Tracking down February

At the end of January, I was a bit disappointed that my foodie side of the blog was under-represented, but February, although the shortest month of the year, was full in tasty experiences. Practically, if you browse my blog entries for this month, you will mostly find a lot of recipe tasting and first and foremost, my first entries as part of the Brand Ambassador for Spice Kitchen UK, a lovely Birmingham-based company I previously worked with, many years back. 

Another foodie achievement was to explore the flavors of turmeric, in the already classical golden milk. 

But the blog also shared my thoughts on (local) dating or advice about how to practice yoga without leaving your office, strongly recommended to all busy business women out there, in search of some short muscle exercices. 

February was for me also a month when I had to keep thinking about how to further develop my business, especially from the technical-bureaucratic level, but also when some unexpected personal events made me think more about life, friendship and family ties. As a dear friend was took to the hospital with a mild stroke, I've spend a huge amount of time visiting, while trying to bring her a bit of sunshine and encouragement when things were starting to look way too gloomy. Fortunately, she is out of any danger right now, with a slow recovery process in the front of her, but all the events that unfolded in the last two weeks were eyes opening and made me reconsider a lot of thoughts and attitudes regarding friendship ties and how we can grow up our family ties and go beyond old misunderstandings and conflicts to nurture warm and heart-to-heart talk.

As the weather went completely crazy out here, in Berlin, Germany, with two-digit below 0 temperatures, I had to be an unpleasant amount of time indoors, cooking, but therefore without a way to explore other possibilities in terms of pitching and topics for my articles. Hopefully, this time is over now and I can go out more often and create more interesting content. For a long time, both me and the baby we fought with the strange flu that seemed to never end, so my original energy aimed at blogging, parenting and working was significantly diminished. But I did a lot of sleep which helped me at a great extent to keep somehow the battery fully charged. 

For the last three weeks, I tried also an experiment of limiting seriously my spendings, as trying to buy only what I really need, while combining wisely the available ingredients I already had at home. I am usually a minimalist, and I hate clutter but this time I tried to think at least twice before purchasing a specific food item, and focus my mind on what I can really do with that specific product. If not, what about not buying it at all? Thank G-d, I do not suffer of any shopping addiction, so it was easy to follow a simple line, but for me also meant that I can rather keep and save money for really valuable investments, such as a great bed for my son. Post detailing my experience coming up soon on the blog.

Last but not least, February meant to me a lot of freelance work, as the frozen and slow paced January was finally behind and people started to get interested in moving on with their business plans. My works involved a diverse range of activities, from proof-reading, the usual translations from and into 3+ languages, a bit of guest blogging, but also some business consulting. Overall, not bad at all, and I hope that this intense pace will continue. 

What March has in sight as for now? As Pesach holidays are just around the corner...there is a countdown I prefer to ignore sometimes, as there is a lot of stress associated with this part of the year usually, I will probably try to set up some recipes and stress-free suggestions. Unfortunatelly, I wanted so much to give some tips for both Purim and Tu B'Shvat, but my everyday life was overwhelming enough to challenge my plans. I would also have some fashion and style posts, probably a feature of a jewelery maker I've had the chance to meet in Berlin a couple of months ago, plus some interior design inspiration too. My posts about beauty tips will also continue, with some reviews of products I've tested and loved. I do have some parenting tips I am ready to share soon and maby some parenting books reviews too!

There's all for now! Let's hope in a meaningful and filled with good news month of March. Cheers to that!

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Tracking down January

Freelancer life - not always a bed of roses

With a bold generous agenda set up in the last hours of 2017 ahead of me, both in my professional and personal life, I decided to keep an even stricter track of my goals, events and time management achievements and failures too. Tracking down... will hopefully be a regular presence on my blog, published on the first of every month and aimed at offering an overview of the previous month and some lessons learned. My hope is to be able to share inspiration with other people coping with the same issues or trying to improve their situation and find their own professional and personal path of life.

