I told myself I would be consistent this year.

 

But like every year, consistency becomes paralyzing because I try WAY too hard to create something unique and different.

 

For. Every. Single. Piece. Of. Content.

 

I’m annoyed with myself, and I figured you may have had similar experiences with paralyzing perfectionism, so I wanted to ask—

 

Can I talk to you like you’re my diary for today?

 

 

 

I’m sitting on the couch reading while my mind is berating me non-stop,

 

 

But, like the procrastinator I am, I decide to tell my brain,

 

 

As I flip to the last page to read the Acknowledgments (am I the only person who reads a book literally cover to cover?), my brain is back on its shit:

 

 

 

My brain starts counting on its metaphorical tentacles, 

 

 

I’m sitting on the couch staring straight ahead, having this internal pep talk with myself, when my boyfriend breaks me out of my trance by screaming,

 

“I’M BOOOOOORED.”

 

I’ve told you this before, First name / girl , but I’m a people-pleaser.

 

 

So, I tell my brain to SHUT UP again because now I have to search for a restaurant we can go to for Sunday Funday!

 

 

“Should we take the bikes?!” Zack asks with his cute, gigantic smile. 

 

I glance outside our French doors and see a light sheen of water reflecting the trees in our backyard, telling me it must have rained earlier.

 

 

Eh… 

 

“Why not?!” I answer.

 

I stare back down at my phone, trying to remember what I was looking up when my brain starts to do that thing again…

 

 

 

 

 

But we haven’t eaten lunch, so SCREW work (or maybe I can get stuff done while we’re eating?), let’s go get lunch from 2:30-4, come back home between 4-4:30, which will give me 30-60 minutes to write Plot Twists & Tips!

 

“Where are we going?” Zack interrupts The Brain That Won’t Turn Off.

 

“Uuuugh, I don’t want to decide! You pick!”

 

Being the foodie that he is, it takes Zack all of 20 seconds to settle on going to The Drunken Clam on St. Pete Beach for snack.

 

Which is perfect since it’s just 10 minutes away. We’ll have time to grab my parents afterward and head back to the beach for that bar I promised them with the best sunset seats on Florida’s west coast.

 

“We should probably turn your bike on,” Zack says, opening the garage door.

 

“Oh yeah, I don’t think I’ve ridden it in like… 3 months!” I say, picking up my bike key and following him outside.

 

“Oh, shit— let me charge my phone. I only have like 9%.”

 

I skip back inside, slip my phone into the kitchen charger, and go out the garage doors just in time to see Zack turn the key on my bike.

 

 

 

“Damnit. Your battery’s dead.”

 

“Poop,” I answer, watching him take out his phone.

 

“I’ll have to look up where the battery is on this thing. Can you hand me that charger behind you?”

 

I turn around, grab the portable battery jumper-charger-thing, hand it to him, and continue to watch him YouTube on his phone because—for once— my mind is blank.

 

I don’t have anything to do but wait.

 

“Can you like... help me Google?” He says, looking up at me.

 

Whyyyy that’s a 2-person activity, I’ll never understand.

 

I’m frustrated because my brain finally gave me 5 seconds of pure silence, but now I have another Task.

 

I get my phone (which is now at 19%) and start looking at how to charge a 2006 Harley Sportster battery.

 

Except, by the time I went back out to the garage with a YouTube video pulled up, Zack already has the bike in pieces and is putting the cables on the negative and positive terminals.

 

I can hear the back of my mind whispering  “Put your phone back on the damn charger!” but I tell my brain to SHHHHH! as I watch Zack bring my Sportster back to life.

 

“Here, that should be good. Turn the key.”

 

I walk over.

 

Glance at my phone.

 

Make a mental note that it’s now past 3 p.m.

 

Turn the key in the ignition.

 

Press my finger down on the starter aaaaand!

 

 

“Are you sure you turned it on?”

 

I know how to turn on my bikeeeee.😤 

 

But I simply step aside as Zack tries to turn the ignition in some magical way only a man knows how to do.

 

 

 

“Damn. I don’t think we have jumper cables, either.”

 

But I know we have jumper cables.

