Despite me still being away on a hiatus, we managed to make a small gain on both YouTube and Spotify!
For YouTube, we saw a +1 subscriber gain, so I’d personally like to say to whoever decided to support me, Thank you! and welcome to the community!
For Spotify, we saw a +14 in starts, -4 in streams, -4 in listeners, and a +2 in followers! Even though I’m on a break, thank you for joining the community and supporting me!
During this recording, I had also announced that I’m planning on returning once I have 12 scripts written and formatted out and ready to go. So it’ll take some time to get all of that done, but with me being between jobs right now it should give me the chance to get some stuff done. I’m hoping to return before August so that I can have episodes ready for the Week of Creativity, so let’s cross our fingers and hope I’m prepared for that.
There are a lot of things going on in my life right now, between training for my 5k, looking for a new job, working on short stories for the yearly collection, working on my novels, and so, so much more; so for the people who choose to stick around and support me through this time in my life, I am grateful for you and I thank you.
I’d also like to briefly mention that I have finally published my 2023 Collection of Short Stories on other sites, so you will officially be able to find the collection on:
If you enjoyed this bit of content and would like to see more like it, then feel free to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials to stay in the loop for publications, updates, sales, recipes, and so, so much more.
I have recently completed week 6/10 of training for my first-ever cancer 5k race. So here’s everything I’ve learned so far, how I’m feeling in terms of my goals, and my plans for the next few weeks until race day.
To start off, I’ll be racing on May 26th and the race I’m participating in is with Push For Your Tush, which is raising money to help fight against colorectal cancer. You can donate to either me personally Here, or you can donate to the team I’ve created called Trail Mixers. I originally wanted to call my team Trail Maixers for a combination of Trail Makers and Trail Mixers, but my boyfriend told me it sounded weird and to just go for one or the other. So I instead went for Trailer Mixers cause that’s the name he liked more.
My Goal –
My goal for this race was originally to run a 5k in 25 minutes or less, however, with a month left until race day, my current run time, and me being constantly sick, I had instead decided to raise it to run a 5k in 30 minutes or less. Currently, my fastest 5k has been 32 minutes and 6 seconds, so there is still plenty of room for improvement, but it is still much more possible than 25 minutes. For my 25-minute goal, I had signed up for a second race which will be on August 24th, so I will work hard to try and reach that time frame for that race instead.
As for donation goals, for both my personal page and the team page, I had set up the goals at $500. For people who wish to donate, you can choose between either/or, I don’t mind which, and donate however much you please. Remember, these donations go to help fight against cancer.
So far every week I’ve been documenting my progress toward my goal, so with each of these sections you will be able to watch a video along with them as well. Sadly, throughout the weeks I don’t think I had managed to make much progress, which I partly blame on constantly being sick and also partly blame on being so focused on progress that I’m no longer prioritizing rest like I had when I first started going to the gym. All in all, I was pretty happy with those workouts because that was the first week I was finally able to reach 5k. So because I was able to do so, my focus then shifted to completing it faster. Which in the end is slowing down my progress.
Due to being so sick on week 2, I was unable to do much in terms of exercise but I still wanted to at least try working out, which sadly just made things worse since I was in pain, struggling to breathe, and was set back due to not resting.
During this week I was still sick, on my period, and had my birthday. I don’t drink alcohol very often, before having that glass of wine I had actually gone over 2 months without drinking, so it was a nice treat especially since that’s my favourite type of wine. During my period I choose to prioritize rest and eating whatever I want whenever I want and do my best to minimize leaving my bed. Though, unfortunately, we live in an economy and money is necessary for survival, so I was required to work every single day of my period and didn’t really get to rest much.
For my workout schedule I typically do Thursday is cardio and lower, Friday is cardio and upper, Saturday is cardio-focused, and Sunday is conditioning and rest. However, due to how hard I push myself on Thursdays and Fridays, I typically have to skip the Saturday and Sunday workouts to rest. This is primarily because I get excited when I get close to reaching a new mini-goal and instead of just slowing down to make things easier in the long run I instead push myself harder which ends up slowing me down in the long run.
