead. I’m not going to go back through that. If you’d like to read about it, it’s on my food blog at Sweet, Sassy, and Southern.

Overall, I really wanted to get my writing blog back up into action. Afterall, I have so much happening right now. My writing has been much slower, and not as pumped out as it has been, but that is okay. I am working on trying to get consistent with my posting, but sometimes life seems to happen (i.e. the wreck and subsequent weeks).

I have started working on one of my websites where I talk about building your own business. You can find that at Simple Handmade Business. I have included how to start your own blogging business. I will be expanding on that in the coming months. Right now, I’ve been trying to get everything updated and running smoothly. I’m still juggling many websites, although not like I was in the beginning. In the beginning, I was also running a sewing business. That has been put aside, and I’m not promoting like I would if I were in my own home where I could have ALL of my sewing things here, tons of fabric included. The website count of those up and running are eight (8). I still have 4 more that need to be, but I am leaving that for another day.

Until then, look for my weekly Saturday posts.

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It has been some time since I wrote or things have been normal for me. We have been currently displaced and will be for some time, though I do hope by next week we will have some sense of normalcy until we can find a permanent place to call home.

I didn’t think that I’d ever crave the normal I had. I had such huge pipedreams of what I wanted- of things that were different from what I had. Now, I just want to go back to that or some version of it.

In order to find something that felt normal, I decided to wake up and write today. Writing has always been my outlet for working through things, even if those things are a struggle.

The fun in all of this is finding something we like. What is it that we want? Part of me wishes that we could buy, or that I could even help my son buy something. I’m still burdened with student loans, so there’s not much that I can do. It lessens my purchasing power. My son doesn’t have that problem. Perhaps he will be able to have what it is that he wants for him and his children.

Until we can find that, we are just searching. Searching, watching, and waiting for things to settle from the dust into a normal life.

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This week I allowed something to sidetrack my progress. Everything was going well. I made two sales, and I sent those out early, but when I decided to create some new items, it completely stalled my progress.

I had several new items that needed to be embroidered, and I woke up Tuesday thinking about my favorite No-Show Stabilizer. Considering my recent orders used up much of the cut away stabilizer I had, I knew I needed to order some stabilizer, so I went on to Amazon to place an order. It was then that I realized I had just ordered a roll in February of this year, and I had only used it once. So where is this roll of new stabilizer?

This is the perplexing mystery. I have spent the last 4 days searching the house for this stabilizer. I have not found it. I can’t remember where I put it, because to be honest, it entered into the house the same time I had my stroke. Many things are fuzzy about February. I even went through photos that were taken during that time period to try and jog my memory, but I still can’t remember anything. Even the pictures mean nothing. This one thing has derailed everything, and I am stuck, unable to move. I could still do what I need to do, but I can’t push myself to do it. I don’t know why.

I know this is just a temporary sidetrack. I know that I will soon merge back into the activities I was focused on, but right now, I am burdened with this loss of consciousness that surrounds that time period of my life. It’s like a huge blinking sign pointing out the fact that it was serious while I had been trying to downplay everything.

How do I solve this problem? First, I plan to organize things better. Second, I plan to focus my priorities on something else. Last, I plan to follow through. It’s temporary. The main goal is not. It’s the same with writing. When you think you have written yourself, or your character, into a corner, leave it. Skip ahead to something else and go back. I have left my character in a corner for some time now. I’ve gone back and fleshed out their story more to see how they would fully handle this. I needed more for their character. When I find what motivates him, I’ll know how he will solve the problem. Until then, he is in that corner. The same with me. That stabilizer is tucked into a corner somewhere. I’ll find it. Until then, I’ll keep organizing until I find where I thought was the best place for it.

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After much introspection, I decided it was time to make some changes to my business model. This pertained mostly to the ecommerce businesses that I created over the past 3 years.

June was such a busy month for me. I planned to make the grand announcement on July 27th (which coincidentally is my oldest son’s 30th birthday). My goal is to have everything in place for the change in structure. I have already changed over to an LLC. I just need now for the business to grow, and while I realize that some things will take time, I don’t have years and years to wait. I’m ready now.

I’ve envisioned it.

I’m prepared for it.

It’s time to dive in.

Just one problem: it isn’t quite sustainable at this point. The economy has taken this nasty downturn, and I don’t see it changing in the next 2 years. Inflation is running rampant due to the excess money the government dumped into a troubled economy that was struggling due to the pandemic. Companies whose manufacturing had slowed down due to lack of workers (Covid hit some companies harder than others), suddenly had to produce more product which drove up the prices. Now fuel prices are about to drive up the costs of other commodities (like grain and meat).

In the past, spending has often fluctuated depending on the economy, and when we grow closer to a presidential election year, things will generally go on an uptick. However, this is the first time that I have lived through a pandemic, so I’m not sure what to expect. My goal is to just push through with my plans and expect that it may take some time before things pick up to a point that I want it to pick up. Until then, I’m just going to keep going forward.

