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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As for my writing routines, I decided to focus on those blogs that generate the most traffic and ad revenue. Once I grow those up to where I want them, I should be able to start to hire a team to assist. At this point, I’m not even close. Think of my traffic currently in the lower double digits. We’re talking another year or more before I reach that stage of growth. If then.

All of these changes means that I can now choose a day to focus just on writing, a day to focus on scheduling social media, and the rest will be for sewing or creating. I don’t have to worry about what I can and can’t do. I don’t have to worry about if I have time. I don’t have to pick and choose. It’s a lot to think about when you are trying to deal with 10 websites. It’s less when it is 8. Now, it’s better with 6.

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This week I decided it was time to change my routine. I gave every day (including weekends) a designated work assignment. I would alternate between writing and sewing. On days where it was a writing day, if writing ended or I was unable to write for eight hours, I could stop and do a sewing related activity. That seemed like a winner, right? I would still be working on a business activity either way.

The biggest problem is not the day designation. The problem is I enjoy sewing. I’ll find any excuse to go sew. At least on days where my depression doesn’t seep in and cause me to be listless while my anxiety re-examines every awkward incident and event in my life.

So today is a writing day. If I can manage to find my thumbdrive (I don’t know why it isn’t where it is supposed to be) I may actually have time to work on my novel. That’s another reason why I needed writing days. I have much to write and finish this summer. My goal is to have my book finished by the end of July. I’m certain I can do it as long as I can stay focused.

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I’ve been extremely frustrated lately with the fact that when I sit down with every intention to write in the evenings, I can never find that spark of inspiration. What’s the deal? All day at work, I mull over ideas in my head and I’m certain that as soon as I’m home I will put pen to paper or fingers to the keyboard, but what follows is anything but productivity.

This has been a weekly occurrence, and I’m frustrated about the writer’s block that seems to happen at the end of my normal teaching work day. [If you are unfamiliar with what I do for my 9-5, you can visit my blog: Teaching ELA in the Middle. I sometimes chronicle my life as a middle school teacher there.] Why must I have writer’s block at the end of the day?

Then, something miraculous happened. I realized that my most productive writing times are in the morning after I first wake up and late at night (closer to midnight). What? How can this be?

My ideal writing time is not lining up with my daily Monday through Thursday schedule. Now I am at a loss for how to work this new information to my benefit. Do I get up extremely early during the week, or do I stay up extremely late and risk not being at my best for teaching?

I don’t mind this kind of schedule on a Friday night or Saturday, but I have no choice while school is currently in session to comply with my creative needs.

Ugh! I feel like my students right now: Ms. Thurrrrrstonnnnnn, this is tooooooo harrrrrrrd! And yes, it sounds just as whiney as it is written and with eyes rolling, pencils slapping desks, and frustrated children sliding down in seats.

How do you overcome writer’s block when you have to write?

I’m certain that in some alternate perfect paradise where I no longer teach, but I have freedom to write whenever the mood strikes, or I can write for as long or as late as needed, I wouldn’t have such severe writer’s block. Right now? It is horrible! Even with the multitude of beautiful journals, notebooks, smooth writing utensils, and gorgeous planners, I can’t manage to focus. Even my idea document is not benefitting me lately.

I need something to change.

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This morning when I sat down with my cup of coffee in hand, I had every intention of tapping out several posts across at least 3 blogs. Instead it is almost midnight, and here I am writing my 2nd article of the day while sipping my night time cup of tea. I suppose that is production, just not the type of productivity I was searching for when I woke up this morning.

I started my morning like I do all weekend mornings: planning for the day ahead. I made out my list of things that I needed to accomplish today, and I even numbered them in order of importance. Since I did not finish those labeled in priority at 4 and above, those become my number one priorities in the morning. In fact, I have already cut out the fabric and made a plan for attaching the fabric to my jeans to extend the length. Sad to say that I have been trying to lengthen these jeans for 3 months. They are the only pair that I own that actually fit me in the waist since losing weight. The only thing that didn’t fit were the length. They apparently shrunk once washed and dried.

My least favorite chore- laundry- is currently finishing its round in the dryer. I still have about 2 more loads tomorrow, and of course folding, but I will be finished for another week.

The problem: Writing.

I have so much writing to catch up, yet I can never find the time. I have sat down at the laptop multiple times today, but even going over all of my lists of ideas, nothing seemed to jump out at me with inspiration wanting to be placed on the page. Maybe it is stagnant thinking? Maybe it is lack of inspiration? Maybe I can only churn out writing after I first wake up? If the latter, that makes so much sense. I do feel more inspired to write first thing in the morning. By the middle of the day and into the afternoon, I start to become mentally fatigued. I also haven’t read in the genres I want to write about lately. Don’t get me wrong. I love my topics and niches, but I haven’t come across any news nuggets.

They say that in order to be a more proficient, and daresay better, writer one must be reading. Always reading. There were times when I spent much of my lunch breaks scrolling through the news and reading interesting articles, or sending them to myself so that I could read them at a later time; however, I haven’t read much. The few articles I have clicked on have all been about the government, and I don’t write about the government. Writing, money, food, and business are my topics of preference.

So how will I manage to get caught up on all the writing that needs to be completed?

