Sunday Night

(Editing note. I just discovered this blog never published, and I am irritated. It is most likely my own error, as you will discover, I was very tired. Anyways, I am very annoyed but I hope you enjoy this blog that should have went up last week. )

Daily Blog #61 is scheduled, and when you read this blog, it will be published, so if I am doing my job, I will have linked it. ( But yet, struggle to post this blog. Ugh.)

Should be fun to find out.

Anyways, as I said in that blog, I need to get a bit done before bed, but I do find I have better luck updating the blog when I start the next Daily Blog file, so I wanted to start this. Here it is.

Started.

I have been giving more and more thought to branding, which has led to me really look at my own “niche”.

I know nearly every growth, content, and marketing person out there recommends “finding a niche” or to “niche down”. Basically, find the thing you will do, and dedicate all your time to it.

But my thing is all sorts of things. I am a writer, but I am also incredibly passionate about cannabis, about skin care, about social issues…I am passionate about things that end up being featured in my art, because of my passion. I am not interested in niching down to only discussing “the writer’s process” or whatever, when I hardly every “talk” about the process… I just kind of live this thing that I guess one could call my process.

I am not a beauty blogger but I use products enough to make doing reviews logical. I read about skin care often, do research, and am frequently consuming content about skin care, so “beauty blog” type blogs with product reviews, how to _ , or just skin discussions, are something I am likely to do, despite that not being my niche.

I LOVE cannabis, I have written about it before, I bake with it, I smoke it, I care about the culture, cannabis content is a thing in my life for sure, in fact, much of this blog’s original intent was to help be make a living writing about and contributing to cannabis culture. I have cannabis in my writing, with characters that smoke or deal weed, I have written about cannabis, and I lean heavily on my wealth of knowledge and experience with cannabis to do so.

When legal for me to do so, I will be growing it myself, and I will be writing about that journey as well. I have grown in the past, and I wish I had taken more pictures and blogged about it, because that kind of content can really build the community.

But I am not only going to focus on the niche that is cannabis culture.

I love my fantasy writing, but it isn’t sustainable to only post my fantasy writing, or my “universe” writing. Another reason the blog exists, is to allow me to write and publish without it always being my magical universe of writing.

I enjoy daily vlog style blogs, like the ones I do here, with my Daily Blogs, so obviously, I will continue to do those. All in all, one may call me a lifestyle blogger, or a daily blogger, but then when my article style blogs show up, both of those titles seem silly.

I don’t know what my niche is, other than perhaps “other”, or maybe Lifestyle, if Lifestyle bloggers or Daily bloggers do article type blogs, as well as other kinds of content, sure.

But I also have some new things I am working on for this blog, some new features I want to add, so I wonder if that title will actually apply.

Oh well, this is all to say, these are the reasons why I won’t be niching down.

Now, I need to get ready for bed, but I also want to do some more writing and hang out with Bret so, I definitely need to wrap this up for the evening. I will update more tomorrow, and tomorrow’s blog, as you know, is already scheduled, and when you read this, it is already up.

Monday Afternoon

Greetings and Happy Monday!

Today has been a pretty good day, despite the best efforts of zombies everywhere, I have been kicking ass and not letting them bother me.

I woke up in a tired but good mood and I have been keeping that energy all day.

That being said, there are some who haven’t been having the best day, so I have been trying to cheerlead for them, too.

Housing, healthcare, food and water, are all things I personally believe every human life is entitled to have, and a Good Monday, every week, is also on that list.

In Latin, Mon means to warn, or monitor, so some try to claim this is a warning that Mondays are rough.

I think Monday is a warning that other days may try to come for you, (Looking at you, Thursday), so kick ass today to prepare for tomorrow.

More romantically, of course, is the french translation, Mon meaning My.

Monday=My day. This sentiment flies around the optimistic side of social media nearly every Monday someone who took french feels inspired, so it may not be a new thing for you to know. If it is, great.

Remember, today is YOUR DAY.

Really, all of them are. So don’t let some zombie take it from you.

The internet has lost their minds, speaking of, in regards to Civil War.

Don’t worry, I will be refraiing, as much as is possible, to not get political.

The internet is discussing a Civil War, it seems that the right has said “if you try to impeach we have the guns and we will be a massive army” and the left has said “Bitches do you think we don’t have fucking guns, lets dance.”

And everyone is tossing around Civil War hashtags.

