Hi All! These are my answers to the January 10 Challenge.
After twenty plus years working as a professional romance writer, the bottom was dropping out of the magazine market and I decided to retire. But I quickly found that I missed the therapeutic benefits of daily writing. AND, I was really upset/anxious about turning 60. By starting a blog, I hoped to alleviate my fears about aging.
However, after about year of being a retired Baby Boomer, I realized that I no longer had the same anxiety I’d had before. In fact, I embraced my retirement fully and felt younger than I did before. So in that respect I met my blogging goals. But, I still loved to express myself through my writing and to entertain myself and, hopefully, others along the way. Without really thinking about it, I began to expand on my subject matters–which included my pets.
Once I discovered Blog Hops, I became somewhat addicted. I went from posting regularly once a week–with virtually no photos–to posting almost every day–with pictures. It was so exciting and new. Although watching those stats increase was/is truly intoxicating, I quickly began to burn out. I simply can’t keep up with my self-imposed demands. Which is why I am anxious to read others solutions to these problem.
After consulting with my stats bar I found that my biggest draws seem to be my written posts. Therefore, I am currently trying to post more words than pictures. Quite frankly, I do love to take photos, but I’m afraid I just don’t have the genuine talent or inclination to take great photos. Truly the best ones on my blog are generally the ones my daughter takes for me.
As for posting, I’m pretty schedule oriented, I work well under a deadline…probably goes back to my romancing days where I was considered a ‘go to writer’ when an emergency story was needed.
Nowadays when I need inspiration from an entry, I go to a variety of places: magazine articles, my grandchild, my pets and my husband. He is a champion muse! A retired journalist himself, he has a knack for unleashing my brain with just a few words. When worse comes to worst and I’m just unable to come up with a thought, I either make up a list of silly things or write about my gone-but-not-forgotten Golden Retriever, Rhett.
Staying on top of things has actually become my biggest problem. There just aren’t enough hours in my day any more…and I’m supposed to be retired! I know that I need to learn to be more organized and to make each post generate more traffic. Mostly, I need to not forget that I have a ‘real’ life too. And this is one of the questions I most hope to learn from this January Challenge, how do you do it all without going crazy.
My goals for 2013 are many. But primarily, and without foregoing all the other pleasures in my world like family, pets and breathing, I would like to figure out a way to make enough money via my blog for it to pay for itself. If I could earn enough to buy a new pair of jeans, too, that’d be great!
Thanks so much to Amy Burkert at GoPetFriendly for hosting this Challenge! Speaking for myself, I found this ‘challenge’ to be very helpful and extremely focusing. Can’t wait to read what the rest of my fellow challenge-ees wrote!
