The Stoner Mom Diaries: stream-of-consciousness blatherings on the personal life of a stoner mom

The Stoner Mom Diaries | Another One

Well stoner fam, we did it. Somehow, probably with the help of cannabis, we’ve managed to survive yet another year. I have been spending these first days of January working on organizing my calendar, planner, computer, and files. Refining daily schedules and making a few small resolutions to hold myself accountable in 2019. It’s a new year but my same old life. This year I’m not making any lofty goals but instead am going to focus on refining what works, what already exists, what we already know. God, look at these sentences. Can you tell that I’m high?

New Year, Some Obsessions with Time Management

School started back up this morning, and as I drove away after dropping off the girls, I couldn’t help but feel relieved to be back to the routines that our lives revolve around. Every year, from Thanksgiving to the end of winter break, I take a short social media detox and spend a lot less time on the internet. Instead I focus on my home, my family, my friends, and my self. Just a few weeks where I change my expectations and allow myself to be the person I really am, an introvert with limited energy for social interactions.

But as of today my holiday hibernation is over, and it’s time to get back to work, not as mom, but as the stoner mom. And my first step to getting back into work mode is always to spend a day focusing on the systems in place. That means building a productive and realistic schedule, refining routines, and planning for a strong first quarter.

So that’s what I’ve been doing. I bought a new Moleskin journal late last year and I’ve been setting it up as my 2019 bullet journal. I’m been journaling a lot in it, sometimes filling out an entire page of stoned observations. Most often though, I’m just jotting down a few sentences about what happened that day.

Back in 2017 I discovered the GTD method and it is the backbone of how I run both my personal life and business. Last year I started using a combination of Omnifocus, Notion, and my bullet journal as the main tools of the system, and I am very satisfied, so this year I’ll be following the method once again. You can read the basics of GTD in my Getting Things Done for Stoners series.

I’ve always been a creature of routine, but as I get older I find myself wanting more and more to refine those routines until they become habits set into my bones. I want the basics of every day life to be so engrained in my psyche that I go into autopilot and cruise through chores and to-do’s with never a question of how I should be spending my time.

The End of 2018 at Casa de la Stoner

We had a lovely round of holiday cheer over the past several weeks. Christmas was great, all the kids were sufficiently spoiled. David surprised me with a new video camera setup, and I gave him an extremely sharp chef’s knife. The kids got a range of new things, including a Nintendo Switch, skates, books, roller blades, clothes, toys, even a bowling ball for Miles! A lot of stuff, but they’re all such good kids. Polite and well-behaved, never disrespectful, all with excellent grades. It’s a joy to be able to spoil them a couple of times a year.

At the beginning of this week my oldest daughter Victoria turned 12, which of course meant another round of gift giving, celebration, and just a small bit of panic for me. Twelve years old means 6 years left before she’s 18. And that thought, my goodness. The thought of a day when they’re not here in this house anymore…

But I don’t want to dwell on that now. For now she’s here, they’re all under our roof, so I’m just going to savor the time as I have it and trust that we’re doing a good enough job that they won’t completely ignore us when they’re adults.

Stoner Mom News | the business side of the stoner mom

Speaking of things that make me feel old and insecure; in June this website will be five years old! That fact really has me in my feelings, and so I’ve been dwelling a lot on what I want to accomplish here in this 5th year of creating cannabis content. Here’s what I’ve come up with.

Content Resolutions

The Stoner Mom has been a profitable business for a few years now, and so this year I am not looking to make any huge changes or meet any big goals. Instead, in 2019 I will:

• Improve the overall quality of content I produce
• Achieve a consistent publishing schedule that has a comfortable balance of sponsored to non-sponsored content

Recently I’ve been talking a lot about my struggles with maintaining balance on my website. Though I’ve been blogging regularly for well over a decade, this is the first website that I’ve ever successfully monetized. So in a way, this kind of is my first rodeo. I am still learning how to balance sponsored, contractually obligated content, with original personal content.

The truth is, when you can only produce x amount of content per month, taking up the majority of those slots with sponsored content alienates the consumer and, in my case at least, frustrates the creator!

So, before I grow to loathe what I do because I’ve turned it into a job instead of the stoner hobby it began as, I am resolving to be cognizant of the balance of content I put out. I am going to focus a lot on posting more often and upping the quality of what I post, so that viewers, listeners, and readers don’t get annoyed by a constant stream of product spots.

This year I really want to write more. Video is fun and very important to my business, but I am so much happier when the bulk of my content is my writing and photography. I’m hoping to spend more time and attention to my photosets this year, and also want to focus on strengthening my voice and confidence as a writer.

And that’s where things stand in this stoner mom’s life. Now that kids are back in school I’m ready to kick my butt into gear and start producing all the content that’s been on my mind for the past many weeks. I love being The Stoner Mom, and I love being able to share slices of my world with you guys. I am so happy and thankful to be approaching my fifth year as a cannabis content creator, and I thank you for being a part of it. Thanks for watching, listening, reading and sharing your cannabis stories with me. Thanks for the constructive feedback when I ask for it, for the awesome, personal emails, and for the support of my sponsors. You guys are the best audience a stoner mom could ever ask for. Here’s to a very stoney, productive, and happy 2019!