Now, I will NOT be weighing in on my personal thoughts on this…If you know me at all, you know my thoughts, however…It did remind me that I still have not written up a blog about the Shiloh National Park trip that we took with my dad when we went to see my family for my Grandfather’s memorial service.

So, I think my goal will be to type that up, but, it won’t exactly be an easy blog I can type up while on hold at work.

It is now nearly quitting time at work. I got busy mid-sentence, and then helped out down below in the store, because they have so much to unpack from the trade show, but now it is the end of the day and I have no small amount of stuff to get done this evening, including a workout, and a metric ton of writing. I am in the middle of several projects and for once the well from which my creative inspiration comes from is running full, bursting with inspiration to write this blog, and tons of others, as well as Flake City, and a few other Universe based stories. It is a good time to be me, if you want to write all the time and never have to wonder exactly what to write.

So, I am going to log off and get home, so I can get this stuff done!

Huzzuh!

Monday night

Alright, it’s workout time!

Came home, made us dinner, and now I’m working out while we play various vlogs on the TV.

I’m glad to be home, wish I was here more and that I had more time to do things this evening. As I’ve mentioned, I have a bunch of writing to do, including blogs to finish, ideas to write and finish, and my creative writing: so, I’m going to wrap this up, knock my workout out as fast as I can, and get to work on the rest of my evening. It’s already 9:00 PM and I want to log a proper work out.

Also, my cat has joined me for my work out, so, I am gonna enjoy this and I’ll see if I can update before bed when I edit and schedule this blog.

—

It’s after one in the morning and I am still awake and blogging.

The internet went crazy today with talk of starting a second civil war and I say to myself, Self, I think it’s time to do a travel blog about your time at Shiloh National Park when Bret and myself went on a driving tour of the park with my dad.

It was a lengthy blog in which I added a ton of photos, and frankly could have probably been up for hours more, formatting and editing, but I wanted to get it up for tomorrow and the words I wrote were the most important parts.

I am trying a few new styles and things of the sort this week, (some I’m blogging so keep an eye out) but I must say that staying up this late was not my intention.

Still, I’m here anyways so, as my Grandma Grasso would say, “whaddya gonna do?”

I am also up late because I actually logged a work out. I biked 16 miles, which is great, and my cat also joined me. Marcie decided she wanted to keep me company so I have no idea what my heart rate was or even how far I had gone until she nearly fell off and I caught her and then I finally saw I had biked 13 miles.

I’m glad I did the workout, and bladder still that I did all that writing.

I’m in a real writers sprint- I don’t know if it’s that October is nearly here or NaNoWriMo is coming in November and I’m just excited about that, but I have a million things to write and a billion words pouring out.

But now it’s late, and I really need to go to bed. Typing on my phone until the last minute after staring at my screen for hours before and also all day at work is probably not the healthiest so I am logging off now with more to come tomorrow and hopefully a bit more creative writing.

Tuesday Afternoon

Madness. It has been madness. I don’t want to go into the work drama, but just rest assured, it has made for a very interesting Tuesday.

So, back to our blog, shall we?

I have a ton of writing to do, and thankfully this blog is quite long enough content and word wise to be it’s own, so I don’t have as much to write on this particular Daily Blogs, but as I have mentioned previously, I am doing a few different blogs this week and next, so I have those to finish off, as well as no small amount of Flake City writing…Although this section of Flake City only has about 30,000 more words left before I call this section/season of Flake City completed, so really it isn’t as much as it could be.

The second segment, however, is another 120,000 words.

Plus Amy, Kiblah and Kent.

Adare, Luka, and Jayson, who I don’t believe any of you have met yet.

Molly on the island, and the counter part to Molly, her digital self, Molli, in the video game.

Roxy, and her many travels.

Gordo, and all of his fake deaths, his part in Flake City, and why he is on the island.

Sara, who you may recall from a previous short story, is actually involved in Flake City as well.

Plus the entire cast of characters from the “blood” series, which is my original take on my universe, before I grew as a writer and really was able to fully see how big, yet small and interconnected, my universe truly is.

This, coupled with the blogs and the upcoming NaNoWrimo next month, with it’s own project, has me very busy with writing, and work is very busy with work like stuff. I have plenty of work to do at home, including keeping a clean house, cooking, working out, the Poshmark store, so this is all getting to be a bit much. I told Bret he would have to help out more around the house, but I also think I will be losing out on sleep, if i plan on writing as much as i am writing.

