Happy New/Quarter Year 2023: Better Late than Never!

Welp! Here I am on Easter Sunday with a Happy New Year post! 😣2022 was the 1st year I was ever on time with a "Year in Review / New Year" post since creating this blog. Alas, it was too good to be true. For 2023, I didn't even make it in time for Valentine's Day. Oof! A quarter of the year may already be behind me, but I still want to greet the remainder of 2023 with a lil' introduction before I jump back in, here.

WHY SO LATE?

The 365 days that were 2022 were part amazing, parting interesting, part challenging and part pure HELL! My words for that year were Perseverance and Discipline and I needed every ounce of those virtues to carry me through. Without getting into the nitty gritty and gory details, let's just say it was a rollercoaster year. There were as many highs as there were lows, with most of the highs coming through during the final quarter of year, which is the reason I had almost no time to sit and pontificate on the closing of the year or my hopes and wishes for the subsequent one. In short, the ending of 2022 and the start of 2023 was AMAZING and hectic AF!

It was around September or October when I found my groove on YouTube posting videos, which actually started getting views. If you know how YouTube works, you know once the beast shows you favor, it requires you feed it consistently. The algorithm was showing me mad love and my goal was to serve it a smorgasbord of content to keep the love going. That meant I spent hours in stores filming content and hours editing pictures and footage for videos, shorts, reels, etc. I went from 8 subscribers in September to meeting my year-end goal of 100 subscribers by the first week of 2023. To date, I'm up to 376 subscribers and I've met my 4,000 hours of watch time for monetization. I've had my first subscriber giveaway and rewarded myself with a Canon G7X Mark II camera to increase the quality of my videos. Getting my subscriber count up to meet this year's goal of 1,000 subscribers has been my focus, but - recently - I've been short on time and energy to 1) keep up with feeding the beast as often as I need to and 2) I've spent a considerable amount of time planning and shopping for Spring and getting neglected home chores in order. In addition to that, I have a 9-5 and there's been a lot happening on that end of my world, competing for mental space and energy. Just last week, jury duty was thrown into the equation to top everything off. With things finally settling in and settling down somewhat, I can FINALLY have a quiet moment to just write.

WHAT'S NEXT?

Right now, I'm on a bit of staycation, so I can get a handle on everything. All the planning and shopping is done and I'm oh, so ready to get my life and a schedule together to consistently put out content again, including blog posts. Spring cleaning in just about done, but I'm at a point of seriously considering outsourcing some of the chores and tasks in my life, so I can spend more time focused on getting and putting out content consistently. It's the only way for me to grow my subscribers and meet this year's goal. Which brings me to my word for 2023. GROWTH! That word has been a self-fulfilling prophecy ever since I chose it. Work-wise, channel-wise, personal-growth-wise, etc. And it's taken me this long to settle into all of it and plan for the growth to come.

To possibly complicate things, I'm considering moving, another action of growth. I suspect that's going to be a chunk of time where I go missing, again, so the goal is to take advantage of the time I have, now, to get back on track. If I coordinate it right, there may even be an opportunity to turn the move into content to keep things going, but that's on the back burner, for now. At this moment, it's all about getting back into the swing of things and getting my next 300 subscribers before the end of Summer. In my effort to move forward, I wanted to fill the gap in my blog with this post - an explanation on where I've been and set up what's to follow. The posts to follow this one is already at my fingertips. Spring has sprung and I'm springing back into action! Happy Quarter Year 2023! 🎇😊