Hi friends! If you read my last Little House in Guatemala update, you will know that I am now back home. Actually I have been home for a little while now but I was still really busy with our Airbnb guests, we hosted 8 people in the first 10 days we arrived, plus BF’s aunt, the lake has been rising and the water pump broke so we had no running water, it was a busy time.
I missed my little house…
I also wanted to get back into a routine, which is half a pass, half a fail, what suffered most during the trip was physical activity, sure, we walked around a lot, and traveling on a motorcycle is even considered a sport by some, but I stopped running once we got to Morocco, for a number of reasons, but I would say mainly because with the winter days the sun was rising later, as late as 8am in France, and going for a run at 530am in the dark is pretty depressing. I couldn’t ask BF to wait until 10am for me to be ready to travel either. And we ate at restaurants every days, drank a lot of wine and/or sangria, so I felt like a heavy potato. Going back home, BF bought me a neat new pair of running shoes, a cute pink t-shirt and some comfy running pants. NO MORE EXCUSES!
Now I am back to running 8-10K three times a week, I can run for a full hour without feeling out of breath and have a heavenly swim in the lake afterward. That is the best way to start the day with a ton of energy.
On the blog side, I bought another PF website, and it has taken a lot of my attention as well, the migration to my server didn’t go well as there was a confusion with Hostgator, they canceled my hosting plan, the site was down, I had to migrate back to the old server, then again to the new one… Long story short it was a mess.
I also had tried to stay away from the online world while we were traveling around Europe for two months, as an obvious courtesy to BF, and simply because the trip was to be enjoyed, not spent online. It was mostly a success, I had the majority of my posts planned in advance, and my lovely VA did a great job holding the fort behind the scenes.
Thank you to the awesome bloggers who took over to host the Carnival of Financial Independence in my absence, I will now alternate hosting with other bloggers, hosting once or twice a month myself, and leaving the other two weeks to volunteers, you can register to host on bloggercarnivals.com.
I kept reading many of my favorite blogs by downloading them and reading offline when the internet was not reliable, although I did a poor job of staying in touch, commenting or simply saying hi once in a while, I hope you can forgive me.
With the blogs on auto pilot, it was easy to stay away from it all, and just watch passively as I used to when I just read blogs and never participated in the community. Then one day, there weren’t enough posts in the queue. But I hadn’t planned for it, so there wasn’t time either to start writing some more. And I got lazy. Like I hadn’t run in a month and it took all my energy to get back on the horse.
However, I am now back and on fire! I have written about 20 posts in the past few days, for all three sites I now own and manage, have implemented a few ideas to make things even better, and I hope you will join me for the ride in the new year.
Reach Financial Independence will feature 2-3 posts per week and remain my personal outlet, for life updates, random thoughts and of course posts about achieving financial independence and living life in early retirement. I will try to resume the Wednesday guest posts about YOUR quest of Financial Independence, let me know if you would like to be featured.
Make Money Your Way will host three posts a week after a bit of an hectic schedule, we are back to normal. One post will talk about investing or real estate, the second about side hustles and ways to make extra money or improve your career, and the third will be about online income and blogging.
And finally, Super Secret Website #3 will host 2-3 posts a week about frugal living, saving money, travel, life goals and self improvement. Its name will be revealed as soon as I break even from my purchase, which I expect to be in less than 6 months.
Which means I have a writing schedule of around 7 posts per week, wow! I already have a staff writer for the investing posts, but want to keep my two sites personal and hopefully interesting so they keep growing. Let me know if you have any suggestions on how to get better, see you around, and thank you for bearing with me during those busy times!
I’m very curious about the mystery blog Pauline, looking forward to the reveal. Welcome back!
haha hope you don’t get disappointed in the end! Thanks and hope you have a nice holiday season.
-18 celsius in my part of Canada this morning and I am having trouble getting enthused about anything. It has been overcast for days. Days without sunshine drain the spirit.
I am enthused about working on my 2014 budget and great things that will happen in my quest to end debt and finally begin to build wealth in the new year.
Sounds like an exciting year you have ahead, hope it makes you forget the bad weather!
20 posts in 3 days? That’s awesome!
I’m glad you had fun on your trip! Sounds like you’re glad to be home =)
Yes I am, nothing like home after a while.
Oh my gosh 20 in the past few days??? I’ve been on PTO from work but have been so distracted with doctors appointments, cleaning, random to-dos, etc. It’s pretty bad because I wanted to get a lot further ahead : / I need to just sit down and get it done.
That’s awesome you could have the blog on auto-pilot! Honestly I think that should be the ultimate goal for most blog owners, and is definitely one of my own for down the road. I do think engagement in the community obviously helps a TON so I’m not sure how it will work to make it completely passive. We’ll see : )
Make a list or one of your fancy spreadsheets to get organized 🙂
My SEO traffic is around 50% so if I stop networking I would “only” lose 50% of traffic I guess, so it would just be about doubling the SEO traffic and everything would stay the same!
