The Balance | The Stoner Mom Diaries

When I started The Stoner Mom I did it for connection. Not necessarily in-person connection either. I wasn’t looking to meet people or make gobs of online friends. If you’ve been reading here long enough you know that I’m antisocial and not very conversational. I mean, communicating with others is half the reason I smoke weed.

The connection I craved was more in the need to be a provider. I wanted to provide others, particularly mothers, a friendly picture of a stoner mom. I wanted to challenge viewers to reassess their personal stereotypes of a cannabis-using mother, and for them to extend that thinking to all responsible adults.

I wanted people to look at my life and think, wow, who would have thought that lady smokes so much weed?

This year, however, there has been a shift in my content that reflects more on the industry I work in and less on how I parent my children or manage my family.

Some of this is because I have this natural response to guard myself as my audience grows. There’s more editing involved when you feel more eyeballs on you, that’s just a part of being responsible.

But another reason is that The Stoner Mom pays my mortgage. It is my only stream of income. I don’t have health insurance, and there’s no retirement plan here.

But…when I place producing sponsored content above personal content, I end up feeling less like my actual self and more of a store-bought version of myself.

I used to write about my love life, and my kids, and how I run my house. I used to get stoned and be nearly poetic in my marveling of my loved ones. I used to write about blending families, organizing kids, and how to not be a shitty person.

Authenticity is a balance. I authentically need money to provide a roof over my head. Building an online business to provide that is not inauthentic. But it is inauthentic to forget the reason you started in the first place.

And so this is a stepping off point for coming back to journaling here.

I have been in extreme self-reflection mode, typical for me at this time of year. I’m an obsessive goal setter and a serial achiever. All of this thinking has led to two goals for the next year: produce more personal content, and make The Stoner Mom a financial success. I’ll refine those general themes into concrete things-to-do over the year. But for now, my hope is that next year I can continue to shape The Stoner Mom into a successful business, with a renewed focus on the things I love, namely extreme productivity and domesticity while stoned.