For conditioning, what I have down though is increasing and decreasing (measured in km/h) every 200 meters. I’ve mainly done the adjustments every 200 meters but I’m planning on going down to 100 meter adjustments to prioritize rest and actually get through the conditioning routine. So here’s what it looks like: 7, 9, 7, 11, 9, 13, 9, 11, 9, 13, 11, 15, 13, 15, 11. Problem with this routine though is that I don’t feel as though I’ve improved much after a week. However, back when I first started working out I’d instead walk between running/sprinting and I feel as though that’s what helped me improve so much so quickly. So another focus of mine is to take a page out of beginner me’s book and try to slow down a bit, actually walk instead of attempting to speed through everything and end up knocking myself out.
This one was cut off but if you’d like to watch the entire thing then you can do so on my Instagram @dark_night_wolves. For the initial workout, I had decided to set my goal to run a 5k in under 32.5 minutes, which I had absolutely demolished, however, it once again destroyed me for the rest of the weekend. As per usual.
This one was cut off but if you’d like to watch the entire thing then you can do so on my Instagram @dark_night_wolves. This week I had actually got my race shoes in so I decided to test them out and go for an outdoor run, which wasn’t too bad, however, I was dehydrated because I hadn’t had my minimum of 2L of water yet and that day was over 20 degrees and pretty humid so it was certainly a struggle but I don’t blame the shoes nor my abilities because of it. I also need to get a new sports bra soon too, I have like 7 sports bras and only 1 fits me and even then it’s still a little too tight. I tried to get a new one at the decathlon over the weekend but they didn’t have any that were exactly what I was looking for; they were either too loose in some areas and too tight in others, had too thin of straps, didn’t have a large enough size, etc. So instead I’m just going to have to work with what I’ve got or wait and see if a good one becomes available sometime soon.
Also, for the orange & pomegranate drink, I highly recommend you all try it, it was PHENOMENAL. It’s literally just an orange, half a pomegranate, and a tablespoon of honey, blended up and run through a fine mesh strainer. I swear, that juice was otherworldly, perfect for a post-workout beverage, and it made my oatmeal so delicious as well with a bit of fruity background flavours. I highly recommend.
Unfortunately for week 6, I ended up having a severe allergic reaction from I don’t know what so I was unable to fit in another workout over the weekend. For some background, the night before I started to get all red my hands started getting really itchy all over, so I assumed I was just having a mild allergic reaction and it’ll go away after a bit. I didn’t bother taking any medicine because I was at my boyfriend’s place and he didn’t have any and it was past midnight so nothing was open. So I ended up falling asleep after around 2 hours of constant itching, well, when I woke up up in the morning, my hands were still really itchy and it had actually spread down my arms after a few minutes of being awake as well. My arms were all red and there were bumps everywhere and I was struggling to breathe as well. But even then, it was still early in the morning and too early to order medicine so I tried my best to ignore and allow whatever was happening to pass naturally. It didn’t. After a few hours it had spread all over my neck, face, chest, torso, legs, when I was out shopping with my boyfriend it had even moved down to my feet. I tried to find allergy meds at Dollarama, cause I know there are a few places in Ottawa that sell them, but they didn’t have any, so I just tried to get through with all the discomfort. Well, a few hours later after getting home the pain and difficulty breathing became too unbearable that I ordered some medicine and had to wait around an hour for it to arrive. I ended up taking 2 Benadryl, a Tylenol, and had a Neocitron while I waited for it to arrive. When I woke up after a bit the itchyness and difficulty breathing subsided a bit but it took an entire day for the redness to finally go away. To this day I still have no clue what caused it, I assumed maybe one of my boyfriend’s roommates had seafood or kimchi and touched the fridge door or something with the juices still on their hands, but even then, I doubt I would’ve had that bad of an allergic reaction just because I touched some fish oil. I’ve been in mild discomfort ever since and it’s been 3-4 days now.
