This Is Why I Haven't Been Posting Much - Thrift Diving Blog (2024)

The other morning I woke with a sense of anxiety. It’s been common lately where I’ll wake up in the middle of the night, whether it be from a dream which I can’t quite remember what it is but the remnants of it feel less than positive sometimes. Or maybe a trip to the bathroom, stumbling into the corner of the bed with closed eyes to prevent myself from waking up, as if that will seal in the sleep-induced coma from which I had just awoken.

(Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is an effective “go-back-to-sleep” hack).

I then find myself in bed, my mind still foggy with sleep, but with an active mind, flipping through all the things that concern me: my health….family matters…the projects I was supposed to already have completed but are moving at the speed of molasses…about the things I want that are beyond my control…about my son going off to college in 3 months but still not sure how we’re going to pay for that…and thoughts of how I can tighten up my spending, saving, and investing…about whether I still feel joy in what I’m doing and what the next 10 years will even look like, and more.

If I breathe deeply enough, I feel like I’m able to get myself back to sleep within 30 minutes or so. But when I wake up, the worries and stressors are still at the forefront of my mind, unsure of which direction to point my focus. It’s as if all of the topics and issues are equally important, but that I don’t give any of them enough attention. So when the middle of the night comes around and everything is quiet and still, I feel like the issues elbow their way to my conscious mind so that I can figure out solutions.

The thought that rose to the forefront of my mind the other morning was the fact that we’re nearly halfway through a new month–literally juuuust near the halfway mark of 2024…..and I feel like I have accomplished…..well….very little.

I remember when I used to speed through DIY projects (okay, notspeed through….because we all know that no DIY projects gothat surprisingly quick!). But I felt like I was tapping deep into my creative depths on a regular basis: I painted things. I stripped things. I built stuff. I uploaded videos. I uploaded podcast episodes weekly! I felt that I had a lot to say, and couldn’t wait to share it!

I felt intrinsically motivated to do all the things I loved, whether it was room makeovers, or working on finishing the interior of my shed. I was creating, which is one of the three pillars of my purpose in life: CREATE, INSPIRE, and TEACH.

But I feel like I’ve slowed down tremendously in a time when everything seems to be speeding up. And it’s as if I am expected to speed up right along with it.

I’ve not slowed down for lack of interest; I still enjoy creating, DIY projects, and creating videos. But I don’t feel I have been able to keep up with the speed and range of how far my content should be reaching.

Also, as I mentioned on my Instagram recently, I have been focused a lot on my biggest DIY “before and after” for the past 3 years, and that would be MYSELF and my health.

Let me explain.

In spring of 2021, I got to the biggest weight I had ever been. I didn’t recognize myself. I don’t know if all women do this, but it was not uncommon to hear me compare myself to how much I weighed “pre-pregnancy.” It’s as if it’s a timestamp that is burned into our brains and we can’t fathom being anything but that woman we were 20 years ago, 30 years ago…. I always compared myself to “then,” wanting to get as close to the time when I felt I was the “epitome” of myself.

I started running 5 miles Monday through Friday daily. I went to the gym and strength trained 3 days a week, giddy with excitement at the way new curves and strength emerged that had never been there before, as the scale went down, too. I felt better than I had ever felt. Even my lab values seemed to be improving, as I measured my body fat composition, tracking my visceral fat surrounding my organs, lean muscle mass, and everything in between.

I was becoming my very own DIY project.

I worked with a trainer for a few months, just to get me on the right path with weight training, but really, I took control of what I had to do for myself. I was aiming for a transformation that I could be proud of, and boy did I show it off! What used to be an Instagram page full of painting, home improvement, or just general lifestyle stuff, Thrift Diving’s page started incorporating some of my proud health transformations, hoping to inspire others to take control of their health, too.

While my mission has always been to “create, inspire, and teach,” I had hoped that I could venture a bit into this new space of health and fitness, too, in case others were hoping to do their own “before and after” on their health and wellness.

Unfortunately, late summer and fall, into winter of 2023, I lost my healthy momentum. Suddenly I started skipping workouts here and there, although I was still going for occasional runs and incorporated more walking…..I’d stop for my favorite ice cream, thinking that the good canceled out the bad…And of course I’d overeat, but if you’d ask me, I would probably tell you that I surely wasn’t eating more than my allotment of necessary calories per day and that scalemust be broken!

It wasn’t until a friend recommended doing The 75 Hard Challenge that I realizedthat challenge was the solution that I was going to use to get myself back on track. It was at that time I had seen another “old school” blogger (Becky, from Infarrantly Creative) post about The 75 Hard Challenge and how she’s just completed it. Her results wereamazing. I honestly didn’t think I could follow such strict rules:

• Follow a diet plan (any plan) for 75 days.
• Read 10 pages in a nonfiction book daily (easy–I love to read).
• Two workouts per day, at least 45-minutes each, one of which must be outside, no matter what.
• Drink 1 gallon of water per day.
• Take daily progress pictures.