Blogging life

Blogging life was good in the last 31 days and promises to be even better, with a couple of sponsorships already done, and a couple of others in the making. I did maintain a permanent social media sharing and interaction, and things are growing up, although too slowly for my liking. The traffic is steady and, at least with BoiledWords, I am far beyond 100,000 views and growing which is a good thing after all. In terms of food experiences, I had only failures - including today therefore I am a bit behind with my recipe sharing. My waffle book and another two books that are almost done, but need a serious editing, were on hold, because...there is just no excuse for it anyway.

My bookish blog was by far the more active and more successful this month, with a couple of blog tours, interviews and new collaborations sealed for the next month at least.  

Interaction with other bloggers and influencers was a bit different for the better, but I am still not in the right place, I am trying at least. Not too hard, though. 

I finally learned how to make attractive Pinterest covers and I am really enjoying this newly creative tool. Better YouTube and SEO are next on my to-do-list. 

To be continued though, hopefully in a more steady direction, as I am not happy at all to swim over and over again in the same mud for a couple of months already, without any sparkle of change. I can probably keep doing what I am doing and being happy with it, but I am sure I can do even more.

Right now, I am reading Confident Digital Content by Adam Waters, and more such books are prepared for a crash learning course this weekend so maybe I can change something in the right direction. 

Freelancing

January started a bit slowly in terms of freelance work, but I had at least two projects to achieve per week in the last three weeks. 

In order to keep a good track of my income from freelancing, I was finally able to create an Excel which covers the income both from blogging and freelancing. The frustrating part is that there are projects done and paid later - if ever, and this could create at least for a while a serious financial disbalance. When you have bills to pay, you need to have a permanent flow of money happily jumping in your account and the aim is too really create this best case scenario. I am not even half through achieving it, though. 

In terms of the content of my freelance work, I did mostly translations, which I am doing for already a couple of years, but which is not my favorite professional domain. Editing and writing are always my no.1, with photography and online teaching coming next, but because too lenient to do some research and pitch my ideas, I keep doing it. 

Time management

Since my school years, I am very strict in terms of time management, tracking down obsessively my schedule and trying to be as busy as possible. With one single exception of a couple of days, I kept being very busy in January, with only a couple of days when I was really lagging behind. Those days paid high too, as there were supposed to be spent chasing blogging and freelancing opportunities. 

My aim for a couple of days is to get the best of each day and hour, and most of the time I am doing it, but once in a while I am too tired or really need a healthy procrastination hour before doing anything. And this time never comes back. 

Personal life

Personally, things were with ups and downs too. Maybe this is life, but I am sure some improvements can be done. Baby improved significantly his speaking abilities therefore I am more relieved and stress free when it comes to his development. An appointment by the pediatrician is in the cards the next week when I will get probably the best advice, as usual, about the next steps to be done.

Baby kept being my priority for the last days, with a lot of efforts being done towards securing a place for a kindergarten at least from September this year. Apparently, there is much easier to be accepted to Harvard than to find a place to a decent Berlin kindergarten and the struggle is real. 

I've spent also some great times with my friends having lunches out but reclaiming me time was sometimes almost impossible, so all I was able to do was to take some extra hour of sleep.

The relationship with people that I have to deal with, although they only create discomfort and tensions was smooth and I am finally able to ignore their negativity. As for the negativity of people that are actually close to me, this was very hard to deal with, and keeping them and their thoughts at bay was quite a hard, difficult and almost impossible mission. 

Some good modest things happened too, such as the fact that I was finally able to have a general dentist check-up and another general medical more awaited check-up. I also started to gather information about the best driving licence schools around me, which will finally pave the way for me being able to drive. 

I am also looking forward to learning new skills online, and registered for some free classes on Coursera, but I keep being distracted by other things going on around me and every evening ends up with me being unable to switch on to the learning. However, my German exercises went smoothly, with at least one hour of practice - which included also reading and writing - every day. 

Overview. What's next

To be very honest, I am 75% unhappy with the current situation, but in a very positive way which creates a healthy pressure to finally make those much awaited and well-deserved changes in my both personal and professional life. I know I can do more and I will definitely work hard towards it, with a better time management and better determination. 

Let's hope that February will bring it on more positive changes and improvement in everyone's life. I, personally, can't wait to let them happen and share them here.

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