Just one more week before Daylight Savings Time. I can’t wait. I hate the current state of light right now. I’ve been having to pin a blanket over my work office window in the mornings because of the light stabbing me in the face every morning. Also I like the summer “time” best.
So last week was… rough. I was mentally not in a good headspace, like maybe the worst since the pandemic began. Started with momocon being canceled and then SDCC going virtual and then just this crushing realization that even with so many already vaccinated and more coming nothing is going to change anytime soon? I don’t want to keep living like this.
2 thoughts related:
1. I won’t be “attending” any virtual events this year. I watched and even participated in some of the virtual Dragoncon stuff last year. I will not be this year. It’s too painful.
2. In good news, basically my entire family is now vaccinated. My parents got their first shots Monday. We’re planning an Easter get-together. I’m so excited for it.
So yeah I was not in a good mental space last week and then Chase started having back problems again. Likely from all of his yardwork the weekend before. It seemed exactly like a repeat of August 2019 to me, even though he kept telling me it wasn’t. He managed to get a last minute appointment at his back doctor Friday, who thinks he strained a facet joint.
But it totally blew all of my plans for the weekend. We had Kevin this past weekend – delayed from the snowstorm weekend a couple of weeks ago – and I had all kinds of fun things planned for us. I was upset.
We did at least get to watch the Wandavision finale together (picked up Kevin thursday so he could binge the entire show Friday day to be ready for watching it together Friday night) and Kevin and I recorded some fun tiktoks together. But that was it. We had planned to go to the zoo but… yeah.
We DID get our second shot Saturday though. Had a sore arm by that night. Sunday I woke up feeling fine but by about midday was feeling groggy and tired, so I spent most of the day on the couch. Finally around 4 I realized the way I was feeling was pre-migraine, so I took some imitrex and within a half hour felt fine. So I don’t think that grogginess was vaccine-induced – I think it was a normal weather-related migraine for me. (It’s getting warmer this week.)
So anyway, let’s go through the week.
Monday night I recorded some Scarlet Witch content I’d been trying to get to for ages but needed my new crown.
Did a dressing video and another little thing. And also did a making-of video while I had everything out.
Monday the Celebration art print Chase got for me arrived!!
I love it but haven’t had the energy to figure out where to put it. I have Michael’s gift cards set aside for framing.
Thursday night after we picked up Kevin we started joking about Kevin wearing my Scarlet Witch costume – he thought the name should be “Scarlet Warlock” and I thought “Scarlet Wizard” but after texting the following pics to Lauren, I think we’ll go with her suggestion of “Scarlet Manwich”
He was SO tickled with this. Was giggling the whole time. Tried to get the gloves on him but they didn’t fit.
Speaking of Wanda, the magic band sticker I did for this trip arrived:
And then I had a crisis because the only gen 2 magic bands I have available for it are pink or yellow. And I really wanted it on a red one. But my one red one has my Padme art magic band sticker on it and I didn’t want to ruin that one. I tried to find the backup sticker I had of it to no avail. So I ended up making a new Padme art sticker and when it arrives, I’m going to put it on the pink magic band, take the old one off the red one so I can put Wanda on that one.
Flowers starting to bloom in the yard.
In the sewing world, between my ennui and having Kevin over, I didn’t get much done. I had planned to get a good chunk done on Sunday but didn’t get started until after I’d taken my migraine meds.
But I did get some work done on my disneybound Leia.
The zipper finally showed up mid-last week so I could get back to work on this. Though after working a few hours on it I realized I wasn’t at the point of putting the zipper on yet anyway.
I tried it on and realized that even though I’d had to take it up through the waist, the hips were a little too tight. I ended up having to let it out – both the outer layer and the lining, on all the seams, and that took forever.
Then I got them sewn together at the bottom hem and it seems like no matter what I do, the outer layer is wanting to be longer than the lining layer and wanting to “bag” out at the hem. I got the neckline pinned in a way that seems to fix it but I can’t baste it down yet since I still have to add the collar. It’s going to be tricky. At this point I’m thinking I should’ve just flat-lined each piece instead of trying to actually construct this thing like an actual Leia dress with all of these parts.
I got the sleeve openings closed last night and the collar made. I need to press the sleeve openings and hope that makes them look a little better. This was supposed to be a really simple project.
Hey so remember this romper I made out of the Stitch knit last year? It was a test run for possibly doing this for the Leia disneybound look, which obviously I’m now not doing… because I didn’t like how I looked in the Stitch romper. It made me sad I’d wasted the cute fabric on something I didn’t want to wear. Then I realized… why leave it like that? I took it apart at the waist seam… I’m going to do a baby hem on the top and have a cute semi-cropped loose fitting tank, and put the elastic back in the top of the bottoms for some cute shorts. Problem solved.
So that’s really all I have this week except for the Tiktok review.
Monday – video of a “rainbow” of my costumes.
238 likes. Traffic: Following 75%, FYP 17%, Profile 7%
Total flop. Glad I didn’t spend too much time on it.
Tuesday – no post
Wednesday – Scarlet Witch “Once in a Lifetime” video
299 likes. Traffic: 65% Following, 25% FYP, 9% profile.
Another flop, which made me sad because I really liked this video.
But I’ve noticed anytime I upload my own sound/music for a video it NEVER does well. Even back when things were going better.
Thursday – Scarlet Witch “Making Of” video
1283 likes. Traffic 88% following. 9% FYP. 1% profile.
I don’t even know. This video does so much better than everything else this week but the majority of it is followers? Was this pushed more to my followers? So confusing.
Friday – Scarlet Witch Dressing Video
933 likes. Following 67%, FYP 30%, 1% profile.
It’s respectable for the way things are now, I guess.
Saturday – a little “instagram vs real life” video I threw together Saturday morning.
222 likes. Following 39%, Sound 38% (?? weird.), FYP 22%, Profile 1%.
Total flop.
Sunday – Luke and Leia vs Vader
426 Likes. Traffic: 96% Following. No FYP at all.
One of the videos I made with Kevin. Why did this not get to the FYP at all? Like wtf.
Yeah so at this point, I’m tired of this. I literally put in probably 6 or so hours of work into filming tiktok content this week (between the Scarlet Witch stuff Monday night and Luke/Leia stuff with Kevin saturday night) and it just makes no freaking sense to get so little engagement.
I mean like – 222 likes with 94K followers is .23% of my audience. The equivalent of that would be me only getting 36 likes on an instagram post. Which NEVER happens. It NEVER goes that low on instagram, even with how bad things are over there.
Nevermind the fact that my stuff isn’t really being shown to a new audience through the FYP page either. When they do get to the FYP that tend to stay there for maybe a half hour-hour. I can see the bump when I first post a video of FYP traffic… and then it’s gone. The only new followers I’m getting I can tell are coming from older videos they’ve found probably through hashtags – I can tell, because I see this person like an old video, and then they follow me right after.
So yeah, saying all that – after I exhaust my drafts, I’m taking a break. I’ve tried everything suggested at this point to no avail. I’m putting all this data together in an email to send to tiktok feedback. I know they probably won’t care – but when there is no return on investment for time spent, what is the point in continuing to invest?