How much blog is too much blog? How honest is too honest?

I want my blog to be a true reflection of my life and, also my writing, as I like to push that whole Meta thing. Yesterday, I tried live blogging, where I was writing, right before I posted, my thoughts that I had been organically thinking on since the night before.

*obligatory link to that blog*

Previously, because of my work schedule, and wanting to always post consistently, I have been writing and scheduling my blog the night before it comes out. When time allows, I prewrite ideas, edit and formulate them into blogs, the night before, and schedule them. I even schedule a tweet to announce to my followers that I have posted a new blog.

While this has been useful, and in fact, crucial, to launching my blog, I do wonder if I have shortchanged myself and the readers, perhaps not growing my blog to its fullest potential. My writing makes more since when informed of what is happening in my life, and even if you don’t need to know every detail of what is happening, I do like when blogs discuss personal stuff.

I also really like watching vlogs, namely “day in the life” vlogs, so why wouldn’t I want my blog to reflect that? I have considered making a vlog channel, and it has been encouraged by others for me to do so, but why should I consider that If I am not being as open as maybe I could or should be, on my blog?

Not every one of these posts gets posted to the Medium account, as some of you may know, I post creative writing and article type/lesson blogs on Medium, but I post everything on the main blog. I do this in hopes of Medium articles receiving any money, but I sincerely doubt that will happen. I write lots of cannabis blogs, and many of them make for good articles, but frequently, cannabis content gets demonetized. Being honest is more important to me anyways.

The point of this isn’t to make money, but I wouldn’t say no to it. Plus, I read on Medium, a lot, so why not post some of my stuff there in case anyone wants to read my stuff.

SO: Today’s blog topic IS: How much blog is too much blog, OR, how honest/personal should one (me) be on her blog, and for a bonus discussion, should those standards be the same or different from a hypothetical vlog channel as well.

We gettin’ personal today, y’all.

So, Bret and I have been trying to move to Washington, because the climate, culture, and laws are more in line with what we want for our lives. Mountains, oceans, liberals, environmental concerns, and legal weed. I was concerned it was to “white” for us, because neither of us like being around people of rampant, unchecked privilege, but we had reached out to a few people and found as long as we stuck to the city, we would be able to avoid any of these massive issues.

We have been saving money and searching for work, etc etc, but all the while, we have both been getting more and more over our apartment.

Our apartment is a cute little apartment, perfect for some kids in NYC.

Not great for two people literally trying to run several side hustles, create art, build our little “empire” or whatever, in our thirties.

I like having dinner parties, and we have no room for a dining room table, or even a table of snacks. Sure, we have hosted dinners, but I literally had to rearrange our entire living room each of those times.

Insane.

So, we need more space. Our dog needs a yard. Our cats miss having more windows and more space. Hell, my cat Marcie wants her own Instagram page and YouTube channel, so we probably need to get her some space.

(Cat moms will love this; other people will think I am insane)

We need more than one small bathroom.

So, Bret and I need a bigger space, which adds to the stress and urgency of wanting to move.

We are both so miserable at work. I hate what I do, and I have no job satisfaction, and Bret is doing my old job, which is probably the only job I could think of worse than mine.

So, changes came, and, by a stroke of luck, some things changed for Bret at work, and we realized we could stay in here longer, so, we decided to start searching for another place to live, which is what we are currently doing, searching for a larger place to live, so we can build our stuff more before moving.

So, as we are getting personal, lets talk about what this all means.

Both of us have many creative projects we are working on in the background, and we want people to see, hear, enjoy our art. We need money to get that out and we do not want to have any sort of corporate influence, or any influence…the world, the people around us, that should influence us. Money, people giving us money in exchange for our ideas? No, that is not okay.

We started the Poshmark store to help pay for the art, we need more space (better space) for our store. Our downstairs neighbors in our apartment building are hoarders, but worse yet, they are smokers. We used to smoke cigarettes too, but we quit, and when we DID smoke, we didn’t do it inside, we smoked outside. Our downstairs neighbors smoke, inside. This, coupled with not having an in unit washer and dryer, affects our Poshmark store. The bedroom not having AC and getting impossibly hot, even without studio lights, is another problem that affects our store. We have done quite well with these problems, we have maintained a good rating and even ambassador status, but we cannot grow our business the way we would like, in this situation.

Our entire apartment has issues I could rant about, obviously but I won’t. I won’t go into details, and I will say that this apartment has its charm, too, and was what we needed when we needed it, but we have long out grown it, and we have been forcing ourselves to stay here to save a small amount of money, when if we would invest more in our home, we could be much happier, but also making more money.

So, the choice is now clear, find a nicer place, move.

I am going to keep working on my blog, hence, trying out the whole “open and honest blogging” thing.

In this past week, you may have noticed a few writing blogs, where I posted some writing.

These are very personal to me, more so then my plans to move, or if I like my job, so it seems fair to do some open an honest blogging.

The Molly stuff is super near to my heart, and also is related to Flake City, which as you know, I love, and is all related to my main universe of writing, in a pretty big ways. I have put huge clues to my universe in these bits of writing, with even more coming, so why not be open about a few other things?

I am growing my blog to encourage more people to read my stuff, but also to get it out. I guess I have realized that traditional publishing isn’t my style, and I have reached a nice point of “I don’t care about the money, no but really I don’t” meaning that I just want to finish my writing and get it out there. I know that some of it, I want to have filmed, or released in ways I can’t keep free because of overhead costs, but if I earn money by putting out content, maybe I could? So, in the effort to keep control of my writing, and my universe, my goals and dreams for the many different mediums I want to tell my stories, I am posting what I can, and creating what I can to show you everything possible. I want to make some money by pushing out content, sure, to help me create more art.

For example: In Flake City, we have a radio station, and there are people, at least one person, in the radio station. I would love to make a podcast of the radio broadcasts.

Inside Flake City Hospital, we have Moriah, hidden in her office, barricaded in for safety. I have written much of her story in the main Flake City writing.

Downstairs in the morgue, YouTuber Georgie and the nurse, Lissa, are barricaded in Moriah’s morgue office, while zombies rage all around them. Lissa figures out how to get vlog footage out, and she and Georgie work on getting their story out. I would like this to be filmed and posted to YouTube. I have a few other YouTube ideas, but it seems more productive to pitch them when I have built the world a bit. I would rather network, make connections by people reading and enjoying my writing, and collaborate to make the art, to bring the many stories to life. I think that some people may want to bring these people to life, and those are the people I want to find.

I want to grow all my “networks” so I can find people who also like what I am building, who like the idea of telling a big story across so many mediums, and make some real art, full of integrity.

Bret and I are trying to build art in this mindset, the idea of keeping it pure, doing the extra work needed to keep the art pure and not influenced by negative energies.

So, I took today off, I am writing, spending some time “gysting” (Get Your Shit Together), and focusing positive energies on our goals.

I am trying to be more personal, but I don’t think I will be talking about some of the family news yet, for a few reasons, the least of which being I have already rambled for over 1500 words, but probably also because I am still not ready to talk about it, but lets be real, we have already gotten pretty personal, and you, my dear reader, would probably like to go read something else.

So, go read something else, and I will go continue writing something else, another post, for you. I am committing now (Ha! See, blogs do force accountability) to post this weekend, so here is hoping I do.

So: Should Blog/Vlogs be personal? Is it better to be real? Probably.

*smirk*

“Let me know in the comments what you think.”

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❤

Abbi

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