Musings on falling off the pony... and how I intend to get back up on it.

Hey friends.

I don't know if anyone's noticed but my M/W/F update schedule has gone through the wringer. First I tried to move it to Tu/Th/S then I declared I was going to get through a chunk of the backlog then take a week's break in order to work ahead. 

Currently I'm still working on that chunk of the backlog.

So what's happened?

The short version is: I've goofed up hard, I'm working on correcting it, no excuses.

The long version for anyone curious/full transparency: For relatively benign reasons I'm on a thyroid medication that has really specific instructions. If I fail to follow those instructions I tank my sleep schedule and it can take a week or more to fix it. During that week I sleep absurd amounts, at absurd times.

I've been goofing my medication up a lot lately. My days have been spent living that Sleepy Vampire life which is nowhere near as glamorous as the media would make it seem. This is not why I've fallen behind per se, it's mostly a contributing factor. An easy, less embarrassing way to explain it to the curious.

Like many things in life it's an error cascade - one thing leads to another thing leads to another like dominoes. In order to fix a primary problem (not updating my ding-dang blog) I have to fix a bunch of tertiary problems.

The big way I ended up here was by losing my buffer. It's not unusual for me to mess up my meds, or do one of many things that ends up delaying my ability to sit for the chunk of time it takes to hammer out some reviews. In the first few months of this site I dealt with it by having a ton of reviews pre-written.  It removed the threat of a deadline... which lessened the anxiety around deadlines, which actually meant I was more productive.

And then a couple of things happened that turned that on its head:

1) I used up my pre-written stuff like a dinkus.

2) I got more press samples than I could have ever dreamed of. Like D J Khaleed I'm Suffering from Success.  The thing about press samples is I try to time them to releases or sales if I can... so that means the Great Queue got disturbed and I learned a valuable lesson in why Real Magazines plan stuff so far out in advance and are so firm about their publication queue.

I want to be candid about working with an anxiety disorder and a sleep schedule to rival sloth. These are not reasons it is OK to fail - it is not OK to fail - but often our labor (especially online) feels isolating and like shouting into the void. I know that a lot of people are going through their own versions of various self-made hells that bear a striking resemblance to my own. This is me putting my hand out to all who are floundering along with me and going 'Hey, it's okay, I'm doing the same thing'.

SO. What comes next? How do I get back up on the pony? I've thought I a bunch about this. I want to get reviews out for fall press samples before the collections go down! And it seems like now that Halloween is over we're moving on to winter collections and I'm like 'uh oh'.

The solution I've come up with is:

1) I'm going to a twice a week update schedule - Monday & Friday - starting next week. There will be a proper Saturday post later today... and then it's all M&F going forward until I have my queue back.

2) At some point there's going to be a week "off" from posting but not from writing. I have some review goals to get through before I do that.

3) In the short term I'm going to post what's upcoming with dates because nothing motivates keeping a deadline like public embarrassment.

The queue for the rest of November looks like:

Saturday 11/9 (later today - maybe going into the wee hours of Sunday if I goof hard): 5 Little & Grim reviews - the rest of their Halloween collection + a soap sample I was sent.

Monday 11/11 : Sihaya - 6 reviews.  Probably in the later afternoon if I'm being honest.

Friday 11/15: 4 Sucreabeille reviews. Andrea wanted some feedback specifically for Suc scents - so I'm actually going to touch on four of the older scents in the collection (Afterglow, Vodka & Swearing, Potion and Elixir) that I bought forever ago (before starting the blog, actually)... well, I bought three and got one by accident as a mix up.

Monday 11/18: Nui Cobalt - 5 scents (probably from their Return to the Big Island - I need to sort through what I have)

Friday 11/22: 5 scents from the Stereoplasm fall collection.

Annndd... the last week in November is blacked out for a Super Secret Special Project I've been collabing on. More on that as we get closer to the date.

This is temporary. Eventually I want to get back to three times a week, with that Wednesday slot being used alternately for reviews and for articles. And by 'eventually' I mean: In December.

That's all for now friends! Thank you for sticking with me.

Sneef you later! 

- Aubin