2017 Report Card

Hi! Following up on last year's report card on which my advice and comments were a simple, "Do better, stupid!" the bar was set rather low for this year, I'd say. LOL The advice I received was a little better this year, but its clear I still have some work to do. First, let's review the goals I made last January:

Try at least 3 new brands or companies ✅

There weren't a ton of reviews this year, but I did try out three new brands. I tried out Pantry and Alina Skincare back in January, and Hubble Contacts last month. 

Finish a challenge ✅

I finally finished a challenge! lol If you read yesterday's post you saw I finished my Reading Challenge for the year, I finished my summer series of posts and I finished Self-Love September (extremely late but I finished it lol). On a slightly unrelated note, I also finished all three month-long series over on ATV without missing entries. I usually have a hiccup in there somewhere but other than a couple of bumps with Octoberfest, everything went off without a hitch. That's probably a first for me, but I'm glad I finally finished something I started. 

Try newer games for both mobile and console ✅❌

I gave myself both answers for this one because I did try out new games for mobile but didn't try anything new for console. I still have a PS3 so the time for trying out anything new on it has long since passed. lmao I've been fighting it off for like 4 years but I finally accepted that I'm going to have to get a PS4. I was still in a smaller state of denial about it until last month when Warner Bros announced they were shutting down the PS3 multiverse of DCUO on January 31st (the day after my damn birthday too. Happy Birthday to me) and I don't appreciate that shit at all. At that moment I finally accepted it was time to figure out how to get my hands on one. How I'm going to do that, I don't know. But since Sony's already announced plans for a PS5, I should probably try to get a 4 at some point. lol 

Start Android series and try more current apps ❌

My Droid series was one of the things I had planned to start building up the Tech portion of the site, but I think I overwhelmed myself so I'll be starting it next year. I have tons of apps and websites to show you, but I'm trying to get them all organized before I start the series. Because I'm an idiot, I was also actively looking for new apps while trying to organize and check out the ones I already found so I put too much on my plate. It's finally coming together and I've (mostly) stopped adding new apps to the list so I should be able to roll it out soon. Another thing that stopped me here was that I don't own an iPhone or iPad so I can recommend things correctly. I don't want to recommend wrong alternatives to iPhone apps so I'd need to see them first. Either way, I'm trying to get that series up and running sometime within the next couple of months. 

Do more projects ✅❌

I gave myself both answers on this because I did do more projects, I just didn't post them because I didn't like the outcome, didn't think it would work so I didn't take pictures of the process, or didn't want to recommend something bad. I actually had the first post in my DIY For Cheaper series ready shortly before Halloween but I didn't have another shirt to use so I could post a tutorial, so it never went up. I need to rob a bank. Insta influencers are pulling five to six digits to promote shit tea, I just want a few bucks to get the right equipment, make some shirts and save people money. Where's the balance in the world? lol Anyway, I want to build up the DIY portion of this site. That's the short of it.

Restart SBS ❌

I did make an entry into SBS this year, the Pantry box I reviewed back in January or February, but as for officially restarting the series with a new box every month, it didn't work out. Because subscription boxes have already hit their peak in terms of public exposure, most companies aren't doing the free trial boxes anymore. I can understand that; even though I try the free trials for review purposes, it's important to remember that each free trial box is a loss that the company takes in an effort to get exposure with the intention of getting repeat business, aka memberships.

Continue growing audience ✅

I put a check on this because I did see an uptick in views this year. It wasn't a drastic improvement in audience, but I've been monitoring the views per post and when I post on time lol, I see quite a few more views than I did before. I also notice more views when I promote the post than when I just post it and don't say anything. I haven't yet gotten to a point where I see consistent engagement on posts, but that's on the goal list for next year. I'm not at all where I want to be in terms of views but considering I still post so many things late, maybe it's better that way. As for the goal of growing my audience in general though, I accomplished that. 

Get better at social media! ✅

I posted a lot on my social media, my Instagram in particular, this year while I was promoting posts. Well, a lot for me, anyway. lol I did a lot better than last year with promoting my posts on social media, although I didn't do as well as I would have liked. That's another one that is deeply affected by my inability to post shit on time, but I'll get back to that one in a bit. I also started posting to Google Plus this year when a post went live so even though I keep hearing that people don't often visit G+, I did see a bit of traffic from there so I'm going to keep doing it. Again, I'm not quite where I want to be in terms of being active and maintaining consistency on social media, but it's a lot easier for me to do now than it was last year.

Correct last year's report card failures ✅❌

While I did correct some failures from last year's report card, there were a couple of rollovers from last year that will be rolling over to next year as well. lol Most of those failures last year were due to financial or planning restrictions, and the same is true for them this past year. I can't wait until I'm able to develop an entirely new list of goals because I accomplished all of the others.  

Become more disciplined with schedule ❌

This is probably one of my biggest issues with my blog. I am often working on multiple things at once and for a lot of the year, I wasn't working smarter so I wasn't getting as much done. This obviously affects scheduled and upcoming posts, and many of the series I started this year had some late entries sprinkled in there that got no views because they went up so late. I have good ideas for posts but don't often figure out the direction of the post or how to go about it until I get in there, but I've already jumped in headfirst and given a post date so it ends up being late. I bite off more than I can chew and it's still biting me in the ass so I clearly haven't learned my lesson yet.

On that note, the last three entries in the Self-Love September series weren't posted until recently because of issues I was having editing the post, so even though the series looks complete to you now if you go look at it, for a couple of months it looked like I just dropped off mid-month. I hadn't; the post was actually ready to go up not long after the date but I was having so many issues with the post itself that it didn't go up for months. The same goes for the Back to School and Spring Break series, so I'll be rolling those over for next year. While a couple of them are finished or nearly finished, others don't even have a direction yet but I tried to force myself to do them anyway. As a result it just looks like I started something I didn't finish--which I guess in essence is true, huh? LOL  

Create a blog that better represents RRNT ❌

I gave myself a 'no' on this goal because the intention was to give the blog a more well-rounded look by the end of the year. If you look at the archives right now, the Beauty and Things categories are the fullest by far. The Books and TV categories are slowly coming up, but the DIY, Tech and Games categories are as dry as my pockets. lol The goal coming into this year was to give more attention to the neglected categories of the site but I wasn't able to do that. I want this to be a well-rounded blog and right now it's not. I think if there was anything I was embarrassed about concerning my blog, it would be that. 

Overall Grade: D

Don't let the checks fool you, I still take an L on this year's report card. lol I really want to do better next year so I'll just have to be more resourceful with how I approach accomplishing these goals. Either way, I'd like to move up to at least a C+ next year. I was an A/B student all through school and these constant L's I've been taking are messing up my shit. lol See you tomorrow!