Back at it again

Friday - We went to Woody's BBQ since we had a $5 off coupon, pretty tasty :) I also love it when a restaurant has really great fries.

Saturday - I had dinner with a friend and watched the fireworks at GlobalFest. It was really nice catching up with my friend who I've been friends with since junior high. So nice to catch up and we plan on hanging out more!

On Sunday we had double date brunch at Brokin Yolk, and then went over to our friends' house to chill and drink mango pineapple slushes. :) Then I made a post on my blog and went live with my blog site. Yup, I bought the domain after doing a ton of research for the best price, speed, and space for me right now. Lovin' it so far.

I also started to look at other jobs again. I'm at a weird place in my career life right now. I definitely want to pursue blogging... but I know that will take quite some time. Also, because I start work so early in the morning, it makes it super difficult for me to be like other bloggers, when they started out they would wake up early in the morning to work on their blog, use their lunch hour, and work after work. I can't do the mornings, I'd have to wake up at 6am since I start work at 8am. And for my lunches I like to take those as a relaxer from my work day and break up the work day. I also wouldn't lug my laptop to work each day since it's so heavy (maybe if I had a tablet and keyboard :)). After work and on weekends seems like the only time I can promote my blog and work on it, and I'd love to do more promotions more often.

But yeah, I started looking at other jobs because I do want a more flexible work schedule and I also want to break out of this routine. Right now I feel like I can't really turn to anyone to ask the things I want to ask to help me break out of these routines. I often feel and find that my managers are too busy for me, and I remember in my first year of work, I didn't get 'scolded', but because I was new, I didn't know some of the higher ups would react to certain situations as they would. They would show a side that I had not seen before, pretty much making me afraid of asking them. I'm very afraid of their rejection and when they are negative or in a bad mood. I can feel the atmosphere. :( I understand that they are busy for a reason and have their own work to do, but if they could give more authority to the employees or set time for feedback/suggestions each week, that would be ideal. So I'm looking for something that would encompass that.

I have found a position that I am going to apply to this week. I am really loving their personality and online presence.

Update on the staycations/me time though. It looks like only one person can take vacation as there is a blackout period for the next couple of months due to the high volume of things going on. It's great that it's getting busier, but that means I might feel very exhausted. I am looking forward to learning from the digital media festival and taking some time off at that time to focus on me. I wish there were metime days.

Anyway, the takeaway from this is that I either find a new job I like so that it makes my work day better and makes me happy while I pursue my blog on the side.

I will find a new job!

(I can't believe I am saying that, but affirmations are the way to go.)

I have experience and I will find a new job!

I need more staycations + take it slowly

I am back home now and today I took the day off so that I can focus on blogging and video stuff today. Also to chill before I go back to work, I've learned from last year that I should not go back to work immediately after volunteering, etc... so I always take an extra day off now to settle in.

It feels nice to be back home to my own bed, but ahh back to work tomorrow. It's going to be a busy week, which is definitely euphoric for me, and breezes the week work by! However after my vacation I realized I really need to take more metime days and staycations. I'm going to book some days off in September to attend a digital media convention that I won a badge for, so that'll be nice! I need to figure out what panels I want to go to, though. Not a lot of the content is relevant to the industries I'm interested/involved in, but hey, it'd be cool to learn something new.

I think I may take some more staycation days off too. Probably not this month as there's only two weeks left in August.. but maybe a few more in September and October.

My weekend was pretty relaxing. On Friday we went to the mall to do some shopping. Then we went downtown and grabbed some ice cream. On Saturday we went to the Farmer's Market and got a bunch of fruits, then we went to a buffet place. It was so packed but it was good and so clean. Also got some new shoes with cartoon puppies on them. :) Yesterday I went home and we went for lunch at Applebees. After having a lot of junk food on vaca, I opted for a kale salad. :) Then we went out to get groceries, and my yogurt parfait container (yay, I can be more meal prepared now). Made some bowls for dinner and then played Life is Strange and just chilled.

It was so nice to sleep in my own bed and not with any stuffyness/allergies!

So what's with the 'take it slowly' part of my post title? Well... after all the research I've been doing on blogging, working from home, etc... basically all the things I've learned so far to work towards self-employment (so opposite from my goals from three years ago!) I've realized that I really have to take things step-by-step. There's a lot of things I've learned that bloggers do for side income. And a few of them I can start now, but I have to build my income and audience to get to the other ways of income (like working with different brands, etc... I need to get more engagement to do those.)

