When do you blog? I was going great gangbusters when I started this blog (in the spring and early summer) but now that we're back to school and other life is happening I don't feel like I have time!
Currently I've spent a lot of time increasing my Twitter followers (and following) and trying to share my FB page with more folks. I've been checking my affiliate sites, reading other blogs, and also trying to have a home life. All that seems to have eaten into my blogging time.
Also we just had Thanksgiving, so that ate up an entire (long) weekend. Don't get me wrong, it was a delicious, beautiful, family-type weekend, but it didn't leave me much quiet time.
I know scheduling is key when trying to build up a blog. The problem I'm having is one part writers block and one part hoping to have time to me - and just to me, not blogging, gardening, cooking, laundry doing, working etc. Those moments are hard to find.
My schedule currently involves working 4 eight-hour days, with one day off for me to get stuff done. This week I have appointments on my day off, and I need to get stuff together for my daughter's Halloween party next weekend, as well as my foray into a live Rocky Horror Picture Show performance - think costumes, hair, props, the works! And I'd like to get groceries and do laundry - regular mom stuff.
So then there's evenings after work. I get home (at 5:30 or 6:30 depending on the shift) and either make, or just eat, dinner. Try to get Emma to do homework before Rose has to go to bed (at 7:00) and then get Emma to bed by 8. All that is often accomplished by 8:30 and then it's "my time." So I clean up dinner, do dishwasher stuff, start or switch laundry, and sweep the dinner mess off the floor, if I didn't get that done before bedtime starts. Some nights I also clean up toys and then, if I'm lucky, I sit down. Hubby will have the tv on but I'm only good for maybe an hour before I fall asleep on the couch.
I try, often, to blog while the tv is on. Some nights it works, some nights it really does not. Depends on what's on, or how tired I am. I'm one of those people that needs 8 hours of sleep almost every night to be functional the next day. Yes, the newborn and baby years were hell-on-earth for me. Luckily my sleeps are much less disturbed these days, so I can pull a few later nights if I have to. But when I'm tired I can't form coherent thoughts, let alone interesting blog posts!
Tonight I've been crafting this post while the girls eat dinner - I've had an upset tummy all day, so no loss to me if I'm not eating with them - and now they're watching some tv and looking through the costume bin and Halloween decorations. By the time I'm done here I figure I will have been "writing" for 45 minutes. And really, what have I written about? Mostly nothing. No deep thoughts or well-researched articles. Just fluff about how I don't have time to post anything!
So share with me your schedules, or routines. How do you blog (and promote!), as well as do affiliate stuff and keep up with other blogs - and be moms or dads, husbands or wives, or any other functioning members of society? Maybe with the cooler weather creeping in I may have less desire to be outside, or be doing anything else, frankly.
Really I'm just desperately curious to hear how fellow bloggers manage it all. I really thought I'd just be writing stuff, I did not realize so much came with blogging (if you want people to actually read your stuff!)
