Over the years I’ve witnessed and felt that time is always the greatest struggle a content creator has. It's no matter if you are a master of time management or not things come up. I've seen massive content creators both publicly and privately on platforms from YouTube to Hive struggle with time when they have fallen ill, have massive projections that take them away from their normal content or they simply want to go on vacation. Many of the world’s biggest content creators are quite known for not taking any real time off as there will be no content if they do.

I’ve changed my tactics when trying to deal with time. While it seems something impossible to master you might notice my last year on Hive has been rather uninterrupted. As far as me being consistent with putting out content. Expect naturally a couple of weeks ago with a single missed post.

Over the years I’ve had to deal with computer hardware issues, illness, losing loves ones and friends, hurricanes, losing power, being out of town, relocating, long-term projects, and so many other things. A lot of the time any one of these and I’d go missing for a while. Back in July of 2022, I declared I was no longer a day of content creator.

As many have known for a while now if I can avoid it I’d rather have most if not all of a week’s content already written and mostly ready to go. Maybe I have some last-minute corrections to make, links to add, and tags. Then you have all the usual posting, promoting, replying to comments, and long-term maintenance of a piece of content.

Sunday, May 28th

I had a trip that was a couple of states over for eight days. It was quite an interesting one that I’ll be sharing at some point. It includes trains, exploring a city, beaches, casinos, and crazy people!

I knew going into it that delays happen. I also might need a day or two to recover from that trip. So I planned and grinded to get ahead enough on content so I could be gone for a while. I not only had all those posts needed for the time frame scheduled to post with auto Tweets as well linked out the post. I had almost the following week set up on auto as well.

Expect Sunday, May 28th. There were a lot of things that transpired for me to miss that day. It’s not that I did not have a backup piece of content on stand by I could have slid into that unannounced TBA slot I knew I had. I just was the piece of content I wanted to publish with how it was. I had more important things to deal with instead.

I got back from my trip and I was quite sick the next day. I am still fighting off whatever I caught even though it’s been over two weeks now. Before I left I had more or less everything I owned that was not going in the suitcase in boxes.

Even my computer was in a box. The desk that it use to sit on I had moved along with all my stuff as well. The desk became quite damaged. I decided I’ll just order a new desk. It would take a couple of days to arrive.

I’ll take that time and hopefully rest up. I needed that time of just doing nothing but sitting on a mattress on the floor in an empty room. I’ve been burning myself out on all fronts trying to do a lot for a while now.

The plan was to release a post about my new desk that day. I however had way too many things to do and not enough time to work out that post. Being gone for as long as I was causing some issues and things I needed to take care of. Many times getting a post out is not the priority.

Despite so much effort to get posts out on a regular base. I’m in a place mentally where I already accepted by the time I turned on that computer it was not going to happen. I also never planned to be gone for as long as I was so things turned out a lot better than I was expecting. Time yet again got me.

Mondays

One change I’ve made over the years from when I started is I stopped trying to have seven posts a week. Yes, I can do it. I’d rather use a single day of the week however to get organized, be ahead, and have that day for posting if needed.

While it has not always been a Monday as it sometimes has been a Tuesday. There is always that day of the week if I’m in town that I want to sit down and take stock of things.

I want to make sure I’m all caught up on replying to comments on Hive, Twitter, some Discords, or elsewhere. Despite my many changes over the years replying to people is still something I for as long as I can want to do.

This is also the day of the week if for whatever reason I happen to miss a day or maybe something came up and I just have to post about it. It’s that wiggle room in an otherwise scheduled week that I leave myself open.

I feel many don’t give themselves that single day that they truly need. Far too many have to hit the post button the moment they have typed the last word for a piece of content. Thankfully I’ve moved far beyond that as a content creator to the point some people would lose their minds knowing I was almost gone for two weeks and only missed a single posting day I had planned.

Using Inspiration For Crazy Writing Days

As any content creators know you are working on content if you have inspiration to do so or not. If you don’t that single day you missed publishing can turn into a week and then a month if not more. There are so many reasons to just not feel like working on content.