I guess I will just have to find the time to read at night and write in the morning. I set some very lofty writing goals for myself (3 articles for 3 blogs each day). I don’t think I’m going to reach that point. I had big intentions. I just don’t see me making it.

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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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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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Last week I shared with you that I had decided to change how I worked my business by implementing a new organization system. Currently, I am juggling 11 websites/businesses/blogs. That seems rather overwhelming, but 4 of those are connected and are E-commerce websites. The only difference among them is that they are separated due to focus (children’s clothing, adult clothing, home goods, and party goods). I have had one of those businesses since 2016, two since 2019, and the other since last year. The remaining are blogs.

I started by separating these into days. E-commerce was only one day, while I could combine several blogs into a day. Example: Monday (3 blogs), Tuesday (E-com), Wednesday (3 blogs), Thursday (E-com), Friday (E-com), Saturday (Blog), and Sunday (E-com). Most of the blogs just require some maintenance and writing blog posts or creating social media posts. The E-commerce sites tend to require creating products and fulfilling orders. Because I work a full time job, I didn’t want to spend more than a few hours on my websites, plus what I did work on needed to be those things that brought in money. Important tasks = money generation.

What does money generation look like in a blog? Content. New blog posts. It can take up to 8 months before a blog post can see the maximum amount of traffic it will receive. When utilizing ads, page views (traffic) can mean money. Depending on the keyword or ad placement, it can mean anywhere from $0.15/1000 views to $15/1000 views. By utilizing this new system, I’ve been able to be more consistent in creating my blog posts so that I constantly have posts being published.

I tend to track my rank using Alexa Traffic Rank, and prior to my new system, my ranking had started to decline rather than moving up. This is a really big deal since I had managed to bring most of my sites up from obscurity in the 2 million range to under 150,000 in the last 5 months through consistent content posting.

You don’t necessarily have to utilize my organization system, but you do need to find something that works for you. I didn’t manage to follow my system to the letter, but I did manage to do something productive each day. For example, yesterday I didn’t create an upload of a product, but I did package some items for pictures later. My mind would not allow me to focus, and as far as typing, using my right hand since my recent stroke has been difficult some days. I tend to postpone things that require fine motor skills for when I am able. Is that a bad thing? Missing a day? Not necessarily. It was an E-commerce day. I can catch those up on a day when writing a blog post comes easily. I can upload one or two products or photograph a product, etc.

Overall, I’m liking my new system. We will see how the remainder of the month goes. I have tweaked a few things weekly, but I think I have it much the way that I want it right now. I just need to add in creating video content on Saturday and Sundays, but I’m waiting on more of my recovery before getting there.

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In anything, whether it is writing a book or blogging, the key to success is consistency. You must have a plan to put in the work on a daily basis if you are going to see any kind of success. Skipping a day may be okay, but skipping several can completely derail your accomplishments. If you are writing a book, missing multiple writing sessions could mean missing important deadlines. With blogging, missing writing sessions allows the competition to take away your spot.

Recently, I have moved and had a serious health issue that placed me in the hospital. Moving shifted me out of my writing groove. I spent my Saturdays pre-move writing and having posts and articles scheduled. Since the move, I have barely had time to sit down and finish one article or post, much less have enough to schedule out two weeks worth. The result: Google ranking has declined and page views are down 83%. I’ve seen this with all of my websites. It isn’t a good thing.

My goal for February is to be more consistent with my schedule. I decided to try a new system for managing my time and divided my tasks up so that I didn’t feel overwhelmed when it came time to focus on a certain website, task, or project. This will be my first week at attempting to stick to the schedule for a week. Prior to this, it was difficult to determine what important tasks I needed to work on, and at times, I would find myself with task overload. This did not fit well with my brain. Too much means I feel overwhelmed and the brain shuts down completely. Now I just delegate those too many tasks into categories and complete the important things first, and then move to the next, etc. I’ll definitely have to share how I set up my Happy Planner to keep track of all of this, but that will be a post for next week.

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I set out to create a work schedule for myself, and I planned to use it; however, working in the middle of chaos is not easy.

Last Sunday, I worked on cleaning and clearing out much of the boxes from our move. I also thought about how my content calendar was not very effective for me because of the different types of websites that I run (some blogs and some ecommerce).

To solve my work ethic problem, I decided to dedicate days of the week to certain blogs and activities. I really wanted to be able to dedicate some time in the evenings when I come home from work to work on my businesses/blogs. Not working on my blogs in the last two weeks, I noticed a decline in my rankings, and I am not happy about that. I need to be growing!

I made my weekly work calendar, and I copied it into my happy planner (if it works, I’ll probably create permanent stickers for it). The whole week passed, and I didn’t do anything. Why?

My workspace. Everything that is anything has been placed here. Things that have a permanent place somewhere else is here. Trash? Here. Things that go to the storage building? Here. It is all here. I can’t work with everything placed… here.

I blame it on the Flat Surface Syndrome. You know? Flat surfaces collect everything and anything, and unfortunately, this flat surface is next to the door. It’s a double whammy.

Today I plan to clear the clutter and actually complete several projects. I have several people who have requested car decals. Some I just need to cut. Others I have to design and then cut. *sigh* I’ll be glad when I get back to normal. I miss normal.

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