Quarterly(ish) Update: Feeling Overwhelmed

Friends, I can’t believe the second quarter of 2025 has come to an end. So how has the whole blogging thing been going? The short answer seems to be that I’m starting to feel overwhelmed. Let’s discuss.

Why I’m feeling overwhelmed.

This feels like a good place to start. The obvious answer seems to be “you have five blogs, silly, of course you’re going to get overwhelmed.” For funsies, let’s break it down even further.

I feel out of my routine.

In April, I wrote about how important having a routine is when it comes to my getting anything done. And I fell out of the routines that were helping me get things done. When this happens, it’s very easy for me to say, “well, I already failed this month. I’ll try again next month.” 

Various life circumstances played a role in my routines falling by the wayside; I’m not sure if these reasons matter. If it weren’t for these specific circumstances, I’m sure something else would have happened instead. Now that I’m off the wagon, I’m struggling to get back on.

A loss of momentum.

At the beginning of 2025, when I started this journey I felt really motivated. I was excited to prove that this could be done. 

Now that some time has passed, I see myself losing momentum. This isn’t surprising. The newness of the whole blogging thing is wearing off. 

Another way of putting this is that I find it hard to remain motivated when things are no longer shiny and new. 

I signed up for NetGalley.

If you’re not familiar with NetGalley, it’s a website you can sign up for and request advance reader copies (ARCs) of upcoming books. 

I didn’t sign up for NetGalley right away because I figured you needed to have a larger following before you’d get approved for anything. One day, I signed up for NetGalley on a whim. I started requesting tons – and I mean tons – of ARCs. My rationale? There’s no way I’m going to get approved for all of these, so I may as well request as many as possible. 

Friends, let me tell you something. It’s possible to get approved for books on NetGalley even if you have a tiny following like me. Have I been rejected for ARCs? Absolutely. But I was approved for way more than I thought I would. So now I have an overwhelming number of ARCs to read, along with an ever growing list of already released books that I want to read.

Lesson learned.

The level of detail?

In case you’re not aware, I review episodes of television shows both on Grrrl Fans and She Treks. I had started writing fairly short posts, but realized I wanted to go into more detail. So I tried that. 

While I like the outcome, those posts take me much longer to write. And I’ve been finding myself putting off working on them just because of the amount of time involved. 

What can I do to feel less overwhelmed?

I’m still trying to figure out the right rhythm under changing circumstances. With that in mind, here are some ideas I have about what I can do going forward. 

Work on getting my TBR under control

Look. There are so many books out there that I want to read. I’m not going to realistically be able to read them all in my lifetime. While I’m sure that the list of books I want to read will continue to grow, I recognize that I need to work on reading what I already have in my possession before I acquire more. This is going to be hard for me. Years ago, there were people on BookTube who set rules for themselves like “I can buy one book for every x number of books I read.” Maybe that’s the sort of rule I need to create for myself. I certainly shouldn’t be requesting anything else on NetGalley until I get that under control. 

Alternating television review weeks.

I still want to do the detailed television reviews on Grrrl Fans and She Treks. However, I’m finding that I need to be doing less of them in order to avoid burnout. Right now, I’m thinking that I’m going to have to find ways of working in other kinds of content that I can do more quickly into my content plan. I think I’ll start by doing one week where I do a detailed review on Grrrl Fans plus an easier post on She Treks and then switch the following week. I hope that explanation makes sense.

This method will hopefully make things easier for me while also making it more interesting for the few people reading.

Be ready to experiment

When things aren’t working, that means it’s time to play around and see if I can find something that does work. 

If I’m not feeling something, I think it’ll come across in the quality of what I’m doing. 

Got advice?

This is very much a learning process for me. Have you ever been overwhelmed by your blogging endeavors? If you have any words of wisdom you’d like to share, I’d love to read it. 

Updated: Jun 26, 2025 @ 12:44 am