The past few months I have started and finished three websites for clients and I did the first pass on a major redesign right here at the Fortuitous Housewife. There are still tweaks and refinements to make and new features to add, but I have pushed the boulder up the hill and the downhill trail to the finish line is in my sight!
Ah, productivity, it’s lovely to renew our acquaintance!
What do I credit with relighting a fire under my creative butt, kick-starting my focus and FINALLY getting me down to the business of giving the Fortuitous Housewife a facelift & trimming? Sure, getting off the roller coaster ride that was my life for the past 20 months was a solid first step, but I still wasn’t getting back into my creative groove.
Turns out it was surprisingly simple – I unplugged it all! One night, full of frustration with myself and my still-absent muses, I logged into the Fortuitous Housewife’s back end and embarked on a path of destruction. I uninstalled the old theme and all its customizations, I pull out old plugins and ads and then marched off to bed.
Every few days I would pull up my almost seven-year-old blog and survey the carnage. I went to our annual ADHD tribal gathering (the 2017 Annual International Conference on ADHD), where I reconnected with friends and associates and made new acquaintances, sharing my slick new business cards along the way, knowing many would probably go back to their hotel rooms and pull up my pigpen of a site. I decided not to say anything about what they would find, I would make no excuses. I lived with that mess until I just couldn’t stand it any longer and then, in a surge of energy and laser focus, I sat down to it and got the first pass done in a day and a half.
Lesson learned?
Sometimes to you have to blow shit up to clear the path so you can see where you want to go next.
So what’s next, you ask?
I’ve got a stockpile of photos to edit & posts to write, so I guess one of my top priorities is an editorial calendar for 2018!
Finish up the Fortuitous Housewife’s facelift & enhancements.
And start ADHD parent and student coach certification training in January!
(Yes, you read that right! Lollie’s gonna become an ADHD coach!)
As I held on tight during my wild ride, I learned another important lesson, this one about myself – whatever I’m leaning away from the hardest is probably the exact thing I should be leaning into.
While I frequently blog about life with ADHD, and I started an ADHD parents’ support group in my town, I still want to do more to help kids and their parents learn to embrace their ADHD assets and conquer their ADHD challenges, so becoming a coach is the next logical step for me. (Yikes! I’m simultaneously terrified and exhilarated.)
Writing this (and my previous) post got me thinking about picking a theme for 2018. (I’m working on using “themeing” in my goal setting and time management. I like the way it helps me be more intentional with time and efforts. I’ll share more about themeing in a future post.) The theme I chose for 2015 keeps coming to mind, as does another that I think compliments it perfectly – moving forward and staying focused!
Up next – it’s time to make Grandma’s Christmas Morning Doughnuts! And this year I’m going to share the recipe with y’all!
