Hey, It's Me Again!

 Hi there! So, it's been a hundred years since I used this blog and I've decided it's time to resurrect it. You know how it, you get busy, things fall by the wayside, and eventually it's been so long that you need a good excuse to make up for flaking. Nope, no good excuse here. Just a life happens sort of thing. I'm not consistent and that hasn't changed. That isn't to say I haven't been doing anything.

Since Squidoo was bought out by HubPages I haven't written much for article sites. I have articles up there that were transferred over and I added a few, but the site tends to get on my nerves and most of the time I don't think it's worth dealing with. Especially when I was making over $400 a month at Squidoo and with HubPages I'm lucky to hit payout each month, with even that earning going down each month.

My biggest articles are now getting the same amount of visitors in a month that they used to get in a day, and a lot of the articles have so little traffic HubPages won't feature them, making them into basically dead weight. Editing them and improving them would be nice, but each time I've tried to edit an article on the site it gets pinged and taken off the site until I take products, etc. off to conform to what they think Google wants. So, it's just not worth dealing with. If you want to check out what I still have up, click over to my HubPages' Profile: https://hubpages.com/@alishav

As a reader I love sharing when I find a fabulous book and warning against bad books, so I put together a book review blog. I don't post often and have been neglecting it lately, but that's because I have a tendency to get caught up in reading and don't take the time out to post a review. Bad Alisha! But books are so good...

The books I'm reading and reviewing now are primarily LGBT romance novels, with some fantasy and scifi books in there too. I adore PNR (Paranormal Romance) and UF (Urban Fantasy), but it can be hard to find enough of them with gay MCs. And it's even rarer to find ones with trans characters or poly. I read whatever I can find though. If you want to see what I'm reading (that I've managed to get around to reviewing), check out Romantic Notions: https://romance-book-reviews.blogspot.com/

Loving books as I do, I also tried my hand at writing them during NaNoWriMo. I got a couple books written, but nothing that feels finished enough. I need to put some effort into them and get them done, but I mostly more ideas than energy. I won my trophy a couple years ago for completing my book, but I think it needs more filling out as it seems bland. Then the year before last I was feeling really lackluster and didn't finish, then this last year with the election and Covid there was no way I could settle down and get into the mood to write. A lot of my favorite authors seemed to feel the same way as even the most consistent ones were way behind release schedule.

Something fun, since my pets are cute and I have so many unusual ones, I made an Instagram of them. I was trying to post each day, but got sick and was down for a while, then haven't picked up since. And sadly, it was right in the middle of something I was having fun with, the 12 Pets of Christmas. If you like kitties and reptiles, hamsters and other critters, you may want to check it out. It's Awesome Animals with AlishaV or AAwAV @awesome_animals_with_alishav/

Speaking of Awesome Animals with AlishaV (cause I gotta have that branding), I also made up a YouTube channel. I rarely post on it, but I love to share what I know, so when I make a new toy or cage or something else pet related, or simply see my pets being cute, I post it up there. Lately there's been a bunch of isopod or roly-poly videos because raising them is my current addiction. They make great pets in a tiny package, plus there's the nostalgia of keeping creatures I loved as a kid. They were fun to watch curl up when I was a kid, but I never would have guessed they could come in so many different types and colors. I have orange ones, white, gray, striped, and ones that look like dairy cows. Most are on a new, separate channel I figured out I needed because I was inundating my personal one with pet vids. See my animal videos on AAwAV on YouTube

With the Instagram and YouTube accounts featuring my pets I decided to finally take the leap and create a website about my animals too. It shows the mainly rescue or rehomed animals I have as well as having a sale page for the isopods I'm raising and supplies for pets. It's a work in progress, but I think it came out pretty decent, so take a look: https://awesome-animals-with-alishav.webnode.com/

That's about all I've been doing online lately, I've mainly been reading and taking care of my animals. My depression has been a bit obnoxious lately, so I've been slacking on everything, but I've been trying to get myself going again. The animals' care comes first though, so by the time I finish with them there isn't always a lot of energy left. I've been so unsociable for the last few years I constantly have to remind myself that there's a pandemic as it hasn't changed much for me. Just a bit harder to get pet supplies, but I mostly do everything online anyways.

I'm also trying to find some sort of home to buy with little to no money and not a lot of credit, preferably in the California/Nevada area. Maybe an owner carry place to save hassle for everyone. I'm not too fussy, a good roof and good foundation with something at least semi-habitable. I just want something permanent where I can feel more comfortable and settle. It's difficult moving from place to place, never fully unpacking and having everything chaotic. And that's not even counting the stress of moving with all the animals. Plus the animals need a better place to live, maybe even a place where I can built a catio so they can have some fresh air.

It's been a strain living in various places that we don't own. The place we are now has upstairs neighbors who have kids and a lack of manners. Every moment they are there banging and stomping right overhead. The kids jump around and run back and forth and the guy has an incredibly heavy footstep and likes to slam doors and seems to be taking apart the apartment based on the dumpster outside and drill noises. It even overpowers the sound of the highway and airport we're right next to. Today the two kids have been jumping on the bed which is right over my desk and me. Not for a few minutes, but going on an hour. I'm not normally a nervous person, but the constant noise that only stops for about 2 hours a night makes me twitchy. They've also stopped up the toilet and had it leaking into our bathroom not once, not twice, but three different times. Once while everyone was gone for the day and it got so bad the water was dripping out into four different rooms and I had to move my angora rabbit so she didn't get soaked, all while wondering if this was the time the roof caved in.

Sorry, frustration build up. *sigh* I just want some control over my own home and maybe even some land where we can stretch out and relax. In a dream world I'd love a hobby farm, but I'd settle for a mobile home with a yard and no one living on top of me. Still would have to figure out how to cover whatever down payments and moving costs, but for some sort of home I can be creative.

So, that's me and what I've got going on. What about you? How have you been handling this last year? Are you writing somewhere or have any project going? What have you been up to?