Hello Internet!
I hope everyone had a wonderful week! I had a pretty good week. It was super busy both in my real life and here on the website and that busyness is something I’m going to talk about in just a bit. There’s a lot up in the air right now and I want to talk to all of you wonderful people about it. Before that; however, we hit a big milestone here on the website I want to talk about as well as the rest of the pieces that got published this week. Last Sunday, I published a Weekly Blog about how I am Building Towards Something Bigger which actually ties into this week’s Weekly Blog topic. On Monday, I published an odd Weekly Blog which correlated with a special holiday. There may or may not be some mistakes, but writing backwards is hard! Anyway, I hope you weren’t badly fooled. On Wednesday, I published a Poem titled “April Is In Season” which is a short and sweet poem about Spring and April and how I hope we continue to have Spring showers instead of a third or fourth wave of winter. I want less snow and more Spring-time weather. On Friday I published my FOUR HUNDREDTH piece to the website. It was a Writing Prompt piece titled Emergency Meeting of the World Council (#400). If you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend you check out its connected story, Meeting of the World Council first and then read that one. Both pieces are ones I really enjoyed writing and I think they are pretty good. Give them a read!
Now if you have been a reader for some time or you have just read the past few Weekly Blogs, you’ll know that I am busy training for a new job. I have recently been hired by the Post Office to be a mail carrier. You wouldn’t really think that being a mail man requires a lot of training, but they do. They have a tough job and they provide a wonderful service which I hope to be doing for many, many years. However more and more the training is ramping up and soon I will be working 40+ hours every week with very few days off. Not only do I have to work all of those hours, but delivering the mail all day takes a lot of physical energy and will leave me very tired. On top of that, work does not leave a lot of time to write. I honestly feel like I have very little time now and I haven’t even really started the job. I really wanted to reach the milestone of 400 pieces which we did on Friday, but now I’m kind of at a crossroads. I love writing and I love this Blog, but I just don’t know how I’m going to do both. Now, before you freak out. I don’t plan on going anywhere. I want to see 500 pieces. I want to see four years or more. But I also really need to focus on learning the job. My other fear is that quality will dip and I will miss a ton of dates to publish pieces because I won’t have enough time to write anything. I don’t want to publish garbage just to hit some arbitrary date.
So what does all of this mean? Well I’m not exactly sure. One thing I do know is that I’m taking this next week off. There will NOT be any Poem published Wednesday or Writing Prompt Piece on Friday. This upcoming week is full of on-the-job training and I know it’s going to kick my butt and leave me exhausted. I don’t want to try to put out pieces on top of this. So this week I am taking off. Now next week, I’m not sure. I am going to try and put out a normal week’s worth of stuff, but I’m using this week as a bit of a gauge just to see how busy and how exhausted I’m going to be. Going forward it is very possible that I’m going to miss uploads. If its one or two, that won’t be too bad, but if it is a constant thing, I might have to reassess writing and working full time. My guess is that if I’m going to miss uploads, it will probably be on Wednesdays. Even though Poems are my shortest pieces I publish, they do seem to take a long time because it does not come as naturally to me. Publishing two things a week, a Weekly Blog and Writing Prompt, seem more reasonable, but I’m sure most of my Weekly Blogs will be like, “Man, I worked a lot this week.” That’s really only interesting once and maybe not even then.
I really love writing and I want to keep doing it as I work, but I don’t want to publish garbage and I don’t want to spread myself too thin. I also want to hang out with friends and family, watch Critical Role on a weekly Basis, and at some time I have to get some sleep. All of that will basically soak up all of my free time. That’s the hand I’m dealt with and things can change. Maybe my hours will shrink and I’ll have more time to write (but less money to live off of) or maybe things will get so bad I’ll have to put this on hiatus. Those are possibilities. But for right now, I’m going to take the next week off. Nothing will get published. Next Sunday I will publish a Weekly Blog and in that I will tell you all about the next steps I will be taking. I just really don’t want to stop doing this, but I know I won’t have very much time to write. It’s tough when you have to work for a living. Maybe one day people will pay me to write things, but for now it’s just a hobby I have to support in the little free time I have.
So yeah. That’s where my mindset is right now. If anyone has any suggestions for what I should do or any ways to improve the website and keep it going with less time put into it, let me know. Again, we might just have to go through some turbulence and a rocky upload schedule for a little bit or maybe we’ll have to go on a hiatus as I master the job of being a Mail Carrier. A lot of things are uncertain and as soon as I know them, I will pass them onto you. No matter what happens, I will want to thank all of you wonderful people for showing me love and support on a weekly basis and helping me get this far. Only a couple of years ago, the only people who read my stuff was my Mom and a few other strangers on the internet. Now we have a community of over 380 Followers on WordPress and I have published 400 pieces that I never would have published otherwise. That’s really cool. Again I want to keep it going and I want to celebrate even more milestones with you, but I also want to start a well-paying career.
Anyway, thank you again for the love and support. I know this was a strange Weekly Blog, especially if this is your first time here. If you liked this Weekly Blog or want to show your support, you can give it a like. Feel free to comment down below as well. I’ll take any suggestions or words of support. You can also Follow me here on WordPress if you’d like. Again, this is a strange time to jump in, but I appreciate you no matter if you’ve been reading for years, months, days, or minutes. We have a wonderful community here full of talented and positive people. I just can’t reiterate enough how much all of you mean to me. See you all next week!
I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Allen_The_Writer
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Allen The Writer 