Right now I am just going to start off with affiliate links, and join some ad networks that accept smaller bloggers, etc. Then as I work on building my engagement and audience, I can then reach out to other brands to collaborate/talk about commission. Right now I can also focus on trying to get some freelance clients too to build my portfolio and span of work. All of this is going to work towards my goal of self-employment. :)

I didn't purchase my domain/site yet. Why? Well... it's a little out of my budget right now with the host I was considering before, and there were just a lot of good reviews that seemed too good to be true, and a lot of the reviews I read were all through affiliated partners... I checked out some other hosting providers that had more competitive prices and reviews, as well as what I really wanted (free lifetime domain, and no increased renewal fees, great uptime/fast bandwidth and excellent service), and I think I've found it! I'm going to try FastComet for a year and see how it is. If it's really good, then I'll also move my portfolio site there. (or I may just go back to free hosting for my portfolio site, since I've not really trying to build traffic...)

Anyway, need to go back to editing and my blog now. Took some great photos :)

A lot of stuff happened!

I haven't been able to blog on here for a while. The reason for that is that my computer went haywire and we had to reinstall windows, transfer my files and wait hours for things to be ok. So that took a few days!

I am also in Kelowna spending time with family. We've been going out pretty much everyday, which is great as we usually just chill at home. It's nice to have a staycation. :) I should do this more often! (Blogging, please work out!!)

A recap of last week:

Wednesday - Had a check-in talk with my boss and mentioned that I want to do more work. So that's hopefully coming. I realized that when I get back we're going to be shortstaffed for a few days, so it'll be pretty busy for me next week.

Thursday - Went to Bookers with the team, made a video.

Friday - Went to Hapa Izakaya for the first time for some risotto. Yummy!

Saturday - Watched anime and then went to Kelowna.

Sunday - Went grocery shopping at Costco, Walmart and Superstore

Monday - Went to the dollar store

Tuesday - Went to get an external hard drive for my computer at Best Buy and then went to get some pies from A&W

Wednesday - Went out for wings night

Today we went to the Kangroo Creek Farm to check out the capybars, kangaroos and birds and other animals. Got the chance to hold a baby kangaroo. Soooo cute!

I've also been playing a lot of Sailor Moon Drops and catching up on YouTube videos. Haven't bought my blog domain yet but I think I may purchase it today. Started doing some paid surveys online for some extra income. I got the idea from a blogger who release their monthly income reports and details where their income came from, quite helpful! I think I'll start an Amazon FBA store too. Would be a good way of getting rid of things that I don't need, as I do have some things that are brand new!

Long Weekend + More Productivity

This week was quite productive!

Plans kind of fell through so we didn't end up going for our team dinner (weather wasn't great), so we've postponed it to this Thursday evening.

Each night after going home from work I did blog research and looked up freelance gigs. I haven't purchased a domain yet... I'm kind of holding back because eek it's a huge commitment, but at the same time I have to go through with this if I want my blog to grow to it's full potential! So ahh, I should probably make that purchase today.

I know I've been productive with blog stuff, but as for everything else... not really. I took it easier last week.

So it's the long weekend right now and here's what we did:

Friday - Ate dinner with my family and played with Tofu. We then just chilled as per usual and I did a bit of editing at home.
Saturday - Went to Canmore and ate at The Iron Goat with Dan's parents. Busy place, expensive, but great food! :)
Sunday - Went back home and went to Ikea for dinner/bought a carafe and washi tape (we were looking for parfait jars and patio furniture but no avail), and then went to Alforno for some drinks and had a tiramisu cake cup. Watch some anime.
Monday - Chatted with a friend while the guys were playing frisbee, got covered in a bunch of gnats and had to fight them off for a bit. Went grocery shopping, paid the bills and had dinner with my family.

Back to work tomorrow... and I'm hoping for a busier work week this week. I prepped everything I needed to for my work week except for meal prep, but I might just take some spring rolls or leftover quinoa salad. I have a little meetup with my supervisor on Wednesday to talk about any questions I have since our last meeting. I know lately my work load has been so slow and light, but it looks like everyone else experiences the same. I'd love to ask about the potential to take either part-time shirts or to work from home... but I don't know if that's a possibility. I really want to succeed with blogging and freelancing and so I don't want to show any weird impressions at work.

I guess I will look up ways other people might have tried to bring up part-time or work from home opportunities. May as well try!

I am trying to queue up a bunch of content to keep myself busy with my blog. :) All of this research feels like I am gong back to school again because I am learning so much! I can't wait to apply all the things  I have come across so far. Oh and I also got accepted for some ad networks, so I'm hoping to start with these for a bit!