A most recent example for me is that Diablo IV just came out. Do you think I want to stop gaming like crazy to write content? HECK NO! I’d rather be in the game right now slaying demons and setting things on fire.

Despite that, I still published a schedule saying I was coming out with six posts the week the game was released. I delivered. As that is when you as a content creator tend to get the most views, comments, and traction.

There have also been many weeks I’ve not worked on any content at all other than the daily final stages of get-something-ready-to post. Maybe that day was nice outside or I was really into a game or I was out of town or I was sick. Regardless there are a thousand reasons why you are not feeling inspired to work on the content that day.

Stuff happens. Despite if you have the mindset “I must write regardless of anything.” Sometimes it’s just not worth it. I’ve had days where I’ll spend three hours and still be on a blank page. Slightly better days were in the time I could have written a post I’ll just have 200 words done instead. Those days suck.

That is why I like to be lazy! The only way to be lazy however is by being ahead. So not lazy? When you are no longer forcing yourself to write daily because you have nothing to post for that day. Interesting things can happen if you allow it.

Instead of people having the mindset that they need to work on content if they have the inspiration or not. They need to have the mindset that when inspiration strikes they have a mountain they can write. That however means you have been slacking or have a lot of experience already at the ready to pull from.

I don’t think most people understand what having a truly inspiriting writing day is. It’s not a day where you find yourself being able to focus for six hours of working on content. It’s not a day that you somehow wrote 5k words instead of the usual 1.2k for content.

I’m talking about you starting writing and the entire day has gone by in what only felt like three hours. You did not just write one post you wrote an entire week or more of content. You somehow managed to write some crazy amount of words that people won’t believe you if you told them.

Those days tend to be wasted for many as they think in terms of what they are posting today and that’s it. When inspiration strikes and you can go on a writing frenzy only if you are set up to do so.

Organizing Is Worth The Time

I could tell you the key to what a lot of I do is being organized. While this is true everyone has to find their way to organize. My crazy methods more than likely won’t work for others. It’s something I’ve worked on for quite a long time.

Sometimes I’m more of a visual person when it comes to things. Before I usually write up my weekly schedule I like to lay out all the content on the desktop. That way I see it every day and I know what I have finished and what if anything I still have to write for the week.

I’ll also go into my screenshots from video games I’ve played or photos I’ve taken and break everything down into a bunch of different folders. It helps me at least to see how it all unfolds.

This can be quite a daunting task. I believe for Hogwarts Legacy alone I had over 2k screenshots I went through and organize spending hours. I had a similar amount for a large trip I recently came back on as well.

Having that many screenshots or photos to think about all at once can be quite a daunting task. However, once you break things down into more manageable bites it’s no longer I have 2k screenshots. It’s I have 200 for a single post or whatever it ends up being.

This is also part of the organizational step of working out the different content I’ll be writing up. Am I doing a single post or will there be multiple posts? Am I just sharing my experiences organized by time? Will I be making guides? What do I feel should be highlighted the most? What am I missing that I still need to do?

I can’t stress enough how much I love using folders to keep things organized. Beyond just holding screenshots it makes it easy to keep in the same place any notes, topics I want to discuss, release dates, and any other information.

While this might feel like a waste of time to organize. Having to go through 2k screenshots to find a single one because I was too lazy to properly organize things in the first time. Now that is a waste of time.

Long-Term Projects And Working Around Writer's Block

As a content creator, I feel I’m in this crazy yet cool place. I get to work on long-term content and series that don’t get posted for a long time. It would sometimes be almost a year before the first parts I worked on were even released. On top of that any time I hit writer's block working on one thing I just switched to another.

There is always something I wanted to do on Hive. It was quite crazy. I’ve told many people it’s stupid to do as you won’t get much out of it for doing it. So it has to be something of a passion project. I’m talking about posting something the size of a novel over a couple of days.

For those that don’t know I released a 70k+ word interactive fiction on Hive called Ice Planet back in early May. That was a project I worked on and off again for almost a year and I go over more of it in detail here.

