The Truth Behind ‘Phoning It In’
I bring this up because of my dilemma. I have 4 personal websites right now that I would love to consistently work on but finding the time and balance between work and family is really hard. I don’t want to post ‘just to post’ so I’m doing my best to find those moments, like over lunch, or early mornings, quiet house moments when everyone is still asleep to work on my sites.
In that same vein I thought i’d share some inspiration on balance and finding the time to do what you love when that creative thing you love isn’t your ‘day time job’:
“You know you’ve found your calling, when you would rather do it and fail, than not do it.”
― Alexander Kjerulf, Happy Hour is 9 to 5“Don’t work for appraisal or appreciation, work for your personal growth”
― Sivaprakash Sidhu“Don’t aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.”
― David Frost
After starting this post last month, and never finishing it until now, I’ve come to the conclusion that 4 websites ARE too much, and honestly only 2 are the ones I’m most passionate about and can consolidate the other two into two I already have. Clear as mud? XD I’ll explain.
- IntoTheEther.net – My creative sharing website should technically be ‘everything’ that I do creatively into one location. So in the beginning it was: crafts, photos, music. At some point though I wanted my photography to be a completely separate brand so that is how Lifestock.co came about.
- Lifestock.co – I started with it being a stock photo selling website. After about 4 years of no traffic, and slow progress adding images, I decided to turn it into a photography portfolio site as the primary focus that are offered for sale if people wanted it. I liked that ‘turnaround’ of goal and made it less pressure for me to update it.
- TheWunderBox.com – I wanted a place to put my product reviews with links to my amazon affiliate program so I could somehow yeild some return to help me pay for my websites. I didn’t keep this up like I had hoped so this site is one that I believe I’m going to instead consolidate into my IntoTheEther.net website since I have done reviews previous. Since they are so sporadic it makes sense that this can be something else I can post about on my main ITEN website. So this one will be going away.
- CloverCloudMusic.com – I wanted a place to put just my music. Again, this is so sporadic, and right now I just can’t make the time to commit to a steady stream of music and accompanying videos, that I think i’ll also consolidate this into my IntoTheEther.net website. The title IS ‘my anything creative place’ and that counts and fits into the goal of my site. So this one will be going away.
Although, in writing this now, I’m actually considering letting go of LifeStock.co as well and just consolidating it into my ITEN website. Since that too is something creative that I do. This will allow me to definitely keep my one website up to date vs. trying to spread myself too thin keeping all four of my websites update since I cannot post to all four every week.
This change would be exciting and feels like more of a relief for me to be able to continue posting which I love to do.