During the pandemic, it was all about pivoting your business to keep it going and growing. Now, it’s about change. Pivoting can only help so much. To pivot, you may offer another product. For example, those who created clothing items suddenly started selling masks during the pandemic. My change is much different. I’m moving from retail to wholesale. I’ve seen many businesses start to do both. I’ve been researching and seeking out manufacturing. Anything to create a product and process that is exclusively my own while keeping everything made in the USA.

Now to turn that change into an actual vision.

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I know. I get it. You’re probably thinking what do squirrels and this blog have in common? Well, just hear me out.

My son’s psychologist, during his appointment, diagnosed me as having ADHD. I sympathize a lot with my students who become easily distracted over the smallest of issues, and when you have those same said students in the middle of the day when meds are wearing off, you have highly distracted students. Much like taking a dog to a park and it suddenly darting off after a squirrel, only to dart off toward another squirrel once you’ve chased it down. This is what it is often like trying to go to sleep at night with my brain. It often chases down squirrels.

Last night was no exception. I had a conversation with someone about all the fabric I have that I can’t use due to it being licensed fabric, and I laughed about the fact that I could purchase the fabric and sell it as fabric, but I couldn’t sell anything made from the fabric because that’s a violation. This, of course, made my brain try to think of all the ways that I could sell that fabric.

There are a few dilemmas to this. What if I’m wrong about being able to sell as is? Where would I sell this? How would I sell and market it? Would this be a one and done, or would I want to turn this into a business?

Y’all, I have enough irons in the fire and plenty enough squirrels to chase without chasing this one down. Before I decide to take on one more thing, I really need to let the dust settle. I may need room for the fabric I can make items from and sell, but I may have to just bite the bullet and sell it on Ebay or something. Going into the fabric or wholesale business right now is not on my agenda at the moment.

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I sat down yesterday morning and worked on my To Do list for the day, but it wasn’t long before I decided I really needed to go to Hobby Lobby to see if they had what I needed.

That was my first mistake. They didn’t have it, but instead I ended up wandering around the store. Afterwards, I went home, grabbed the broken item (which was the reason I went to Hobby Lobby to begin with) and took it back to Michaels. I’m not sure why I didn’t take it with me the first time. Maybe, deep down, I really didn’t want to work. So now, with broken item in hand, I went to exchange it. Afterwards, I went to JoAnn fabrics to wander around that store, too.

When I finally made it home, I couldn’t find the needed motivation to work on anything. Instead, while I had already woke up late, I also decided to take a nap. I didn’t even have the motivation to watch TV. I just felt very unfocused. I had no attention span. I struggled to even watch a 5 minute video. Watching TV was out of the question. Sitting down to work at a computer was a no go.

I’m sure that I could have fought it, but I decided not to do so. I just let it go. It was not a good thing.

Recently, I started another business (outside of the 12), and I didn’t have the kind of response I thought I would, so I became depressed, and I think this is what led up to what happened yesterday.

Today, I have a different purpose. I did some reading last night. I went back through 3 years of journals, and I realized what I needed to do. That involves work. Unlike the year and a half that it took me to get where I was, I have insight to know what to do quickly to get results. (I’m thinking I should take those journals and write a book) Anyhow, today is about keeping my nose to the grindstone and getting the work done. I can rest on Saturday and Sunday like normal people!

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During the course of this long weekend, I actually made several huge steps towards progress. On top of launching 2 more websites, I started designing and prepping another. I should have it up and running in a few weeks.

I decided, why slow down now? I think I’ll be able to find the extra time to do some writing this week, especially since it will be a short week with less to do. My biggest issue this week will definitely be school issues, but once I’m home, I can work on my businesses and blogs.

I’m still in the process of taking down inventory for my children’s clothing business. After printing off my inventory audit, I realized I had over 600 entries I needed to enter in my spreadsheets. At least once I finish, I won’t have to do this again next year. It’ll just be a matter of inputting new items made. Not starting from scratch.

I’m also planning to start tracking my time spent working my business over the summer. I want to know exactly how much time I’m truly spending on my business. Even time spent writing. (Of course, I say that while typing this at 6:30 pm)

Lately, I haven’t been in the mood to work any of my businesses, although I have a huge list of things to be done. I think it’s because I don’t see much in the way of forward progress or any hint of success (though it is there, just not in the way that one would think). I’ve discovered that blogging can be tough. You have to push through, and I have to keep reminding myself that what I post will take 4-6 months (maybe 8) before I see the benefit. When I compare each month, I see growth, but only in small increments of possibly $2, but traffic increments are growing by over 100 visits each month. Progress. Slow progress.

I believe this is one of the reasons why I decided to charge full speed ahead. I’m bored with what I’m working on, and I need a distraction. My distraction is to work on other projects while still working on the current one. I’m at the point of 1-2 new items per week in my current fully developed sites, and I’m pushing out writing for the new sites.

Not everyone can juggle this many. I will have 10 before the end of June. I have no problem working on two while also coming up with ideas for the others. I find my best solutions that way.

What about you? What are you planning to do this summer?

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