Blog News

Hello Friends!
It’s that time of year where I need to start considering what I want to bring into the new year, my goals and plans, and how to make things work better going into 2024. Since some of those plans involve the blog, I figure I might as well share some of what I am thinking with you guys.

So, to start, I have decided to take December off. I ended up taking January off last holiday season after getting supremely overwhelmed trying to keep all the plates spinning, so this year I have decided to be somewhat proactive and just understand that the holidays are crazy and I won’t be able to pull off keeping updates rolling. I’m honestly struggling already to keep things going here on the blog without the added holiday stuff, so instead of making it worse, I am just going to make it easy.

Speaking of things being just left of out of control, we are going to go into 2024 a little differently here. I’ll be slowing way down on posting here for a while. I’ve really debated on how to handle this, because I love this blog, but I’ve not been happy with the quality of posts or my ability to devote time to it for a while. Frankly, I’m a little burnt out on it, which I hate more than I can express. I have such plans for it, but this year was just ridiculous. So much has changed in the recent months, most of which I haven’t even been able to share with you, that the blog just needs to take a less prominent role right now. 

At first I really thought about taking a year off completely, because quite frankly, the farm and I need a bit of a rebuild and regroup season, and I don’t know truly how I feel about trying to capture that online, but that didn’t feel quite right. Maybe it’s sunk cost fallacy, maybe it’s pure stubbornness, but I don’t think this project is done yet. So, I needed to find a compromise.
So, currently, the plan is to post a fun farm round up every two weeks ish, and a video diary type thing every two months. That’s the base standard, the goal for now. We may adjust as things change and we sit with it for a while, but that felt like a fast enough cadence that I won’t forget the blog, or lose track of things, but long enough that it won’t be taking up a bunch of time each week.
Now, there’s a huge part of my heart that still wants to post more often, so I am sorta assuming that as the seasons roll on I will probably be using the “photo”, “quote”, and “status” type posts a lot more for “in between-ies” but I don’t want to overpromise and under-deliver. So, for now, I am just going to plan for every two weeks, and the occasional video diary.

But I can hear you saying “Amanda, what are you going to do to solve the actual problem of too many spinning plates?”. Glad you asked! I’ve already done one big thing. I started leaving work at work a lot more, and being unapologetically unavailable during my off hours (not completely, when something pressing is going on I don’t leave everyone hanging, obviously, I’m just more selectively available), and while it’s only been about a month, it’s been really nice. I also took the opportunity to change my hours a little, it’s harder because I work a little later in the afternoons now, but I get a couple extra hours of sleep, which has been life changing. I’m not eighteen and I cannot function on four hours of sleep anymore, and I am way more useful and pleasant with the extra sleep. I’ve also put a lot of personal projects for other people in “maintenance mode”, they are either not active or chugging along passively, where I don’t have to spend so much time on them. Learning to say “no”, and “not right now”. So don’t worry, I am fixing it.

But, that’s where we are at, I know it’s not the post you were hoping for, but I know you all are amazing and will understand that the blog has to enter “low power” mode for a little while. And if 2024 goes the way I hope, when we reevaluate for 2025, we will be able to add back in the fun things, have a way more stable grasp on the farm, and on our to-do list!

Until we chat again my friends!