 

My brain scans the garage, my vision sharpening like the world just switched to first-person mode in Call of Duty— a neon green target bouncing over the recycle bin, the cardboard boxes, the yellow Jeep—until it locks onto the giant tool chest behind it.

 

 

Without a word, I walk to the front of the Jeep, squeeze myself between the grill and the bicycles leaning against it (yes, we need to clean our garage, okay?!), and shimmy into a squat between the side of the Jeep and the tool chest.

 

I reach my hand in the bottom pit and pull out…

 

 

“Oh, yay!” Zack says.

 

“Here, I need to charge my phone,” I say as I shift my hip around the front of the bike and hold out the jumper cables to him so I can hurry inside.

 

“Wait! Can you hold these?” He asks, holding out one side of the cables.

 

I stop. I hold the jumper cables. 

 

I go back inside. I plug in my phone.

 

And that's when my brain decides it’s time to check my texts instead of, you know, letting it charge.

 

I see that it's now 3:30 p.m. and I have a text from my mom saying they she and my dad are on their way (it's a 1.5 hour drive).

 

I call her and let her know Zack and I haven’t eaten all day so we’re going to a place on the beach.

 

“Oh… we figured we were eating dinner with you.”

 

First name / Girl, when I tell you that my people-pleasing heart could not handle this turn of events, I'm not being dramatic.

 

I already had a bike that wouldn’t start, a boyfriend to feed, a DEAD PHONE, alcohol to avoid, and the crushing guilt of NOT working on this beautiful Sunday…

 

“Honestly, by the time you get here, it’ll be close to 6, so we’ll need to go to the other bar first to catch the sunset. We’ll get food after. I’ll send you the places so you can look at what they have. But let me let you go because I neeeeed to charge my phone.”

 

We hang up and because my ADHD is wildly out of control, I go on Threads for literally no reason other than to try to kill my phone faster than I can save it.

 

My brain is doing that silent non-stop whisper thing where it’s telling me I should probably go check on the bike, so I oblige to shut it up.

 

Except when I step out into the garage, my bike is not running, and Zack is still trying to find where to put the positive cable.

 

I sigh. “Let me get my phone.”

 

14%.

 

We’re both standing there looking for a way to find the Mysterious Positive Battery Terminal when my mind starts calculating,

 

 

 

 

"Okay, it says we can clamp it on anything metal that doesn’t have paint,” Zack says, calling me back to reality.

 

“Are you sure?” I look back down at my phone, fast-forwarding through the YouTube video I paused to see where their Mysterious Positive Battery Terminal is.

 

“Yes, it'll work."

 

“Okay,” I say absentmindedly, my brain simultaneously processing the bike problem, my parent's ETA, my phone being at 10%, if there is anything I can snack on now, and the newsletter I’m neglecting on this beautiful Sunday.

 

I go inside to plug my phone in, and that’s when I hear the sweet, sweet sound of my Sportster roaring to life in the garage.

 

“YAAAAAS!" When I go back to the garage, Zack is standing triumphantly next to my bike as it purrs like a kitten.

 

“You’ll need to take it for a spin around the block.”

 

“Okay!”

 

I go back inside, check my phone (3:42), and read the text saying my dad wants to go to Ruby Tuesdays or something for dinner.

 

And because my brain has 0 space left to figure out where or if there is a Ruby Tuesday or something around here, I call my mom.

 

“Okay, well we’re hungry so we’re still going to go to The Drunken Clam, but the bike is working, I just—“

 

“You need to drive it around the block first,” Zack says coming into the house.

 

Oh-ho-hooo my gosh, First name / girl..

 

 

“I just have to drive it around the block first like I was saying,” I continue to say my mom on the phone.

 

“Can you guys just figure out where to eat? I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I have to go drive the bike.”

 

I hang up the phone from my Saint of a Mother, snatch up my pink helmet, storm outside to the garage, and sit on my bike.

 

I aggressively shove the helmet over my head, ignoring the pinch as it folds over my (newly-pierced) vertical helix, and start backing up the bike with the world’s BIGGEST ATTITUDE.

