Influence - Five Minute Friday

I'm joining up at Five Minute Friday over at Heading Home. Each week she shares a prompt, and you write on that prompt for 5 minutes. This week's prompt is "influence."

WIP Wednesday

Another one of my goals this year is to spend more time on hobbies I enjoy, like cross stitching. So each Wednesday, I'm going to share my WIPs (works in progress). This is mainly just to hold myself accountable to actually get some stitching done because I don't want to be embarrassed to say I haven't made any progress from week to week.

Drop Everything and Read - January 14

One of the areas I want to FOCUS on in 2019 is reading more. Hopefully sharing what I'm reading with you all will help me to keep my focus.

Better - Five Minute Friday

I'm joining up at Five Minute Friday over at Heading Home. Each week she shares a prompt, and you write on that prompt for 5 minutes. This week's prompt is "better."

2019 Word of the Year - FOCUS

Happy New Year!

It's hard to believe that 2019 is here. In some ways, 2018 flew by, but in other ways, it was the longest year ever. Our family went through some really crazy things back in early 2018, and it truly feels like all of those things happened about 5 years ago. Anyway, suffice it to say, I'm extremely glad 2018 is over and am anxiously anticipating what 2019 holds.

Instead of resolutions, I'm doing a word for this year, like I have the past few years. My word for 2019 is 

2019 Reading Challenges

One of the things I want to do more of in 2019 is read. In addition to wanting to read more books for pleasure, I also want to stimulate my mind by reading more nonfiction as well as books in genres I don't typically read.

To help keep me focused on this goal, I'm participating in 2 reading challenges for 2019.

Who Am I and What Am I Doing Here?

It's been over half a year since I've written a post here. I've spent some of that time trying to figure out what I want to do with this blog, or even if I want to keep the blog at all. What started as a place for me to share my life/thoughts/etc., became a huge problem for me.

First, I lacked a focus. The place became a product of my attention deficit tendencies. I jumped from topic to topic - life stuff, recipes, homeschooling, spiritual thoughts, and so on. Things here became so scattered and unorganized that it became difficult for me to even focus to share my thoughts or even to know what I wanted to share my thoughts about.

Second, I got caught up in the numbers. How many people read my post? How many comments did I get? Did my post/picture get any pins on Pinterest? Can you see where this is going? While readers are an important part of the blogosphere, I got so caught up in how popular I was (or wasn't), that I didn't write just to write, which was why I started the blog in the first place. Writing a post began to feel like a chore - something that I had to do instead of something I wanted to do.

So why am I sharing this? After my blogging vacation, I want to come back and write again. I miss the creative process that happens in my brain when my fingers are tapping on my keyboard typing out a post. I am a little (a lot) eclectic in my life in general, so trying to decide if I want to have a specific theme or focus here is difficult.