Intention & Priorities

Earlier this year I picked out the word encourage for my year and over the months my word has slowly evolved into intention.

Part of the reason I wanted to homeschool my children in the first place was to be intentional with our days together and with their education.

But while I’ve been trying to be intentional I’ve also found I’ve spread myself a little too thin.

I’ve been doing a decent job keeping up this blog and I’m absolutely loving it. But the truth is I also have two other blogs that I really love. And they all have their own social media accounts. This is where I find myself spread way too thin. Three blogs. Three Facebook pages. Three Instagram accounts. I haven’t done the greatest keeping them all up to date but I don’t think that’s surprising.

Lately I’ve been trying to think about how I could run all three and still be intentional with my days.

I think I’ve come up with a simple solution.

Three blogs. Shared social media accounts.

Which means my Facebook page will share new posts from all three of my blogs. My Instagram will have a variety of homeschooling, business/money making stuff, photography and real life photos with some words of what God is teaching me lately (SO MUCH!). And Twitter will be the same kind of mashup. Oh, and I can’t forget Pinterest, that’s also got a bit of everything going on.

Is this the best idea business wise? Maybe not, all the real business people would say that they are all fairly niche markets (niche pronounced in the British/Canadian way, thank you very much), but the truth is, I am just one girl and all these aspects make up my one life. I may lose some followers because they don’t care about the other areas of my life, but hopefully it will help to bring some clarity to those who continue to follow me, and it should just help to make it all easier for me which means more time focusing on the things I want to.

So, what exactly are the blogs that you’re running? I’m so glad you asked. (Okay, no one asked but surely someone is wondering.)

#1 This one!

This is where I will be sharing our homeschooling journey, our homeschool plans, what actually happens (not always what was on the plan) and tons of different book lists. This is also where I will be sharing a few products I make, right now I am focusing on some literature based unit studies, these are for homeschoolers or teachers and I’m hosting on my Teachers Pay Teachers shop.

I’ve only had this site for two months but it’s been going really well, traffic is increasing and I haven’t run out of ideas to write about (score)! I plan on having new posts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (Friday usually being book list day, because #readallthebooks), I plan on treating this blog more like a business so I should keep up with it pretty well (unless I get discouraged, which happens some days but I’m pretty determined to stick it out for awhile). I’m not going to beat myself up if I miss a post here or there but there should at least be two posts a week for the foreseeable future.

#2 My Personal-ish Blog

This blog is a bit of a mix . . . it’s where I hold my photography session info and share a few sneak peaks from sessions, and host my online photo courses, but it’s mainly a personal blog about life and all the lessons I’ve been learning in my walk with Christ (lately? how parenting has shown me how powerless and selfish I really am).

I don’t plan on having a set day to have new posts on this blog, really, whenever the fancy strikes or I’ve got something amazing to share because God has opened my heart and eyes to something. But, ideally I’ll be posting at least once a month.

And the last blog . . .

#3 Notebooks & Reverie

So, full disclosure: I started this blog last October and only wrote on it for a month and a half. But I really like the topic so my plan is to get myself more organized and streamlined and bring it back to life. Notebooks & Reverie started out as a blog to share blogging tips, obviously aimed at bloggers but in the future I hope to turn it more into a place to share about different ways to make an online income, not just for bloggers, but any one, especially fellow stay at home moms. There are a number of different (& legitimate) ways to make money online without having a blog and I know a lot of women out there who would like to do something while still staying at home. If you are in that category, stay tuned!

For Notebooks & Reverie I plan on posting 2 times a month, I want it to be consistent but I haven’t decided if it will be the 1st and 15th of every month or maybe the first and third Tuesday of every month . . . a little detail I need to sort out yet.

And there you have it! One girl, three blogs, streamlined social media.

I shared a very similar post to this on my personal blog last week and plan on doing the same over on Notebooks & Reverie next week, and then all my social media should be streamlined to just the one Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Pinterest. If you currently follow me at my Intentional Homeschooling account on any of those sites I’d suggest switching over right away, I plan on posting a few reminders on each of the sites but soon I’ll just be @chantelklassen everywhere. If you love all three of the blogs, great, this will be awesome! If you only love one or two I hope you can just skip over the posts that aren’t applicable to you and still enjoy following me on social media.

I hope this post was helpful in clarifying where I all am on the internet and what I’m all up to and hopefully this social media merger will be great for everyone involved! I know it will definitely free up some time in my life and live life a little more intentionally.

P.S. Part of the reason I started out with a separate Instagram account was so I could share awesome graphics like this one my husband texted me the other day (because the photographer in me couldn’t really stand the idea of putting them on my personal account) but with stuff this awesome (and true) I might just have to get over it and share them anyway.