 

Well, as much attitude as you can have sitting with a pink helmet on a Sportster with a (probably) bleeding ear, waddling backward and forward trying to get the 500 lb. monstrosity over the rubber lip of the garage.

 

 

Almost hit Zack’s car.

 

Where I proceed to do an embarrassing 20-point turn.

 

 

Once I finally have the bike facing down the driveway, I feel all my stress ball up in my chest like a fireball.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m not proud to admit this, but I shot out of that driveway like a bat outta hell. 🦇

 

(mom, i know you’re reading this but you probably don’t have your readers on so just known that i said i carefully and cautiously tip toed my bike down the driveway, looked both ways, and drove down the street at a respectable 10 miles per hour).

 

There’s this thing called Wind Therapy, and it’s real, First name .

 

As I ride around the neighborhood— fuming under my breath about Zack’s comments, all the shit I wasn’t getting done, and myself for putting WAY too much pressure on myself to please everyone— I felt the wind licking the flames of that ball of fire on my chest until it was extinguished.

 

That is, until I get back home and realize it's 4:15 and my parents will be here in under an hour, I’m hangry, Zack is hungry, my phone still isn’t charged, and my ear IS bleeding.

 

I storm into the house, pick up the phone, and text my mom that I need to work and we’ll hang out another weekend.

 

I go into my office, aggressively open my laptop, start typing, throw my pug pillow on my carpet, and…

 

 

Anyway, I started my period the next day. 😂

 

I really, truly hope you’re not like me where you put all this INSANE pressure on yourself.

 

 

But if you are, you know the feeling:

 

Watching the clock tick down from some imaginary timeline you set for yourself to Accomplish This Big Thing so that you’re on schedule to Accomplish This Big Thing #2.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next thing you know, you’re on a motorcycle shooting down your driveway like a bat outta hell. 🦇

 

(i mean… you’re carefully and cautiously tip-toed your bike down the driveway, looked both ways, and drove down the street at a respectable 10 miles per hour).

 

 

I call it the Thursday Night Theory.

 

Basically, you choose ONE night per week to post something.

 

ONE night.

 

ONE day.

 

ONE platform.

 

ONE piece of content.

 

 

I started calling this The Thursday Theory after reading James Clear’s book Atomic Habits.

 

 

Like how ABC turned Thursday nights into “Shondaland Thursdays,” airing Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, and How to Get Away with Murder back-to-back with the iconic slogan, “TGIT” (Thank God It’s Thursday). 

 

 

So, if you want to be consistent AND cultivate a fanbase so that your audience starts:

 

You’re my Thursday Night (except we do Tuesdays here). And while I haven’t nailed down sending this newsletter at the same time every Tuesday quite yet, I’ve been consistent with it for 4 weeks in a row now.

 

Which might not sound like much, but after last Sunday, the busy Monday I had, and the painful Tuesday I’ve had, today I wanted nothing more than to tell myself,

 

 

But I care. And I notice.

 

Which is why I’m damn proud of myself for writing this email in my Notes App on the couch with Lady Pug in my arms.

 

But now this newsletter is (finally) over. 

 

And I’m going to go eat and watch SNL with my Lil’ Family.

 

If you don't follow me on Threads (you should), I've been talking about (every thought that comes into my head) how I'm changing up my business in 2025.

 

 

I'm no longer focusing on DFY blog writing services. INSTEAD, I'm offering DFY SEO website copy service. 

 

There are 2 reasons for this:

This means I ALSO have to rewrite my entire website (which I'll be documenting).

 

In the meantime, you can contact me here if you're in need of:

I'm ALSO launching my first mini-offer this month! 

 

It's called Your Story Subscription and it's a weekly email series where you get 3 audience-specific prompts to make your stories more engaging and relatable. 

 

Think: practicing your brand voice, working with idioms and similes, storytelling from different POVs.

 

AND BECAUSE I AM ON IT THIS MONTH (something to do with it being Gemini's year or maybe because I'm a Sag rising? Idk, I still don't get astrology), I'm ALSO sharing the journey of how I'm growing my blog to 10,000 monthly website visits this year!