Settled in with My Love

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It is now January 2021 and we are in the full swing of things. My sleep schedule is ALL jacked. I have celebrated my 2^nd New Year’s Eve in Warsaw, Poland and my family has laid my Grand-grand to rest. 

I started focusing on everything in life and getting sad. I know it is because I was not getting enough sleep at night, but I just could not get sleepy. I was not expending enough energy throughout the day to tire myself out. And my brain was in overdrive!

I know, I know… I planned for this. Have you ever planned for something and knew what the bigger picture would look like, but once you are in the moment the picture looks different? That is how I felt. Plus, everything in Poland was on lockdown, I only knew Mateusz’s friends and family, and watching TV, washing clothes, cooking, and grocery shopping were not doing it for me. Ya girl needed an intervention!

My best friend, Nikima, said she knew how I felt because she is a stay at home mom. She stated that no matter how much you plan for it, you do not realize how mundane a stay at home anything is until you do it. I take all of my hats off to anyone who does it because I do not think it is for me.

The original plan was not to be in the house every day. I had planned to take in person art, yoga, and language classes. I was going to make friends organically and make Poland my happy place. Covid-19 changed those plans because everything was closed and nothing was in person. *tear*

My best friend, Tyeisha, suggested that I join the Meetup app to find things to do and people with the same interest as me. Well, guess what. EVERYTHING is closed. *starts sobbing* But, that led me to another idea and I started joining all of the Polish groups on Facebook. LoL! And I mean all of them. I joined an Expat group, English speakers in Warsaw, Girls Gone International-Warsaw, you name it!

Then, I started researching ways to make a passive income or make money online. Because it is also difficult to see money going out of your account and no money coming in. Woo-child! I was going through a mini crisis. I was looking for jobs every day and reading through 5-10 jobs night and day. It is very difficult living in a country where you do not speak the language. And I want you to know the Polish language is difficult to learn. 

That is when I came up with the idea to start a blog to document my journey with Mateusz and learning to love Poland.  My friend, Catherine, ALWAYS would talk about her blog and how she was making money from it. I thought, why not? What do I have to lose? And it could not hurt.

I posted my first blog post on 1/8/21 and I have been able to consistently post at least once a week. Sometimes, I have to do like Nikima said and think of it like a job because I do not want to write about myself sometimes. But, seeing all of the support makes my heart happy ☺ It has been almost 4 months and I am still at it. Woohoo! 

I did my first post on the google blogging platform Blogger, then wordpress . com, and finally I got the url right (thank you Catherine!) and made my home on Siteground. Through Siteground I purchased my domain (blacktopoland.com) and use the wordpress.org platform to host my blog. That was soooo much fun! SIKE! I created 3 different blog platforms within less than 2 weeks *rolls eyes* I should have asked more questions the first time I talked to Catherine. LoL

So, here we are and I am trying to absorb all of the information I can to bring traffic to my site with the hopes of monetizing this platform of love. LMAO! There is so much to learn and I am ready! Leave a comment or contact me if you have any questions!