A few months ago, I reviewed everything I was doing and decided to cut back on non-income-producing activities. All my writing quickly became about the SEO course I’m working on. It’s a huge course, and in some ways I wish I’d started with converting our WordPress guide into a course instead, but it’s going to be great when it’s finished.

The downside is that I haven’t really been blogging anywhere at all, and I miss it. So here’s a quick random post about nothing in particular just to get it out of my system.

Reading

Yesterday I completed my GoodReads Reading Challenge for the year. Scribd has been a huge part of that, because now I listen to books when my eyes are too sore to read, and I also read a lot of things I wouldn’t otherwise. I struggled to read 50 books a year when I was employed, so this is a huge jump up for me.

Of these, nearly half were non-fiction books; my goal was to increase how many of those I read, so I’m definitely happy I’m doing that. I don’t really write reviews, but I may do a list of my favourites at the end of the year.

Being ill

If you follow me on Twitter, you know we’ve had problems with our cats for months. And the problems just keep on coming. It’s actually exhausting to manage everything when we have so much to do for the business.

And then this week I’ve been randomly ill too, which is really unusual for me. I sprained my foot and couldn’t walk or leave the house for days, and then I had some kind of weird bug with a temperature which knocked me out as well. We don’t get any help from anyone, and we work as a pretty equal team, so one person being out of action means the other person has a hell of a lot on their plate. But we managed, somehow! Thankfully I’m feeling a lot better now, so it’s just been one more blip in the road.

The business

We’re turning two next month, and honestly I look back at our journey so far and I’m still in awe that we created this and grew this and we’ve been able to help people and plant trees and all kinds of fun stuff. People hating me and trying to screw me over with no justification whatsoever is something I’m very used to, because apparently being 5’2″ and honest is something that some people seem to see as a threat for some reason. I think to Joe it’s a lot more of a shock, because he hasn’t gone through a lot of the same stuff I have, and it’s genuinely shocking to see how some people behave when your own baseline is “be a good person.” It’s never customers, it’s never affiliates, it’s never people in general, it’s always a very specific type of guy who thinks we’re just sitting here all day on a pile of money with people saying nice things to us.

Put it this way, people pay us £10 a month for the same support work developers charge £30/hour+ for, and we work 18 hours a day, every single day. We do it because we love it. We do it because otherwise a lot of people wouldn’t get where they need to be. I’m a hyperprotective mama bear, because this life is the best I’ve ever had it, and I don’t want to lose it. Joe and I finally get the credit for what we do, and it’s from the people who matter most, our customers. We have so much positivity and love it has genuinely healing properties. I’m almost never depressed any more, which is something money can’t buy. And we live on a very small budget because I’m still dealing with being completely screwed over by a family member (it’s something we’ll work through, but it’s going to take a really long time to fix the damage). We aren’t rich; we don’t even have a car in our household, and we’ve spent so much money at the vet the past year it’s unreal. But it’s been worth every penny, and I would have sold everything I have to save Sin, if it had been possible.

The fun stuff

Because we’ve had so, so much to deal with over the past few months, including another human death in the family, we’ve been trying to do a small fun thing each day just to lift our spirits because life can be very short and you never know what’s around the corner. Happily it’s very easy for me now to take joy in the small things, like going to the lake and eating ice cream, or having a lunchtime swim at the local pool. Every day I’m excited for a new day, and that’s such a huge thing for me, and something of a novelty too. Of course I always have stuff to work on and get better at, but that’s just part of being a human.