What’s Up Wednesday #4

What’s up guys? You know the drill. It’s the first Wednesday of a new month, so I’ll be doing another little update post. The original idea from this post comes from Shay over at Mix and Match Mama.

Previous Posts:

• What’s Up Wednesday
• What’s Up Wednesday #2
• What’s Up Wednesday #3

What We’re Eating This Week

Variations of food. That is a weird thing to say. But yeah, we’re moving on Saturday and trying to keep our fridge minimal, so leftovers mostly and the occasional takeout.

What I’m Reminiscing About

Quieter days at work. Things have been pretty crazy lately, and we’re waiting for it to settle down.

What  I’m Loving

All the new beauty things I recently bought. There’s nothing like buying things and then using said things. Especially when they’re so pretty! I’m still not great at using them to their full potential yet. But I like to think I’m slowly getting better at the whole makeup and hair business.

What We’ve Been Up To

Slowly packing. At the speed of sloths, snails and other slow creatures. I mentioned in my last weekend review that we haven’t yet packed most things. We’re like halfway done by this point ish. We are on a half day today though. That’s cause we have to go visit the house again for another walk through, make sure it still looks the same and all that. Also we have to visit our lawyer to finalise the loan documents. Joys.

What I’m Dreading

Nothing major, but kind of driving again. I was driving pretty much daily back before the wedding, but  then I stopped. For no real reason, other than laziness. After a long batch of not driving, I’m always a little nervous getting back behind the wheel again. Also, our car is a manual, so I’m gonna stall a lot and that annoys me. But I’ll be okay after a while, it’s just nerves.

What I’m Working On

Scheduling blog posts! I think we’re going to have no internet next weekend, possibly till late Monday, so I’m getting these posts ready to go as soon as I can. I know I could just take a break but…nah.

What I’m Excited About

Moving obviously. But also, it’s SPRING. I’ve recently made a post about it, but I am so glad to have made it through another winter. Bring on the warmth and sunshine!

What I’m Watching/Reading

We currently finished rewatching all of How I Met Your Mother. I’d never seen the last season before, and I’m still mad about it. But since then, I’ve been going around Netflix looking for random things to watch. I really liked Bo Burnham’s “Make Happy”. He’s a comedian, but he also does songs. So comedy music. I don’t really like stand up comedians, but Bo was really cool! I also remembered that he guest starred in Parks and Rec once too. Here’s a few of the songs:

Also, I’m still reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Veeeery slowly.

What I’m Listening To

A lot of pop. I always end up playing on repeat whatever Selena Gomez releases for like a whole week. I will say though, that  I have always hated random rap verses in pop songs. I always look for a version without it to listen to instead.

I also sometimes fall into a Youtube hole of songs from the early 2000s. There’s a lot of playlists there, so many songs I forgot that I love singing along to. You guys, My Brightside came out in 2004!! That was 13 years ago and that scares me.

What I’m Wearing

Still many layers as it’s still cold. But hopefully in the next What’s Up Wednesday, I’ll be wearing less layers.

What I’m Doing This Weekend

I’ve been saying this forever now it feels, but we’re FINALLY moving this weekend. So that’s all that we will be doing this weekend.

What I’m Looking Forward to Next Month

This month will mostly be preoccupied with getting settled into our new place. October has lots of promise though. We will be well into spring so it should be way warmer. We’re going up to Auckland for my sister’s wedding. We’ll be spending quite a few days in Waiheke Island. It’s also Rory’s birthday in that month!

What Else is New

Not too much.

What’s up with you guys lately?

Angela.

Advertisement

What 6 Months of Blogging Has Taught Me

Man it took ages to think of a title. I went through so many variation of 6 months titles.

So, on March 6, I hit publish on my first ever post. It was simply entitled Hi. It was very short and was my intro to the blogging world. I wanted to talk about my recent travels, but felt that an intro should be my very first post. I didn’t expect anything to happen, but the next day I got a notification that someone had liked my post. I was really happy! Then as I kept posting, a few more likes came, and then a follow. I was beyond ecstatic. I had no idea that blogging was about to become a huge part of my life.

Since then, I’ve been blogging daily. I post at least twice a day, sometimes three (when I’m feeling crazy). I’ve met so many amazing people around the world, I’ve become invested in the lives of so many of you, and through this blog, I’ve been supported and encouraged in trying lots of new things.

So without further rambling, here’s six things I’ve learned in my past six months of blogging.

It’s addictive

Seriously. Blogging is addictive. It ends up in the back of your mind almost all the time. Not always in a bad way. You think about blogging ideas, about posts you’ve read from others, about how your latest post it doing. If you’re anything like me, it becomes a passion as well as a hobby, and you can’t remember what you did in your spare time before blogging.

Good grief

It’s time consuming

Writing posts, reading posts, taking or editing pictures, this all takes a lot of time. I’ve learned to set times up for myself during the day when to do all these. Otherwise I find myself with no extra time for anything else I want to do. I write up most posts for the week during the weekend. I read a bit before work, and set aside an hour after work to read posts. Then I keep working on the unfinished posts.

You’ll meet so many friends

In the past 6 months, I’ve made so many friends around the world. As someone who only normally has a small pocket of friends, it’s nice to know that I have such a huge community of online friends. Some I now also know on Instagram, Facebook or What’s App. I feel lucky to have met so many amazing people 🙂

You’ll try new things

In terms of thinking up blog posts, blocks will come up often. Sometimes, to overcome it, it’s led me to try some different and new things. This has led me to baking new things, trying out new makeup/beauty things, sharing more selfies, and basically making me feel more confident in myself and my abilities. To the point where I wanted to invest some money in this endeavour so I could keep expanding my blogging.

You don’t need a niche

This is something I realized early on and stuck with. Some blogs have a niche and that’s cool, that works for them. For me, I want to talk about whatever I want to talk about. I talk about a whole bunch of stuff, I don’t want to be limited to a certain topic. So I’ll talk about a holiday, then random thoughts on a subject, then share a favourite tv show. This helps in keeping up with my daily schedule as well.

Don’t stress the numbers

This is something I keep learning about. Some days, you get lots of engagement, others you don’t. I used to focus on the posts I was putting out on these days, thinking what got more views, likes, comments. Some days I got lots, other days I had less. I spent too much energy trying to figure it out, trying to work out why this post did so much better that this one. So, I just kept writing what I was enjoying, because I literally couldn’t figure out this magic formula. Daily stats will just do what they want, don’t fixate on them.

So that’s all I wanted to share. I really can’t remember any other project or hobby affecting my life as much as blogging has. Both in good and maybe not-so-good ways (I am never not on WordPress). But it is such a big part of my life, and most of that is due to you guys. I’m so happy to be a part of this online community and I can’t wait to see where my blog has landed in another 6 months!

Angela.