Haircuts, a Possible Move and Blogging

This past weekend flew by way too quickly. Why is it that the weekends go fast and the week days are slower than a snail? Maybe it is because my weekends are always filled with a variety of activities, like these:

Housework on Saturdays
Saturday morning soccer game (Chris took Monkey to his game)
Grocery shopping on Saturday afternoons
Mass on Sunday morning
More shopping on Sunday afternoon

Besides doing all of that I managed to fit this in too.

Monkey before I gave him a haircut


Monkey after

Little Bear before.

Little Bear after

Parrot before

Parrot after

I don’t know how I find the time to fit everything in. No matter how full my calendar is I always manage to get about 75% of my to-do list done. I always shoot for 100% but that never happens. And my to-do lists are going to just get longer.

Kitty made it into the talent show! I wrote her stand up comedy act so in a way I will be in it too!

Chris is flying out to Denver on Thursday to meet with executives in the division for the position he applied for. His day is filled with nine different interviews so there is a good possibility that we may know whether or not he gets the job by the time he gets home.

I have a mix of emotions regarding a possible move to Chicago. I am excited because we will only be two hours away from where my parents live. I am nervous because I don’t know how my kids will handle another move. Will they act out? Will it be stressful for them? Will Kitty’s trichotillomania get worse? Will I find good schools for my kids or are they going to suffer? Will I have to home school Parrot? What resources do they have for families of children with Autism? The answers to these questions frighten me.

I did a lot of research on the communities near the office where the job is located. These communities are very affluent and the median income is approximately $75K. Houses for rent are a lot more expensive than out here in Spokane. We rent a 2000 square foot, two story, 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bathroom home for $1200 a month. Out there it would cost us $2,000 or more a month for a home the same size as this one. Don’t get me started on Chicago area schools! That can fill a complete post all on its own.

The cost of living is a lot more expensive out there which means that no matter what I would have to start contributing financially to our family. I haven’t had a regular job in five years. I would prefer to continue to work for myself but blogging has changed so much over the past few years and my income from my blogs has gone way down.

I used to bring in a decent income from The Healthy Moms Magazine but Google made so many changes which impacted my site negatively. Chris thinks that Google is out to get any website that earns an income but is not giving them a piece of the pie. I think he is correct.

I can’t sell outgoing links on my site anymore because Google penalized me. My page rank went down and I started to get less traffic from the search engines. So I stopped selling links and changed all my outgoing links to “no-follow.” That was two years ago and my page rank hasn’t improved yet.

The Healthy Moms Magazine is a PR friendly site however, all the PR e mails I get are from companies and individuals that just want me to publish there information for free. I’ve changed my PR policy six times in two years. But they are still looking for freebies.

I am frustrated to the point that I am really, really thinking hard about whether or not I should continue blogging. Is all this time and effort really worth it? I am making enough money to pay for the hosting fees for my websites.

I am giving myself a month. If I don’t reach the goals that I have set forth by then I am going to stop updating my main blog and quit the other two sites connected to it. By then we will know if we are moving to Chicago. If I quit blogging then I will get a regular job out in Chicago. After over six years of blogging I do not remember what life was like without a blog. I don’t know how I will handle it.

What do you think? Should I just give up? Or do you think there still is hope for me in the blogging community?