Tennessee Autumn
Fall is in the air!
It’s no secret I love the autumn months. It’s my favorite time of year. However, every fall/early winter I get one really bad cold. It never fails. I’m either sick on my birthday (in November) or around Christmas. This year it came early.
Some of our first few chilly, beautiful crisp days in TN I was cooped up inside with a sinus infection for three weeks. On top of that I had to cancel three different shows because of it; one in Franklin and two back home in NC. I was super bummed. Thankfully, I’m now on the mend but it was so disappointing to have to cancel those shows. Thank you to everyone (my band, the venues, people who planned to come support) for being so understanding about it. Now that I’m feeling better I hope I can schedule some make up gigs.
Thankfully, the chilly weather is in full swing and I can now enjoy my long walks listening to my Sad Girl Autumn Playlist.
Franklin Farmers Market is in full swing!
Every season change reminds me how beautiful change in life can be. In fact, my word for 2023 was change. It’s really easy for me to dismissively say “Oh, nothing changed in my life this year,” all because I didn’t have any major breakthroughs… but that isn’t actually true. I was reading in my prayer journal entries from this time last year and I realized all those small changes add up over the span of 12 months.
Even though my life doesn’t look much different, I’ve had a lot of change you can’t see. Small things like friendships that grew closer and learning to let go of others. Being more consistent with taking care of myself. Mentally I feel so much better than I did last year. My relationship with Jesus grew a lot this year. Things that use to send me spiraling into anxiety and depression doesn’t trigger me like it did last year. Loneliness turned into a contentment that I would’ve done anything for last year. Rejection doesn’t leave me feeling like there’s something wrong with me but leaves me knowing the person or opportunity just wasn’t right for me. Is every day perfect? No. But I can handle it better than I used to.
All of that happened in small increments. It wasn’t over night. It’s so easy to dismiss small progress as no progress. A year later though, I look back and realized how far I’ve come. I say all this mostly as encouragement to myself. Hitting major milestones and goals are fun but it’s the little things you prayed for a year ago that deserve the gratitude when they come to fruition.
Talking about small change, I want to take the time to say thank you to everyone who shared my YouTube Channel so I could get to 1,000 subscribers! I went from 750 to 1,000 in the span of a few short days and I appreciate you all so much. The goal was to reach 1,000 subscribers so I could gain access to monetizing my videos, (YouTube is currently putting ads on my videos but I’m not seeing any money from it.) You guys stepped up to the challenge! THANK YOU! There’s just one sad bit of info I didn’t realize…
In addition to 1,000 subscribers, I need at least 3,000 hours of watch time in the last year or 1 million (I can’t even with that number) views on a YouTube short in the last 90 days. It’s so discouraging that a company like YouTube would make it so difficult for small, independent artists to monetize their own content that Youtube is currently making money off of.
I’m not going to let it keep me down though. Instead, I’m choosing to focus on the fact everyone has been so amazing and supportive. We got to 1,000 subscribers! That’s an amazing feat. So now I’m off to keep uploading new videos and shorts in hopes I reach the second qualifier soon.
Baby steps.
If you would like to know some small ways you can support me here’s a few quick and easy things….
Follow me on Spotify and stream my music.
I’m still contemplating my word for next year, but until I figure it out I’m going to enjoy the change of seasons.
What’s something, big or small, that changed for you this year? Let me know in the comments!
xx Carson