If you missany of these items for 75 days, you must start back at Day 1. Ouch…..

The good news is that I completed the challenge. The bad news is that, technically, I should have started back at Day 1 at least 3 times, but….. it’s ludicrous to throw out 60 days of positive behavioral changes just because you forgot to take a picture of your butt. I mean….. So yeah, if you throw out those 3 incidents, I completed the challenge.

And I actually continued on with a modified version of these routines when the challenge ended for me in January 2024: I still exercise daily, with only an occasional miss. I strength train 3 times per week. I snap progress pictures only on the weekends. And I am adamant about my 10-pages of non-fiction reading per day. I’ve polished off several thick Tony Robbins books, including Money: Master the Game, as well as his book on health, wellness, and regenerative medicine in Life Force. These are thick, 700-800 page books!

Health has always been important to me, but as I inch closer to the age when my dad died at 48 of a massive heart attack (I’m now 46 and a half; yes, the half counts), I have found myself spending much more of my waking hours on trying to transform my health. I recently participated in a research study that uncovered that I’ve got a very elevated level of something called lipoprotein a. A normal level is 75, and mine was 242! It can be more common in Black people. And there are no FDA-approved drug treatments. Which means, I felt like a walking heart attack or stroke for about a week after receiving these results. Oh–and the cherry on top is that diet, exercise, and lifestyle apparently has little effect in moving those numbers.

Ahhhh….great news to receive, huh? So while I felt like I had been making strides in my “DIY health makeover,” it felt like I had been handed a “probable death” notice.

Anyhow, when I woke up the other morning and had an alarming thought: “OMG….it’s May, and I have barely accomplished anything this year,” it made me dig into the big question of, BY WHOSE STANDARDS?

You see, for the past 12 years, Thrift Diving has been my life. Even when I was working full-time outside of the home, before I got fired, and ever since, Thrift Diving has been my whole life. My life has revolved around creating, inspiring, and teaching. It’s been about paint, power tools, and thrift stores. It’s been about making over rooms in my house, and transforming my house into a home. It’s been about, “What’s my next project?” And then rushing to get it done, show you the results, and then moving on to the next thing. By all accounts, it has been going really well.

But earlier this year, I felt like I was ready to do more, to take bigger risks, and try new things!

If you are part of my email list, you’ll remember me sharing with you about the bathroom makeover that I did in my friend’s house. I talked a lot about it on my podcast and even had my friend on as a guest to talk about that makeover and what it was like for her, as a DIY newbie “behind the scenes” to work on her very first project and room makeover.

What made this project amazing is that 1) I had never done a project in someone else’s house before! I didn’t know how to navigate even bringing all my tools and materials all the way across town to do that!, and 2) I hired a videographer and editor to help with the project, which was a completely new experience!

I’ll be honest when I say…..if you thinkmolasses is slow…..???!!!!…..this bathroom makeover video and edit has been moving at the speed of water carving rock. Like, seriously!!!

Because working with a videographer and editor was new, I didn’t know what I was doing. Some things stalled, took longer than expected, and we’re now going on–gulp–3 months just for the editing of the video! It’s insane. I’m disappointed that I didn’t know how to better “flow” this project. I feel like I’ve wasted the whole first quarter of 2024 trying to do something different and exciting, filming an “HGTV-style” video when I probably could have just filmed the bathroom makeover the way that I normally film my videos: shooting and editing myself, and then moving on to the next amazing room makeover.

I’m trying to extend some grace to myself by pointing out that this is the first time I’ve used a videographer and editor. Of course it wasn’t going to go exactly as planned! When do new projects ever go exactly as planned?! But it doesn’t mean that the entire process, while still in the works right now as I finish up the final round of edits, was for nothing. I’d like to believe that this project is an investment in Thrift Diving, the pilot that could one day launch–who knows??–maybe an actual series somewhere. If not HGTV, then why not Netflix? Why not even a Thrift Diving streaming channel on Roku?!?

The bathroom makeover project in my friend’s house was so much fun to work on, that she and I have started tackling her outdated bedroom, too! You know, one thing that I didn’t anticipate is that that bathroom project would spark a renewed friendship between her and I, as well. We’ve been friends for 15 years, but over the past two years, we had fallen off a bit. Working so closely on this project, we’d spend more time together than we ever had! Now, we are going out to eat, going out for shopping trips, and enjoying each other’s company again. I would consider our renewed friendship the equivalent to a “non-scale victory” for someone trying to lose weight; it counts.

