by Joey | Mar 3, 2017 | beauty, Loves
Despite the funky mood I’ve been in all week, I did a decent job keeping anxiety at bay. Compared to last week, I’d say this was a “win” week in the anxiety department.
I’ve come to love my quiet time every morning. Call me crazy, but I’ve always been a morning person. It feels like stolen time. And for the last few weeks, I’ve spent the first hour of my day sipping my coffee and reading the Bible. I honestly thought I’d hate it, that it would be boring and grueling. But every time, I’m amazed. There’s a lot sitting on my heart these days, and I’m finding answers daily.
There’s a great peace that comes from unconditional faith. I’ve always been an optimistic person. I’m filled to the brim with hope and faith regularly. But this feels different. I also love hearing about where you are in your journey, what you’re struggling with, and how the Word is speaking to you.
A friend emailed me this week with lyrics to Sara Groves’s Word.
I’ve done every devotional
Been every place emotional
Trying to hear a new word from God
And I think it’s very odd,
that while I attempt to help myself
My Bible sits upon my shelf
With every promise
I could ever need
Ain’t that the truth.
This week was a fail, however, in the planning department. Productivity was low, and the distractions are real. So I intend to spend some time this weekend setting up next week for success.
I did do some research on methods to increase productivity when distractions are everywhere, so stay tuned for that post!
by Joey | Mar 2, 2017 | Real Life
Nostalgia has been haunting me lately. There’s a desperate longing for periods in my life that were just much simpler. The moments vary, whether it was high school, college, or even as recent as when we lived in our Buies Creek bubble.
Those simpler times certainly had their own troubles, I must remind myeslf. It’s just easy to put things in perspective in hindsight. Life these days is hard. Throat closing, panic attack inducing hard.
Nothing is wrong necessarily. It’s just that every single thing we do on a daily basis carries so much weight. There’s a physical and mental exhaustion that rides on the back of entrepreneurship. When every dollar you make depends solely on your hustle, your perspective of hard work shifts.
My brain feels constantly full. So full, in fact, that I’ve stopped making space for creativity. This blog is suffering. I haven’t written a single word in my current manuscript in months. Months. It’s not that I don’t have the time. That’s not the problem at all. I’ve just gotten into the habit of wasting time.
I get it. I do. But I miss bubbling up with creativity and being unable to fight the urge to tap out 1000 words, uncovering a story buried deep within.
The breakdown comes from a lack of planning. Because I spend so much of my time chasing Bliss, I find it easy to excuse away planning as a waste of time. So, then, “unnecessary” creative projects just crash and burn.
I told myself when I finished Yeah, maybe that I’d keep the momentum going. And now I can hardly remember what that exhilaration felt like. But the truth is, no one is going to do any of these things for me.
It’s been heavy on my heart lately. This hard-to-ignore feeling that if I don’t act on these things soon, they’ll slip away all together. But committing to them means sacrifice. Sacrificing down time, sleep, and time with friends. It was easier in Buies Creek, of course it was. I was in isolation with an MIA husband in a house that only set us back $600/month.
But if I’m waiting for the stars to align and deliver that kind of opportunity again on a silver platter, I might as well just give up now.
So, I guess once I say it, it’s real. You heard it here first. Book 2 is coming.
::dives into black hole::
by Joey | Feb 24, 2017 | beauty, Loves, Real Life
Current Mani: Revlon Naughty
I once read somewhere that entrepreneur means living a few years like most people won’t so you can live the rest of your life like most people can’t. That’s a pretty accurate description. The sacrifice is real, my friends. And if anyone tries to tell you it’s not, they’re lying to you. Building a business from the ground up is amazing and rewarding and wonderfully terrifying.
We are finally entering into our sweet spot. One year ago today, I purchased the www.blisscs.com domain completely unsure and unaware of what the year would hold. Remember, I’d done this before and it was a mistake.
I’ll only buy it for a year, I told Myra who wasn’t my business partner yet at the time. That way if it crashes and burns, I’m only out $1.77.
So, here we are one year later, I’m so happy and proud that we have to renew our domain. We’re running a full-blown functional business. Praise be to God!