Hell, last night I realized how long some blogs can take, and still require work. My Shiloh National Park travel blog took a ton of energy, and still had plenty of things needed to it. This morning, while i sipped my tea, I added the captions for my pictures and caught half a dozen editing errors.

I can’t have errors in my writing, so I need to make sure I don’t short my blog the editing time it needs, more so for those longer blogs that aren’t as much “daily blogger” style as my more article type blogs.

Quality content is important, so I will be having to add more time to my edits and photo taking/loading/formatting.

I love this blog, so all of this is a labor of love, so please don’t mistake this as complaining. Really, I hope this instead serves as a useful guide for any other writers out there who are also bloggers. I don’t mean writers who blog, or have a blog, but writers who are ALSO bloggers, recording everything they can and searching for the hidden lessons to share with others, is much different from someone who has a blog. I want to show writers that we can ALSO be bloggers, and we can in fact dedicate tons of time to our craft, and we don’t even need to have one niche to do so.

We are writers, we fit entire universes into our heads and BIRTH THEM into the world. We can do anything.

So, for any writers out there, YES it is a ton of extra work, but it is also worth it.

But, worth it or not, I have blogged a bunch for this blog and balance is key, so I think I will wrap this one up while I am on hold with this client, and try to finish my work day…I have two more blogs to work on plus Flake City which I refuse to not work on tonight to work on this evening, so I need work handled ASAP and work is crazy hard and busy so, this is me, signing off of this blog for now. I may or may not add another “conclusion” paragraph, or I may end up editing and scheduling this in 12 hours when I should have been asleep for two already, but I ended up writing instead…I will let you know which it ends up being, below.

Oh, and we have to grocery shop tonight. It’s gonna be fun, seeing me try to do all this.

Tuesday Night

Well, I ended up staying at work until much later than intended, later than even my boss. Last one out the door, kind of stuff. Then, we went home to smoke, because holy crap what a damn day, and make a grocery list we didn’t adhere to. Thankfully, this last part is really cool to me, because we ended up getting way healthier foods than if we had stuck to our list.

But, we did end up getting home late, and then we had to eat dinner. I also had to take a shower, which takes a little while with my long hair. Not as long as most people I know, but still. Detangling and brushing takes a long while and drying it takes even longer, sometimes a full day or two, as it is fairly thick.

So, it’s now 11:30, and Bret is kindly doing some of the dishes so I can get some writing done on this blog. I wanted to just wrap this up, and I figured, hey, how about I go ahead and do a proper blog conclusion.

It has been crazy week already, and it is literally only Tuesday.

My life is now a meme, I guess. But millennials love memes, right? I should check my blog stats, see if that is reflected.

The zombies, as it were, are everywhere.

And they are bad.

I am trying to stay optimistic. Which is why I have put a face mask on, a nice sheet mask I bought from Ipsy on one of their deals. I may review it, may not depends on how I feel and a poll I have going on Instagram. If you have the ole Instagram, let me know, I would love to connect.

Tomorrow poses to be just as difficult, but, I want to be a team player and just help everyone get through this tricky time. Tensions are high, stress is high, workload is high. It is the start of the month, so as an accountant, I will be plenty busy, but, I tend to budget my time well enough to allow for some help, so I am going to work hard and getting some stuff done tomorrow, so the collective team of coworkers will be better off.

I need to make good use of my weekend though, because the writing is adding up, and I am now behind from today, so, I am thinking that I will have to try and make that up tomorrow, and work even harder this weekend to get the rest of it done.

I am to the point where I need to get these things out of my head and written down, as now it is affecting my rest. I don’t know if any writers out there have that issue, if you do, please tell me below, or on any of my social media pages (@abbigrasso). I would love to connect with fellow writers who understand the predicament of “I have to get the writing done” and how it affects you if you can’t get it out, how it hurts your brain and makes your bones ache.

I sure as hell hope that isn’t just me.

Anyways, it is nearly midnight now, because of the time I took to put this face mask on, and did my first pass of edits, so I think I will go ahead and load this to the blog, and put in some pictures.

I hope your Wednesday is fantastic, and that you are able to pursue whatever it is that makes you need to do it.

AKA: Are you working on your art?

Don’t let the zombies keep you from your art.

❤️

Abbi

PS- Obviously, i did not do much editing to this blog, as I was hella mad at myself and still have today’s blog to post too, but, I will mark this one for when I go through and do a big edit on all my past blogs. I will probably talk about the prep for that process of revamping/updating my blog, in some upcoming blogs.