But while I feel like it’s understandable that things have been running slow with publishing the “BEFORE and AFTER” video for that bathroom project, I feel like I don’t have time for mistakes. I don’t have time to learn new things, when the algorithms are “king,” where if you don’t post often–screw the fact that you’re trying out new things, or taking the necessary breaks to focus on your health and well-being. If you’re not producing content, and posting it often, then you simply slip through the cracks where people’s attention spans are only 3 to 7 seconds anyhow. Social media starts to hate you. YouTube starts to hate you. Even Gmail starts to hate you and suddenly you end up in everyone’s SPAM folder.

And I feel like I’m slipping through the cracks.

You know how that is: once you start slipping through the cracks, and you’re aware that you’re slipping through the cracks, you’re even more hesitant to make a move because you worry that that move could cause you to further slip through the cracks. You start second-guessing everything, wondering if you’re even relevant anymore. So you hesitate to post because you don’t think as many will read. You hesitate to publish, because you wonder how many will watch. You know what it will take to stop falling through the cracks, but what will you have to give up, what will you have to stop doing, what will you have to sacrifice in order to go “all in” just to get back to the level of performance and focus you used to have?

And that is causing me some anxiety.

I remember when I worked outside of the home and would work on DIY projects and blog posts from 9pm until maybe 2am. I sacrificed sleep in order to make Thrift Diving become a reality, since I had no time in between work and raising little babies. Now that my “babies” are 17, 14, and 12, and they don’t need me as much, and because Thrift Diving is my full-time gig, I should have more time than ever….Right?

But I find myself spending the first part of my morning doing my 10-pages of morning reading, followed by strength training 3 days a week, grocery store visits, soccer practice, soccer games, drs appointments for the family, and all the other duties that fill my calendar. And don’t forget phone calls, text messages, and audio messages that I sent to friends during the day because, in case you didn’t know, being a solo content creator can be lonely. There are no coworkers that you’re chatting with over the water cooler at work. There are no Zoom meeting calls (or very few) where you get to talk to colleagues about what crazy weather they’re experiencing that day. So the friends I connect to on a daily basis, I sometimes find myself filling up my “emotional bucket” which then eats into the time I “should” be creating, inspiring, and teaching.

So the few hours per day that I get to work on actual projects/editing/, I often feel that they’re not enough to allow me to move at the speed at which I feel I need to in order to compete with the speed at which the entire social media and content world is moving at.

So less emails get sent because I have less new projects being completed quickly enough. Less emails means people forget about you.

Less published videos on YouTube then means that YouTube pushes your channel down, to the ranks of “People Who Aren’t Serious Creators.” Well, I don’t think that’s an actual line-item in their algorithm, but I wouldn’t put it past them.

Less blog posts tells Google that this blog isn’t very active, so that’s less posts that show in search results. Less traffic means less ad revenue.

And it becomes a spiral, because the less you connect to your audience, the less you publish, means the less you connect to the people who matter, the less they watch, the less they read, the less you’re recommended in search, the less money you make….and before you realize it, you’re right back where you were in 2014. As if ten years of growth is gone.

But the true growth, in my opinion, is more than just how social media, Google search results, or revenue is growing.

I’m not saying those things aren’t important. But first, it’s about making sure that health is #1. Ask anyone what they value and you’ll get answers such as “health” and “family” at the top of that list. But let’s break down what “health” actually means. It’s physical and mental health. In fact, I would even argue that mental health is more important than physical health. If you’ve got a physical condition or ailment that prevents you from doing that which you love, as long as you have the right attitude and mental conditioning, you’ll find a way to work around those physical limitations. If you’ve got a positive outlook, you won’t let your physical condition or the fear or anxiety of what that physical condition really means, prevent you from figuring out a way to enjoy life.

But imagine having poor mental health. Good Lord….you might not even be able to get out of bed, even though your body physically may be able to. You may not even feel enough joy to even pick up a paint brush, despite being able to physically be able to create anything you’d want. But mentally, you’re just not able to.

It’s okay to take time to improve your mental health, which also includes reading self-help books or even starting therapy to improve your relationships, money, anxiety, or whatever other things that plague you mentally and cause stress. If this is the thing you’ve been able to achieve this year, by taking an important step towards working on these things, congratulations, you are growing. Even if it doesn’t feel productive or quantifiable.

Physical health is the next important thing, and not everything is about the number you see on the scale! For me, something amazing happened a couple months ago after strength training: I was able to do my first chin-up! You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to be able to pull up my own body weight. I have always felt like it was the epitome of strength. But what’s even crazier is that I am now able to do three chin-ups in a row! And it was just a matter of weeks to get to that point after accomplishing the first one! Now that is growth this year, even if it doesn’t translate into more YouTube views or advertising dollars or my position in the “blog eat blog” world.