There are three main things keeping someone like me from doing that kind of project. First, creating almost daily content gets in the way of working on other things as that content takes priority first. Second, you need a lot of inspiration even more so when you thought a project you were working on might end at around 10k words but ended up being over 70k instead. Third, writer's block is going to happen on a large-scale project despite how much you don’t want it to.

Thankfully I’ve already covered how I resolved most of these issues. I stopped being a day of content creator. Also when I was inspired and had a writing day Ice Planet was there for me to put that momentum into.

Now Ice Planet was quite a different kind of content for me. It’s the kind of content on a good day I might only write 1k words. As it required a lot of thinking, reworking things, and it’s so different from my day-to-day stuff. On my best day, I managed almost 5k words, and I considered quite a writing crazy day for that project.

What about writer's block you might be thinking? Well, that is when I simply switched over to writing about something else. Ice Planet was a long-term project. I did not work on it daily so when I hit writer's block on it I worked on other things. Thus, beating writer's block the best way you can by switching to something else. This also meant when I was working on my daily content and hit writer’s block I just switch back over to Ice Planet.

This however meant that I had to have time. I had time to work on Ice Planet instead of daily content when I could. I also had time to work on daily content instead of Ice Planet. Many people struggle to try and keep both those kinds of things going without neglecting one or the other.

The Future

Back in December of 2022, I got tired of always feeling like I was just trapped behind a computer all the time. I wanted to go out into the real world and do a lot more stuff. This as it turns out would end up being a new content series I’ll start releasing this coming Friday.

I know many this year are sad to already find out I won’t be doing my normal gardening posts. That is something I’ve done for a couple of years now and I truly loved it. I am however no longer in a position to have a garden. That is just how it is for the time being. Instead of looking at it in a negative I decided to come up with a different kind of real-life content. As I’ve missed going out.

I’ve shared some parts of it that won’t be making it into the series for the most part. It was not so much about the places I could go to play Pokémon Go. It’s about switching worlds and showing the other side of it. The real-life adventures I’d have exploring cities, casinos, parks, and so on.

I’ve only recently decided to call it Switching Worlds along with the fact it will start rolling out Friday on this account. This is also not something I’m even close to being done with either. I have no idea how many posts I’ll end up creating for it. For all I know this could just be a 2023 thing or something I write about a few times a year for the next six or more years.

This was also something I was not sure I was ever going to share either. I’ve been going on adventures. Taking a lot of photos and those photos of just been sitting around in folders. As I just did not have the time to write anything up between making time for the adventures, all the content I write weekly, and everything else going on.

Back in January, I tried to write a post about one of my adventures. That post I felt did not turn out. It was just not the right time for it.

Then some inspiration hit me. I knew once Diablo IV came out I was going to be hard-pressed for time. As that would be taking not only all my attention but any free time I have as well. I also had to get caught up on writing up a few pieces of content before then just in case I had nothing to post about the game.

There was then this window of just a week before Diablo IV launched. I decided it was now or those photos would just sit forever in folders unused. So I went for it. I got to say I love so far how a large portion of those adventures have turned out.

There are still quite a few unwritten adventures and I’m sure I’ll go on many more. I had way too much content to try and write up in a week. It was however there waiting for when I had that moment of inspiration.

The first post will be about going to the casino. For those who don’t like the casino while that is quite a heavy theme in a few of the adventures and places I go. There are many other things as well.

I also find it kind of fitting. In the past, I’ve tried to write about my casino adventures. That however ended up being something I abandoned. It turns out there was a much wider story to tell. Many times the casino was just the backdrop. Other times it had nothing to do with the casino at all.

Final Thoughts

I do find it quite shocking after all these years I’m still around. For now, it seems I’m taking you along for some past and future adventures. Where it goes from there I still have no idea. At least when I have places to setup a computer, an internet connection and some time to write.

As usual in a few days I have a late night casino trip planned to celebrate this milestone. One should always take the time to appreciate such things and celebrate. You never know when you will run out of time.

Other Content

• My Fifth Anniversary
• My Fourth Anniversary Celebrating It On Hive
• My Third Anniversary Of Being A Content Creator

Information

Photos were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Cover screenshot from Diablo IV.