Welcome back! It’s hard for me to imagine running 3 sites at once, each with multiple posts per week, but it seems like you’re on top of everything. Very impressive.
Can’t be as demanding as having one site and two kids 🙂
Host Gator has been a pain for me as well! If I had it to do over again, I think I would go with BlueHost.
I still quite like them and the down time over the past few years has been very little. But this time they really pissed me off.
Welcome back! 20 posts in three days is very impressive. I can’t wait to hear what the third blog is. Sounds like running and a swim in the lake is a great way to rejuvenate as well.
It is! Enjoying the good weather in between showers as for some reason it is raining during the “dry” season but hey, still better than a real winter.
I can relate to the 20 posts in a few days. I think I was at about 15 over the span of three days last week. I’m going to be gone for about half of January and didn’t want to have the stress of coming up with posts. Glad you had such a good trip and time away from the internet. 🙂
Even with staff writers you do have to come up with something don’t you? I’d like to keep the queue that long all the time but unfortunately sometimes writer’s block makes me go through it all.
Twenty posts in a few days! Man, that is the kind of thing that puts your own writing in perspective. Thanks for the motivation. 🙂
yep, and all 1,000+ words. But I hadn’t seriously written for a while.
You’re a good writer doing 20 articles in 3 days! Wooohhhh!!! How did you do that? I’m very excited to read those articles. 🙂 Also, welcome back!
I made a series for the new year on my new site so it was 9 posts out of the way quickly then I had topics I thought about during the travel which I didn’t write about so it just came flowing. Then I can spend 1 month without writing..
It’s great that you are able to travel for so long and still have everything running on auto-pilot. I hope to be able to do that one day. I look forward to reading your 20 posts!
Thank you! It is not that difficult once you have a system. Which I don’t. haha.
Glad you made it back safely! Good luck with the new venture. Amazing how “normal life” can seem so exciting after an extended absence. 🙂
that is very true. Hope you have a lovely holiday season William.
That is a lot of blog posts to keep up on every week; even with a staff writer! Have you also considered reaching out to a VA to do your uploading, formatting, finding pictures, etc? Don’t forget you could always re-post old content if you come up short once in a while.
Yes, the VA uploads and looks for pics, but she does not do internal linking and I try to have my posts with 2-3 internal links so I have to go back and review anyway. Still learning!
Welcome back, Pauline! I’d love to get more organized – very jealous 20 posts written. I wish! 🙂 Definitely something I want to be more proactive about next year. Maybe have an editorial calendar as sometimes it’s late in the week and I have no idea what I want to write about.
I just wrote a post about how to get fresh content on MMYW. I got lazy and went through all my queue but the time off was divine and now I am glad to see the calendar filled almost until March!
Looking forward to your new blog! How many of you are there?! 🙂
I’ll have my fifth hand implanted next week 🙂
Wow, 20 posts in a few days! That’s productive. An alternative view that came to mind is what’s the market value of those posts…if you could sell them for $50 a piece, that’s $1k right there!
it hadn’t occurred to me, ha! or I just saved myself $1,000 for a staff writer…
Welcome back, Pauline! Looking forward to hearing more about this super secret website #3!
Welcome home! I am almost unpacked, looking forward to the holidays so I can read books, run, cook, do some work on the blog and get on top of our money.
I am not looking forward to the todo list that has slowly grown while we were away.. imagine you have a similar one. happy holidays!
Welcome back Pauline,
I’m always amazed as how bloggers can write so much content. Your Europe trip looked awesome, look forward to reading about your other sites
well I wrote a 9 part series so it was easy to get some continuum there, then I had a few ideas written already that just needed shaping into a post. I’m not saying all of it is good! But I am proud of the series.
Glad you’re back home and doing well, Pauline!! I’m in this weird frame of mind where I just want the holidays to be over. Not sure why, as I’m managing the to-do list quite well, but I’m just not in a celebratory mood. A quiet Christmas at home would be just fine with me. 🙂
That is just what we’re having. I am not for the big Christmas bash either. Weird, you were in my spam box today. Have a good one!
Sounds like you had a really successful vacation! I’m with you, going for a run in the dark is depressing. Starting your day with a run and a swim sounds great, though. I’m also curious about the new site. Good luck with it!
Pauline, so glad to hear your trip was a huge success and good for you (and BF) for enjoying it without being tied to a computer. We enjoyed seeing the photos and “traveling” right alongside you.
8 Guests in 10 Days with No Running Water – sounds like a great title for a book. So good to hear your Air BNB venture is getting visitors but sorry you had to go through that!
And – one hour without getting out of breath?!? That is a huge success! What an accomplishment!
Hi Tammy! what are you guys up to? Anything exciting for the holidays? I see you haven’t blogged in a while, good to see you!