It seems silly to me now as I sit here to write this that I let anxiety win this week. I worried instead of praising God for seeing us through this the last year. The perseverance and stamina required to bring us to this point was a gift. So for that, I will be forever grateful.
In case you’re just here for the nails, here you go.
by Joey | Feb 23, 2017 | Devotional Series
Okay, so you probably know that we moved recently. And if you want the general story behind it, you can watch this vlog. But what you might not know is that pretty much everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
From crazy unexpected fees to finding squatters living in our house, the whole thing was just one big mess. Now, you may know that I’ve been slowly reintroducing faith into my life. I think when you’re doing anything risky, having faith is pretty much the only way to find sanity.
Without hope and faith, I am nothing.
That being said, I’ve never actually read the Bible. It intimidated me, and quite frankly I was embarrassed of my lack of Bible knowledge. Those things stopped me time and time again. But it’d been on my heart for some time to actually start reading it. I’d been faithfully listening to Rick Warren’s Daily Hope podcast for months. And while that was something, I knew without getting into the Word, it wasn’t enough.
Then, crazily enough,I listened to Emily Maynard’s I Said Yes. And she said something that stuck with me.
I started reading the Bible regularly that day. Not books about the Bible, not devotions quoting Bible passages, not blogs about the Bible — but the actual Word of God.
So there it sat, this desire to dive into the Word. But I was embarrassed to ask for help, to admit that I’d never done it before, and that I didn’t know anything about it. I had no idea where to start. So I just let the desire hang in the air. I knew eventually it would become clear.
As things started to fall to pieces around me with the move, I went into action mode. For every disaster, there was a point of contact. And each time, I noticed that the representative who stepped in to solve the issue was named Matthew. Not Matt. Matthew. This didn’t happen once or twice. It literally happened for every single disaster that needed solving.
Later, on a call with my mom, I shared my troubles and joked about all the Matthews. Then it hit me. Huh, I said to her. I wonder if that’s God’s way of telling me that I should start reading the Bible with the book of Matthew.
I left it alone. In the days that followed, I started to have downloading issues with the Daily Hope podcast. Frustrated, I just skipped that part of my day. It didn’t take long for me to notice a significant difference in how my day went though without putting God first. So the next morning, I opened my Bible to Matthew, and I started to read.
Now, those of you who are familiar with the Word of God, you know that Matthew is the start of the new testament, the birth of Jesus Christ.
Sadly, I did not know this. I was completely unaware of what I would find in the pages of Matthew. But unsurprisingly, I found the exact answers I was looking for.
As I dive into this journey, I’d like to share with you how I’m seeing God show up in my life. We all have our struggles, and God shows up differently for each of us. But sometimes we could all use the reminder that He is there, He hears us, and He only wants good for us.
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks the door will be opened.
Matthew 7: 7-8
by Joey | Feb 17, 2017 | beauty, Real Life
Current Manicure: Revlon Sublime Strawberry.
This is one of those annoying scented polishes. But the color is so dreamy that I can’t give it up. I came across this polish a few years ago when I was on a mad hunt for OPI’s Chapel of Love. Surprisingly, that polish is pretty hard to get your hands on. This is a pretty dang close dupe. I kind of miss the days of a good old polish hunt. I haven’t done that in a while.
Current favorite thing: the string of Christmas lights hanging on the dresser in our bedroom. There’s nothing quite like climbing into bed to relax in the evening in the glow of fairy lights.
Current obsession: crockpot meals. Since moving to the suburbs, I’ve found my meal prepping groove again. I guess there really is something to the whole taking ourselves out of takeout and delivery heaven. I’ll find a way too cook pretty much anything in a crockpot. Tonight’s meal? Crockpot Philly cheese steak sandwiches. Want the recipe on the blog?
Current lesson: letting your faith be bigger than your fear when you’re building a business is a lot harder than it seems online. I found a quote the other day about entrepreneurship that was pretty spot on: “Entrepreneurship: Living a few years of your life like most people won’t so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.” It’s fun, exciting and wonderful–but absolutely terrifying 90% of the time.
Current favorite? It’s Friday, and I have big plans to sit on my couch and catch up on Superstore with the husband tonight.
Happy Friday, y’all!
