I’ve jumped on the bandwagon for the Love Your Blog challenge by Kate of A Playful Day a week late. I knew that it was going on and checked out how to get involved a couple of times – but what with Easter, the p-LUSH podcast to go out, Tommy the Dog to stay and a lot of admin stuff to do with my recent employment status, I just didn’t have the time to sit down and talk about the first prompt, which was Community and Interactions.

A load of other bloggers did, and Kate has provided an inLinkz directory for you to check out what they blogged about.

The prompt this week is Beginnings, which is the perfect time for me to jump in with the next bit of news about the Plutonium Muffins universe.

Beginnings

I’ve been running PM since 2011, and in that time the blog has seen me move from a flat in Brixton, to Kent, to Devon, to Islington. In the same time, I’ve worked at four different companies, and consulted for a fair few others. The fields have varied from tourism to technology, and my organisational skills and ability to just ‘get things done’ has seen me through them.

I was signed off work last year for mental health reasons, and after a year of trying to figure out what was going on, I have finally decided to register as self-employed. This happened last week, and I am now truly at the beginning of my journey.

I hope that Plutonium Muffins will not change too much as a result of this. Realistically, I will now have more time to dedicate to blogging and podcasting. I’m also going to start looking at a number of things including sponsorship and advertising to help pay my way through the monthly fees required to keep it all going, although I intend to do this in a tasteful way.

I’ve also started offering my consulting services to people in the industry. With almost ten years of experience as a blogger and social media nerd, and a huge number of tools at my disposal thanks to my data scientist boyfriend, I am able to help people who are drowning the world of staying on top of social media while also trying to manage small businesses. I have recently started helping Sincerely Louise out in this endeavour, and am in discussions with a number of other people about this. The key for me is affordability and manageability – a lot of people know they ‘need’ to do it, and I can help take the pain out of it without breaking the bank.

(This is not a plug for that, but if you would like to discuss this further with me, please email corrie@plutoniummuffins.com)

I’m excited. Since making this decision and doing all the official things (scary looking envelopes from the government have started dropping through my letterbox with information on things like tax and national insurance contributions), I’ve been finding things so much easier to cope with. I’ve got back on track with my running, I have been able to motivate myself to do ALL THE THINGS, and I’ve managed to do it all with the support of my wonderful friends, family, and the fibre community!

I don’t know what the future holds – my primary ‘business’ activities will involve copy-writing and data analysis, and as a result there shouldn’t be too many changes around here. I will be sharing my journey with you, however, and I hope that the plans I am putting in place now for the first few steps will stand me in good stead for a successful future.

This post turned out slightly more philosophical and serious than I had planned it to; here’s Tonks giving Tommy a ball to lighten things up!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf_gBs4NIoU

Much love,

Corrie xx