Here's to finishing my goals for the month! 

Happy New Year! Welcome to a secret project I've been working on: a serialized story for my blog! I'm excited to introduce you to Pam and her fight to regain hope and joy after a hard year. Check back every Monday for new episodes.

3. 2. 1.

Happy New Year.

Instead of cheers and clapping, I sank to the floor and cried as if I had lost everything.

And considering the last year, it almost felt that way. I didn’t usually stay up to see the new year, but I wanted to make sure the dreaded year had left.

In the space of the last year I had watched my parents grow apart, my best friend had told me we couldn’t be friends anymore, the man I had secretly loved for years had moved to be part of a church plant far away. It was the year I had clung so fiercely to my faith, and yet had left me begging God for something anything good.

It had been the worst year of my life. Now, it was gone. I wished I felt more relief. No, what I wanted was to feel hope.

I pulled myself into my desk chair and glanced toward my bible and then at my laptop. Neither option seemed like it would offer much relief from the pain inside of me. However, I opened the laptop. I opened my browser and scrolled on social media. It was a bad habit I had acquired but wasn’t sure I wanted to fight it.

I paused when I saw a perky, flat-stomached girl holding up a sign with a title. “This year is full of hope.”

It wasn’t a page I followed but I took the bait.

We all need hope for the new year, am I right?

Well, let’s make our own hope!

This year, I am choosing to make time for ME a priority. I will be doing one thing each week to be creative and fun. I’m bringing back some of the fun of my childhood by finally treating myself to Disney Land I’ve always wanted but was denied. Will you join me in making hope?

I rolled my eyes and continued scrolling. What a shallow empty kind of hope. If hope wasn’t bigger then me, it wasn’t much hope.

That’s when I saw it. On a green background with goldish lettering, she saw His Mercy is More. Oh! Carol posted it. She had followed Carol’s account for years, but she hadn’t posted much in the last few months. I read the caption.

Hey friends,

I have missed all of you. The community I have here online is precious to me.

This has been a rough few months for me and I wasn’t sure how to share about it online because it felt so sensitive.

When I got married four years ago, I fully expected to be a mom within a year. I suppose, technically, I am a mother, but none of my babies have lived past the seven-week mark in my womb. We’ve sought medical advice and no one has a clue what’s going on.

There’s some other stress going on in my life with my family, but it isn’t mine to share. Like I said, this hasn’t been an easy few months, but I keep coming back to the phrase from the song I love so much

His mercy is more.

As I enter the new year, I’m determined to keep a record of God’s mercies each day to remind myself of all He is to me and all He has done. I also plan to do something every day to slow myself down and enjoy the beauty God has created around me.

Will you join me? I’m calling in the weekly mercies challenge

I stared at the post. Tears filled my eyes. I had no idea this woman was struggling to have children or had miscarriages. She was one of the accounts I hated because I saw her and her husband happy and adorable while the person I still loved was far away and had probably forgotten about me.

I opened up the comments and took a deep breath. I saw many others were signing their names like they were signing a contract. I decided to do the same. I needed this. I needed to change. I needed this year to be better than the last.

My fingers hovered above the keyboard for a moment and then I typed: I, Pam Ellis, am taking the weekly mercies challenge.

I let out a long breath, this was going to be hard. It would be challenging. However, I would start…right after I slept.

Working retail during the holidays was nutty, but January felt like a respite. I glanced around the storefront and let out a happy sigh. Not many people got to work at a book and tea store. My Weekend Is Booked to a Tea was located in a strip shopping center, right between a pizza place and a video game store. Not the kind of place one would expect a cute little store full of tea, Christian fiction, and classic books, but here we were.

I walked over and grabbed a Lavender Vanilla tea bag and plucked it in my travel mug and poured steaming water over it. I was so grateful I was allowed to help myself to two or three bags of tea a day as an employee.

I took a deep breath of one of my favorite teas. I adored lavender. I loved that it was calming as well as had a floral feel.

“Pam! The new notebooks just arrived!” My boss called.

