Adjusting to Life and Every Curveball it Throws

Taking in everything that this year has thrown at us, I'm sure the title of this post comes as no surprise to you. Now, I have to admit that I've encountered very few curveballs that were because of the pandemic, and for that, I am very fortunate which I appreciate beyond belief.

Truthfully, having all this time on my hands that I would've spent commuting and taking classes that were a set amount of time while everyone learned at the same pace rather than at a pace of their own was, and still is, a complete blessing. I was able to run through what felt like countless edits for my manuscript Clean Slate, have it professionally edited, hire a cover designer, kill some of my darlings, form an LLC, started a YouTube channel, and the list can really go on.

Now, I'm gonna be super transparent for a second; I am absolutely terrible with consistency. It's something that I'm working on, but I have a tendency to try to "fix" everything that needs some kind of adjustment all at once and overwhelm myself, leading to me wanting to throw in the towel pretty shortly after I started.

The areas of my professional life that I see the most inconsistencies are all somehow connected to a schedule for creating and posting content. The thing about me, as I'm sure it is for most humans, I need to get into my groove with something before it basically comes naturally to me. Take these blog posts for example. My first was in January. Then, there was absolutely nothing for months until I post another one in June. Now here I am in September, posting another one as if no time has passed in between, no sorry excuses anywhere in sight.

The gap between my sporadic posts is shrinking, sure, but this is how I learn. My goal for Instagram consistency at the beginning of this year was to post once a day. I even made it super easy on myself and found an app that I could plan my posts on so that they would go up automatically. Basically, minimal effort required. I lasted five days.

Five days also just so happens to be how many days I've been consistent at this point. I decided that I was going to post every day for one hundred days starting on September 1st so that way I would be hopefully expanding my following while participating in Madison Siwak's challenge. Keep in mind I only use the word challenge for a lack of a better word; she clearly states on her initial post about it that it is not a challenge, but that's kinda how I choose to approach it.

Yesterday, I made the announcement that odds are that my book will not be coming out on its initial release day, which, again, I have no shame in my honesty, broke my heart. If you've been following me on multiple platforms for a while, I'm sorry, you're about to hear something I say all the time again. My goal was to publish before I hit 20 years old. I placed my release date so close to my birthday that any extra time that I needed isn't accounted for.

Now that you have that information, we can get onto the purpose of this post. Everybody that helped me make my dream a reality is human. Humans get sick, have emergencies, have family issues that need tending to, have mental health that needs attention, and taking care of. For this reason, extra time has to be implemented into the schedule so that when someone needs to be human, it doesn't completely throw you off track.

I ran into a few human situations during my process that changed my plan slightly, but the delay in my release date isn't their fault. It's not entirely mine either, but I take full responsibility for it because this is my dream and I have to work for it. One of the most important things to always keep in mind is that nobody is going to fight for your dream as hard as you will. Another reason that I accept the responsibility of my dreams being delayed is super simple.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Zero.

I'm nineteen years old, I've never had to plan a massive project like this and be fully in charge and figure out the timing of everything. I'm the kind of person that needs to be in control. Only to an extent, but still. As much as I love being in charge so I can organize everything in a way that makes sense to me, I've never had freedom quite like this. It was incredible, but also so overwhelming at points. I'm also a major procrastinator which is another thing that I'm working on rectifying, but that's beside the point.

There was a point after I heard back from my editor that I just took a break from everything Clean Slate related for a few weeks and then when I realized that time was running out faster than I realized, I threw myself into my book and worked on it for at least twelve hours a day for two or three days.

My release date had to be pushed, but I'm okay with it. I'm still learning and I'm willing to accept that there is quite a learning curve when it comes to being your own boss and this is just the beginning for me. There are already so many things that I'm going to do differently during my book writing and publishing process before the next one comes out. Allow yourself time to learn and grow.

Stick around if you want a little inside peek at some of the changes I'll be making, my next blog post will be going up soon! And yes, I mean that.

With love and appreciation,

Alyssa