(totally unrelated picture , though you probably could find a deeper meaning in sprouting seeds that are still in the pod. I just think this is a really cool thing mother nature does – a lot of trees on Curacao have seeds in pods and this how she gives them a headstart in that harsh climate)
I guess the Januaryis the time we do that, isn’t it? Making plans, listing ambitions? I usually am way too positive about what I can actually achieve. And, weird enough, especially after a year that didn’t work out the way I hoped at all.
2022 is a very good example of a year like that, but I do notice that I’ve been on this planet for over half a century now (ouch, that sounds so much older than “I’m 51”). I let myself get carried away for a little while, because that’s just fun, but then I got more practical.
Prioritizing is a skill that I had to learn over the years (don’t we all?) and I’m finally getting the hang of it. I have a big garden and a very messy house (we’ve come far from the state we bought it in, but there’s still a lot to do), I have to do the taxes and all other administrative tasks for my husband’s company, work on my books, and I have family members to talk on the phone with (for hours, literally). Also, I live on a beautiful island, in a house with the best view one can get, so I really want to take time and fully enjoy all that. Not to mention the crafting, cooking and reading I love doing so much.
Don’t worry, I am going to continue blogging here and I do hope my audience will grow a bit, but the rest of my online ambitions will have to stay on the backburner for a little while longer. I will work on it in the background when I can, but I’m not going to dive into it fully, or commit to a schedule unless I feel that I have the time, mental space and energy to do that.
Starting a blog focused on herbalism for instance. I’d love to delve much deeper into that subject than I’ve been doing here and I feel it will also hold me accountable to make more time to study herbs, keep doing research and collect my notes and knowledge into something more tangible than “I am pretty sure I read that…” But that takes time and dedication and I’m not feeling up to it yet.
Another thing on my list of things I’d like to do is experimenting with Youtube. I go back and forth between loving and hating the idea of filming bits of my life. But I already found that editing is a whole lot of work, so maybe now is not the right time to start doing that.
I did start posting on Instagram a bit more and I even created a seperate account for my plants (plantstagram is a thing – who knew? But I have to admit I kind of regret it already. I may keep posting for fun, but I won’t go full on social media not even to promote my blog. It’s never really been my thing and it would take up too much of my time. I’d rather take my chances on people finding my blog another way.
That said, I did purchase a domain name for my blog and the not-operational-yet herbal blog too. I had a .com for this blog a few years ago, through another provider, but when they quit and we had to transfer our domain names, I wasn’t blogging anymore, so I told T. to let it go. And regretted that ever since. When I started blogging here again in July, that same name was available through WordPress, but I didn’t want to commit to it too much. Sadly, the .com is gone now (why? who would use that name?), so I settled for notastation.blog. I also got rid of the WordPress adds. I may decide to monetize this blog on the long run, but with my current pageviews it won’t earn me any money and it would cost me extra to upgrade to a plan that allows advertising. Also, I would like to be able to chose the adds that appear here, instead of hoping nothing weird will show up. I’ll look into that when I feel I’m ready.
So I guess I wrote a whole long-winding post to tell you that I’m going to keep blogging the way I’ve been doing these past months? That’s a bit of a non post, isn’t it? Oh well, it did feel good to process my thoughts and try to make sense of it all, so thanks for listening.
Do you have big ambitions for the new year? And how good are you at prioritizing?