Setting my tea down. I turned toward the back room. Lacy stood amid several boxes with a box cutter in hand. This woman and her husband Jared co-owed this place. Somehow, they made it when other bookstores were failing.

“Too bad these didn’t arrive for the Christmas season.” I opened a box and saw the beautiful watercolor cover with a verse printed on the front. I could have sold all of these in November and December.

“God has other plans for these notebooks.”

I didn’t understand how Lacy could always be so confident in what God had for her. But she was.

“And the discount we got after these came in late will allow us to sell them for less. So, I would say, it should be good for business.”

I opened another box and stopped.  A wood background with lavender sprigs greeted me. In a scrolling letter, the cover read:

His Mercies were New Every Morning.

I had found the notebook to record the mercies I found each day. I would start with my job, lavender tea, and finding this notebook.

A little over a year ago, I noticed my newsletter was losing readers fast. I wanted to find out why and do better. So I took a survey. The number one reason people weren't liking my newsletter at the time was  they felt they were getting information that was already on the blog or social media. They wanted original content. This led me to radically change my newsletter as well as examine all my social media outlets.

I made the switch. I created original content for Instagram, Facebook, and my newsletter. My blog suffered and became little used (even though it is one of my favorite outlets). I spent time creating fun graphics for Instagram, spent more time making my newsletter original, and creating unique Facebook posts. 

It worked. People were loving it and engaged. 

And I burned out. 

I wasn't prepared to make that radical change. I quickly became exhausted trying to learn what people wanted in each space and creating that kind of content. I wanted to give my readers what they wanted. I really did, but within two months, I had gone silent across all my social media accounts because I had burned out. 

I learned some valuable lessons that I wanted to share with you. 

No matter what I'm doing as a creative, I need to make sure I never lose sight of my passion. This may be basic, but I was spending so much time creating content for social media, that I lost writing. Yes, there are still days (like today) I spend most of my time on blog posts and social media content creation. But I want to make sure that I'm spending more time on the reason for those posts - my writing. 

One of the things that caused my burnout was my inability to make cute little videos that are so popular right now.  I learned that while it's good to try new things, it's also okay to admit it's not for me. I will never be a TikTok star or make viral Instagram Reels. I'm just not good in front of a camera. I'm a writer, not a performer. That's okay. Trying to be something I wasn't burned me out quickly. I want to keep learning new skills and new ways to connect with my readers. However, I don't have to do things I'm bad at.

I'm very big on pushing myself to work when I don't feel like it. I have to be. If I didn't, I would write one day a week, edit a chapter once a month, and make zero progress. But sometimes, I push myself at the wrong times. I've learned that just as important as pushing myself to keep creating is using my creative rhythms to the best advantage. This means that on days like today, I write blog posts and create social media content because I was inspired to do so. The rest of this week, I'm working on editing and writing.

From my readers, I learned I needed to make original content for each outlet. But just as important, I learned the content I create always needs to be what I'm passionate about. I'll never be passionate about creating short videos for entertainment purposes. I don't even watch much of that kind of content. I'm passionate about writing, books, my family, and mentoring young women. I need to keep focused on those things.

What are some lessons you've learned from times of creative burnout?

It was right here a moment ago. My enthusiasm for starting the new year and diving back into blogging was here, but then suddenly it was gone. Where did it go? I had such passion – so many good ideas. I didn't understand where they went...

...until I stopped to think about it.

I got online and I saw what was being shared by authors and friends that had likes and comments:

• Praising a girl’s article about all the things her parents taught her that were wrong.
• Warnings about a damaging teaching.
• A short video mocking people who don’t like to read.
• A funny video with a fake argument defending a genre.
• A list of things people shouldn’t say to someone going through a certain struggle.

All of these things have some value. None of them are wrong in of themselves. But do you notice what I do? It’s all coming from a defensive and negative point. Yet, I get it. If you share something from a positive and happy point of view, you don’t get as much of a response. This is even true with book reviews. I rarely get a comment on a book I give five stars to, but usually get a few when I post a negative review.