Secondly, growth is about trying something new that you’ve never tried before. For me, this year it was about taking Thrift Diving to places it’s never been before: doing makeovers in other people’s homes! Trying to record “HGTV-style” makeovers that truly inspire people, especially ones who are newbies and don’t have much confidence, to DIY their own homes! That focus is one that I am passionate about. The unfortunate point is that, without a big team, and without sacrificing my health and relationships, at times it feels impossible to have enough time to explore those new avenues without feeling like the year is escaping me and that I should be cranking out quicker, easier stuff that I’ve done before.

But still, I have to admit that that isgrowth.

This year I have also been working on creating my Power Tools 101 online course. I have been wanting to create this for literally years. I always made an excuse for why I couldn’t or shouldn’t do it: “Who would even buy it? Would I be wasting my time focusing on this and it flops? Am I qualified to put this together?”

This spring, though, I decided to stop doubting myself and actually hired the same videographer to record my mentor and me doing a video tutorial for the Power Tools 101 courseHow to Use a Table Saw. This was so awesome! Finally I was putting my fears and doubts aside and taking the action I knew I needed to do to move that project forward!

It’s been a month since we filmed……yet I have yet to make the time to actually create the course. Again, I’m pulled by the anxiety over the worry that it will take too much time to produce and edit, which is pulling me away from other projects. But…..the fact that I got over the hump of even filming this, I am excited over this growth.

So when I woke up the other morning with that anxious thought: “OMG….it’s May, and I have barely accomplished anything this year” but actually stopped to think about all the things Idid accomplish this year, the list was impressive to me:

• Doing a DIY project in my friend’s house and learning how to work with a videographer and editor.
• I have been eating a minimally processed diet for the past 2 months, as I am hoping to lower my A1c to “pre-diabetic” range. I inherited some terrible genes from my father, who had diabetes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t “nurture my nature.”
• I even decided to straighten my teeth with Invisalign after learning from my dentist that my teeth have been shifting andcould spell more trouble down the road if I didn’t take action.
• I completed the 75 Hard Challenge (or at least a modified version of it!).
• I recorded the first of several Power Tools 101 videos! I finally am making progress on that dream of having an online course to help people learn to confidently use power tools!

While things have been uber slow for these past 5 months, I have to keep in mind that sometimes progress isn’t a straight line. And it surely doesn’t move as quickly as I’d like. And while I feel like the speed at which everyone else is moving is far surpassing me, the most important thing is to keep my own pace.

In my 10-pages of non-fiction reading, I read something one day that stopped me in my tracks. It wasn’t specifically what the author said inThe Psychology of Money, but that I was able to take something he said with what a few other authors had said, about what the formula for success really is.

It’s not about “climbing” the proverbial ladder quickly, or more quickly than anyone else. Rather, it’s about taking consistent action no matter what + compounding time + a dash of luck + a vital few things that do well = success.

In plain words, it’s about being consistent even when you don’t feel like it, and doing it over and over and over again over time, letting the results compound and stack up to bigger and bigger results, mixed in with a splash of luck, and making sure that you do the most important things. Sometimes you don’t know what the most important things are, but simply by doing a lot of things that you think are on the right track, surely a few of those things will end up being “the right things” mixed in with the bunch of things you toss at the wall to see what sticks. That’s what I have learned is the key to success.

How that translates for Thrift Diving, it means ramping up to create a bunch of shorter videos, blog posts, and podcasts in between the longer stuff, knowing and accepting that not all of them will be “winners,” but some of them will be. And if I’m lucky, if I keep doing what I’m doing consistently over time, then I’ll continue to grow and be successful. But sometimes it’s just the luck (or lack of luck) of the draw, though! But you have to keep moving forward and growing and trying new things. Baby steps count as long as you’re moving in the right direction.

Now what about you? How do we apply this toyour life?

Think about where you are in this year and what you’ve told yourself about how things are going. Do you feel like you’ve grown? Made progress? Feel stuck? Really question yourself to see if you’re measuring yourself with someone else’s ruler or your own.

Think about the process you’ve made progress towards some things you’ve always wanted to make progress with, even if it’s not your conventional “success markers.” Maybe you’re not making as much money as other people, but you just got a new position that you absolutely love and it’s the dream position you’ve always wanted. Or maybe you dropped 10 pounds, but still have 20 more to go. Don’t poo-poo on those 10 pounds. That’s a win! Or maybe you did one solid project this year that you’re super proud of, regardless of the other 3 sitting there unfinished in the guest bedroom. Guess what?? That one project makes you feel like you’re on top of the world and you can’t stop telling everyone about it who comes over to your house. Forget the other 3 projects for now.

List out your own successes and growth this year, and then think about where you want the next 7 months to go. Do you want to work on your mental and physical health? Is there a single project that has been pulling at you that you want to at least start?? Who cares if you don’t finish, but just the fact that you’re starting is significant.

Let me know in the comments your thoughts and what you’re working on this year!