Tag Archives: niche

Back to Blogging: Embracing Imperfection and New Beginnings

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Oh my dear readers! How crazy was my holiday?! Did you even notice that I took a two week hiatus and didn’t write anything? Did you even notice that I missed the last week of Advent, didn’t chat about the Love Candle or greet you for Christmas or New Year’s Eve? Not even a social media “hello”. I am a bad, bad blogger. The algorithms have all gone awry. I thought about a “word of the year” but never truly came up with one yet. I have no excuses.

And so we come back to another year flipped on the calendar. Time passes whether I write or not. Honestly, who really cares about our little life here anyway? Okay, Okay, I am hoping someone does. Or at least this little exercise is in my own best interest to “journal” and think and muse and use as my own creative outlet for some sort of ordering space in my own chaotic brain. If you’re reading this, then, congratulations! You get to come along for the ride as I purge my thoughts for my own mental health. Again, I have no excuses.

The weeks went by in a blur. Grand baby was born. Work. Holidays in the middle of an already hectic week. Travelling. Farm chores. Baby kisses and shoveling chicken poop. How exciting a life I lead. What’s the point? Why write anything here in my little corner of the internet? I’m thinking back to my very first blog posts about niches and why I started mittonmusings in the first place. To learn. To try. It didn’t matter that I didn’t fit in to the typical blogger mode. I am terrible at getting a good photo. I’m not the one snapping selfies in the bathrooms or videoing in the thrift stores. I don’t make good “art” documentaries or farm instructional videos. I’ve never written a book. I don’t even have Tiktok. I can use a filter, but I still need help editing a reel. I am very, very far from perfect.

Sigh. Maybe that’s the point. In this fast paced world of A.I. technology and rapidly changing fads, my {cough} fifty {cough} something person is on the way back down the hill. I am beginning to see the dark side of the mountain and watching the next generation climb to great heights on the other side. My babies are having babies. We are starting to look at retirement funds. I know, age is just a number, and if you’ve been here any length of time, you will know that I am a firm believer in the “never stop learning” motto. An old dog CAN learn new tricks. God never told us we get to retire from life. Jesus had a plan and left a legacy. He made a path for those coming behind to follow. Perhaps it is the same for us in 2025.

I’m a bit sad that I didn’t have the time to sit down over the holidays and reflect properly. I’m a bit disappointed that we didn’t (okay at least I didn’t) have a whole lot of time to “chill” and look introspectively on the past year and the one to come. I should have. The youngest asked if I had a resolution. I don’t. I have a few goals set in mind, but have I come up with a true, real focus for the year, as I have had in the past? No, not yet. My mind is already racing forward to the 17 things that need to get done in the next few days. My new work schedule requires some getting used to, and we are once again, balancing home and the rest of life. Oh no, my friend, time stands still for no one. Every day is a marching on to the next day.

Perhaps that’s what time is teaching me. Perhaps that’s what God wants me to learn. Patience. A life journey is a march onward. Up (and down) the hill. Things gotta get done. Bills get paid, the dishes get done, the babies grow up, and the dog still gets fed. This is where I am. And it is okay.

Come join me on this adventure! (Photo: Pexels)

Welcome to the blog, dear reader. Welcome to the chaos, the times I go AWOL for no apparent reason other than “I didn’t get to it”. Welcome to the journey. I guarantee that we will learn together. We’ll think and muse and become the master of nothing. It’ll be fun. We’ll question verses and try to apply them to life. There will be bad photos, my crazy chicken stories and lots of grand baby gushing. The hubby will likely be the focus of some #itsnottafarm project and will be there for a few laughs, I am sure. HAPPY 2025!

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Need a Niche?

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Still learning to do this blog thing.  Trying to get my media in better condition too.  Suggestions?  Leave me a comment. Would love to hear how to get those pics edited and transformed!  But… this is not what I wanted to write about today.

 

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Niche. It’s a wonderful little word.  I like it.  As a scientist, I learned a niche meant where you fit in the food chain. Where you belonged in the big wide world.  Eat or be eaten.  The French origin means a safe spot or kennel.  A place where you “fit” to be sheltered and kept from harm.  That crevice in the rock where Moses was sheltered from all the Glory of God (Exodus 33:22).   It’s a good word — but a useless one.

Niche.  It’s a wonderful little word.  I like it.

Does anyone really  fit in a niche?  The great blog gurus say that you should have a “niche” for your blog.  This way people will follow you based on your theme… where you fit in the blog food chain.  I don’t think I fit.  I like my animals.  I like photography.  I like learning.  I like crafts, I like travel, I like baking, I like eating my baking, and sometimes I even like my kids and my husband.  Why can’t I write about all those things?!  That classifies me as a “lifestyle” blogger according to the experts.  I found another blogger who feels the same way.  Chelsie, from Hey There Chelsie wrote about her views on the subject in this post from 2015.  For now I am taking her advice and writing about whatever tickles my fancy.

I say this because I truly don’t think anyone really fits into this perfect little square.  As much as I love it when all my pieces fit in a row and I am fully in control of my world, it never stays that way for long.  Life is just like that.  When I was younger, I had my life planned: I wanted to go to vet school, be married by a certain age, have my first house, my first kid by such and such and live and die — done.  Of course a failing Chemistry mark and a cute boyfriend changed some of those plans.  Only now, as a (ahem) middle aged grown up, do I recognize that God’s plans and timing are always perfect.  Even if I don’t like them.

Recently I attended a high school parent-teacher interview.  My eldest son is a kind-hearted, smart kid.  He loves people and is social like his dad.  He wants to serve the world in youth ministry after high school.  His teachers assured me that grade 12 math is not necessary for this plan.  I panicked.  You need math!  What if he wants other options? What if he doesn’t get in to the program he wants, or changes his mind and needs that prerequisite later? How do

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How do we let go of the plans we have for our kids and let them choose the path that is right for them? (Photo credit: Pexels)

 we let go of the plans we have for our kids and let them choose the path that is right for them? Parenting often teaches us that we cannot mold our kids into the direction we want them to go.  Sometimes we have to do all that we can and hope for the best! I’ve been learning a lot about learning styles lately… which is a topic for another blog post … but it assures me that we are not all the same.  And that this is okay.  The world would be pretty boring if it was.

We never really are safe in this world.  It changes so rapidly.  We can hide in that cleft of the rock sometimes and God will certainly protect us there.  But eventually He kicks us out and makes us go back to a bunch of lost desert dwellers to do our jobs.  We can’t protect our children or our families from this churning whirlpool we call life.  We strategise and study and attempt to make plans and learn and fail and try again.  We have faith that God is in control and do our best to wander in the desert.  It’s just the way it is.

The bigger (and better) thing to do with our niche is to love it.  To learn to love the “fit” and enjoy where we are at.  It seems like I am counter arguing myself… I don’t mean we should be boxed in… I mean we should love our box! Create the passions and desires within us and then go with them!  Use them to the fullest… help others… do your best… learn a new skill… try, fail and try again!  Yeah, we might get eaten as part of the food chain… but maybe it fulfils a bigger picture and plan that we don’t understand quite yet.  It’s something huge we can teach each other:  to work together with our strengths and weaknesses to make this world a better place.  If each of us accepted our role, our “niche”, if you will… wouldn’t we fight and argue less?  It’s not saying one is better than the other… it simply fits like pieces of the puzzle.  Links on the chain.  Part of the plan.  Niche.  Yup… it is a wonderful little word.  I like it.  A lot.