So why did realizing this trend discourage me to the point I wasn’t blogging? I know that not participating in some trends sometimes means fewer people see my work. Like it or not, what is trending does affect what people are looking for. I looked at what I wanted to do and was good at doing and I see there isn’t as much of a market for it even from when I started.

• I’m not good at making videos. I’ve tried.
• I feel there is far too much tearing down out there. We need to spend a lot more time encouraging and building up.
• I’m not a trend setter or even the best at what I do.

When realized what had been holding me back from blogging, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders and I had so many ideas for blog posts and fun. So there is more coming to this more. And once again, I’m reminded that I have a lot of learning to do. I’m grateful that God is such a patient teacher.

Did you enjoy this post? It reminded me of this one I wrote in 2017.

A few days ago, a follower on my Instagram account reached out to me and asked me if I was okay. After all, I had gone silent on all my accounts. I didn't even finish my August Amazingness posts. Even this post, which I started a couple of weeks ago, has sat, waiting for me to finish writing it and actually do something on the blog. So why haven't I?

Truth is, I just felt burnt out.

Usually, I'm good at knowing when I'm getting close to burnt out so I can slow myself down. This time, my writing burnout came on suddenly and I just didn't feel like I could write, promote, or even get on social media. I'm not even sure why. Life is going well. Most of my writing burnouts come because of emotional exhaustion in life. 

As an author, one of the important parts of my job is making meaningful connections with my readers. In my ideal world, this would be through either in-person events or from them just reading my blog. But that isn't always how things happen. Most of my readers are looking to make the connection to me as an author on social media. 

This means I need to keep up with how and where on social media they are connecting.

In the last year, videos on Instagram or TikTok are the big deal. Many of my writer friends have created brilliant videos and some of my readers have been wanting me to do the same. But I'll let you in on a secret: I have no talent when it comes to short videos. I tried. I recorded a lot, tried to make some reels, and tried to get inspired to jump on the trend.

And I burned myself out.

I got so discouraged with it because I was trying to connect with readers, and I couldn't even put something together that I wanted to watch, much less share. It sent me into a spiral of wondering how I was going to keep connected with the readers I cared about as social media continues to change.  I felt so defeated. I felt like a failure.

Over the last few weeks, I've slowly been figuring out what I need to do. I still don't have all the answers. Part of me just wants to pull back from all social media and just post blog posts. Of course, I would miss all my readers I get to connect with, so that isn't going to happen.

I'm looking forward figuring out exactly what I need to do and how to make those meaningful connections with the skills I have. 

What are some of the ways you like to connect with authors? What makes a online connection meaningful to you?

I'm looking for some book lovers to join the launch team for my new novella coming out next month, Fanny's Hope Chest. It's the story of a 30-year-old girl struggling to find hope in her singleness.

As part of the launch team, you will get:

~ free review copy

~ some goodies in the mail

~ A chance to earn a free physical copy of the novella 

~ Exclusive giveaways

What is expected of you?

~ Share about the book on whatever online platforms you are on

~ Write a review for your blog and/or Goodreads

~ Have fun with a group of nice ladies

Interested? The launch team group will be on Slack, a business workspace application. No need to be on social media to take part! 

Find the book on Goodreads here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51812538-fanny-s-hope-chest

Apply for the launch team here: https://forms.gle/44rrj9kBcXvCWcb7A

A new year hopefully will mean a lot of new stories. Here's a peek at what's coming up:

 

I'm very excited about the Kate's Case Files this year. I have the next two books drafted and waiting for editing. My hope is to get four books published this year. This means... the series will almost be complete. 

One of the things I realized while writing books 6 and 7 is that the characters have grown and changed in ways I hadn't expected. So, the plan currently is to have 10 books in the series. 

*not final cover*

A Very Bookish 4th of July is in the works. I'm very excited about using characters from my A Very Bookish Thanksgiving story in this collection. My story is going to be based on Around the World in 80 Days. 

Lastly, is a huge dream of mine that I'm hoping to make a reality this year. A revamping of The Destiny Trilogy. I'm already taking with a cover designer and plan to begin beginning edits soon. This was my first published series and I made some big mistakes with it. But I've learned and want to make it even better.