Today is a day of big changes. #1 daugher has moved back in, a member of the so-called “Boomerang Generation.” #2 son is starting college. #2 daughter has an interview for an important job. #2 son is going back to high school without his big brother.

As for me, I have a day off (after a bit of computer work). Since school begins today, we are sort of past BTS, though not quite. The uncertainties about my job should settle fairly soon; I had a promising talk with The Empress. I also picked up an application at Hancock Fabrics. My kids continue to urge me to do a proper job hunt for a job in our town which pays more than my current job, but if things work out with my current job as I hope they will, I could bring it back down to 40 hours a week and do 10 hours somewhere else and be fine. I am thinking I will probably do tutoring, actually, but the fabric store had a sign on the window so I asked. I could do that on weekends, it would be low stress, and I could perhaps make further progress toward my goal of learning to sew well this year.

I haven’t heard anything on that other job I applied for. However, they said it would be within three weeks, and it hasn’t yet been three weeks, so who knows?

I also leafed through an issue of Writer’s Market yesterday, while returning a Wii game. They were having a special issue on making a living as a writer.

Writing has been part of my paid work for years (it’s about a quarter of my current job, and that proportion should increase), and I do make a couple hundred a year on the side with it as well, so there is certainly a sense in which I am a professional writer. But I was wondering whether I could earn a couple hundred a month with it rather than a couple hundred a year.

The magazine didn’t have enough that looked useful to cause me to buy it. I did read through the article on how to use a blog for promotion.

This is my personal blog. I don’t promote it or use it to promote anything. Just wanted that to be clear.

But I do have two blogs for work. One is about six months old and I have been promoting it as shamelessly as I know how and have time for, and it gets about 1800 visits a week. The other is about two months old, and I haven’t promoted it at all (it exists for a particular, limited purpose), and it gets about 10 visits a week.

Now a big, serious professional blog should get at least 500 visits a day, so neither of these work blogs is really a big deal, but the difference between the traffic at the two suggests to me that promotion makes a difference. Doing more with both of them is one of the things I plan to do once we get through BTS at the store.

But here’s the thing: all of the suggestions in that article were old hat to me. You may recall (if you always read my blog and have total recall) that six months ago I knew nothing about online marketing or e-commerce, and indeed was unable either to find information on the subject or to understand it when that fellow #2 daughter dated pointed me to some of it. Now I am actually doing all the things the article says a person should. So I think that this shows that I have made real progress in this area.

I like real progress.

Yesterday I successfully spent being a couch potato, except for church and grocery shopping and cooking and helping #1 daughter unpack and a bit of housework. I even napped for about five minutes during an Audrey Hepburn movie. Today I may also spend lolling around, once I get my work done. But I am hoping that I will also get some sewing in. My kids think I should be out there jobhunting, but I have to rest up first. Seriously.