Feeling Uninspired & a Linkup

Jacket:  INC // Tshirt:  My Merch // Pants:  Rebellia // Shoes:  Converse (super old)

Feeling Uninspired

I know I wore these pants last week, but I’ve been living in them.  They’ve given me a little bit of flare to my regular jeans and tshirt every day outfit.  If you didn’t know, over the summer, I lost my “dream job turned worst nightmare” (you can read all about that here).  Thankfully, I was able to take over our CBD Store, because my fiance and his brother bought an auto shop down the road where my fiance would end up working at.  He has a mechanical mind, and I’m going to be honest, he can’t sit still for more than 5 minutes, and the CBD store was not for him at all.  It’s a little more calm and zen here, whereas, he’s used to the hustle and bustle of being in a shop, and constantly fixing something.  With all of that being said, my attire at the store is very casual, and I feel as though that’s spilled over into my every day life.  No longer do I feel like dressing up all that often.  I think this not only has to do with the store, but has moreso to do with feeling uninspired.  My friend Ellen from Ask Away sent me a book to read for Christmas, and I’m just now sitting down to read it.  It’s called Influencer, and I’ll be doing a review on that, because quite frankly, it’s an easy read (if you know me, you know I hate reading and get discouraged while reading because of having a reading comprehension issue), and so far, I’ve already implemented some of the things that are covered in the book.  There is a lot of useful information in there for aspiring influencers and long time influencers.

Evolution and my blog

While reading this particular book, I’ve started thinking about the direction I want to go in with this blog because let’s be honest, the blogging industry has evolved A LOT since I brought my blog back in 2013.  There is no denying that.  Even though I don’t like change all that much, in order to grow with the industry, you have to follow the new trends.  Thankfully, I’ve been more inspired with my content on Youtube, but that’s because it’s a topic I’m passionate about.  I feel as though I finally have a platform where I can reach a larger audience.  I’ve started to incorporate more lifestyle content, because as much as I want to get the word out about the MLM (multi level marketing) industry, I don’t want it to just be about MLM.  I have more to say, and more to give to the world.  Sometimes, being anti MLM, comes with negative connotations as well (read this post about trolling comments).

Going back to my blog though.  2019 was not a good year for my blog.  I’m not saying this for people to feel bad for me and give me some kind of validation in the comments, but I’m being honest with all of you.  I feel like I’ve always been really honest with my readers, that I needed to get this out.  With the move to Florida, and everything that has happened in the past year, my blog took a back seat.  This was the first year where I started posting only once a week, and I even took a week off from blogging and social media without it being because I’m on vacation.  Reviews and sponsorships were very few and far between in 2019, and to be completely honest, that’s my own fault.  I didn’t apply myself like years prior.  2019 was the year of new opportunities and that was thanks to my blog.  I started writing for a site that is all about women in auto (and also got to experience an amazing conference/event with more women in auto read about that here, here, and here), and I have something currently in the works, but I can’t announce it just yet.  It’s all thanks to my blog that these other opportunities even came into my life.  So, 2020 is going to be the year where I give my blog more attention.  It’s thanks to this blog and all of you that I’ve been able to experience so many incredible things over the past almost 7 years (omg, eeek) and I’ve met some of my closest friends thanks to this blog.

January 2020

January 2020 was a trial run for me, and I feel like that seems to be the general consensus.  This month flew by and I didn’t even get to enjoy the new year.  There have been so many things happening in my world of blogging, youtube, and other freelance projects, along with the CBD store.  I mean, just Monday we had a completely new product delivered to the store (CBD 100mg bath bombs) and our new CBD gummies.  I’ve also encountered a lot of demonetization on Youtube as well, which has been a bummer, but I personally feel as though Youtube likes to try and silence and discourage the smaller content creators because we aren’t big enough yet to receive sponsorships, so I’m sure a lot of people just trail off and stop creating videos.

I already said it once before, that even if I wasn’t monetized I wouldn’t stop making these videos (I mean, I used to upload beauty videos for a few years with barely having 40 subscribers lol).  Of course monetization is an added bonus, but I can see how discouraging that is for people who truly rely on getting monetized, ESPECIALLY when drama channels monetize off of ruining other people’s livelihoods.

Don’t get me wrong, I spend wayyyyy more time on videos than I do on my blog, so yea it sucks, but it’s shown me that I need to work on building my audience and community.  With my youtube, I did decide that I’m not going to censor myself for the sake of Youtube anymore, only because even with abiding by their rules, I still get demonetized, so why not just be myself 100% of the time instead of 50%.  It’s more fun being yourself anyway.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck by me

I think all of what I’ve said above, has been a result of starting to read this book.  I’m going to write a full review on it (that’ll be my first true book review here on the blog!).  I do think that it has useful information, and I’m not even to page 100 yet, and already, I’ve implemented new things.  I’ve already started to feel more inspired by the day on what I want to do going forward.

This post turned out to be much longer than I expected it to, but if you have read my ramble up until here, thank you for sticking with me for all of these years, ESPECIALLY this last year.  This last year has been really uninspiring here on my blog, and I feel as though all I did all year was complained and made excuses as to why I let myself spiral out of control and let this blog take a back seat.

Seriously though, y’all do not understand how much I appreciate all of you coming here, reading what I have to say, and sticking by me in one of the worst years I’ve had with this blog.  If I could meet all of you and give you giant bear hugs, I definitely would.

Anyway, let’s move on to the weekly linkup.

xoxo Monica

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