Future Races –
As mentioned earlier, I will be participating in another race on August 24th. This race will be with 3, 2, 1, GO! The goal in raising money for this race/organization in order to help provide low-cost support for people with down syndrome and their families. So if you’d like to donate, then you can do so towards my name Here. I’m also looking forward to the barbeque after this race, so I’m hoping they have vegetarian options because I’m allergic to meat.
Anyway, that’s it for this update here, if you’d like further updates then you can subscribe to my YouTube channel or follow my Instagram. Hopefully I stop being so damn sick all the damn time, but all-in-all, I’ve just got to work with what I’ve got.
If you like this bit of content and would like to see more, then feel free to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials to stay in the loop on updates, publishing, sales, and so, so much more!
This month we’ve actually seen a pretty shocking rise in followers and listens, even with me deciding to take a break from podcasting for a bit and am still on break, other than for the premium episodes.
For Spotify, we saw a +4 follower gain and for YouTube, we saw a +14, yes, FOURTEEN, subscriber gain over the past month. I honestly just wish I knew what they subscribed for so then if it’s content I enjoy then I could make more of it. At the moment it looks like the posts I made of me trying saffron for the first time got a lot of attention and a few subs when it was first uploaded, but that was nearly 2 months ago and is old news, so there’s no way it had managed to get me 14 subs. But oh well, I’m grateful for every single one of them since they had decided to join and support me on my journey.
Below is a link to the document with all of the updates and growth over the past few years in case if any of you would like to check it out:
And well, that will be it for me here, time for me to focus on getting healthy again and training for that cancer 5k in May. The race is coming up fast and being sick is not helping me feel confident of reaching my goal of running a 5k in 25 minutes or less.
If you enjoyed this bit of content and would like to see more like it then feel free to subscribe/follow my blog and/or my other socials in order to stay in the loop on sales, publications, episodes, ventures, and much, much more!
This is the second time I’ve made this recipe, the first time being like 2 weeks or so ago. Basically what inspired me to make this recipe was a post on Instagram that looked like a curry and had eggplants which led me to crave eggplants, however, I don’t just keep eggplants in my home so sadly I couldn’t make it at like 10 o’clock at night. However, the next day after I finished my workout I was thinking about what to make my boyfriend and I for dinner and was originally thinking about just rice and an egg, perhaps some veggies. And then I remember, oh yeah, that reel I watched. So I stopped at the fruiterie on the way home and went through to grab and decide what vegetables I believed would be a good addition to an eggplant curry. The original recipe had eggplant, butternut squash, zucchini, and red, orange, yellow, and green peppers, however, this time I decided to toss in an onion. I was also contemplating adding some fresh garlic, however, I don’t use fresh garlic enough when cooking to warrant buying a whole head just to use 2-3 cloves. So I stuck with the powder.
The original recipe also had some orange in it, so I tossed in some orange peel and squeezed in some orange juice as well. However, I mainly like the oranges at the fruiterie and this time around I went to the grocery store so I didn’t want to buy the oranges there.
And here’s a nice close-up of what the final dish looked like. Unfortunately, the egg broke cause I didn’t want to dirty up a pan when I could’ve just rinsed out the pot after I cooked the rice, but oh well, I at least still got some yolk.
I now also have plenty of meal prep for the curry as well which will last me a nice little while. This recipe can make about 5-6 servings if you’re serving it as just curry, however, if you prefer to add it on top of rice you can likely get 10 or more servings out of it.
And of course, keep in mind that I don’t measure anything, especially spices, so all of the measurements listed in the video are just guesses.
If you enjoyed this bit of content and would like to see more like it then don’t hesitate to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials in order to stay up to date on recipes, episodes, publications, and so much more!
On this week’s episode, I decided to do a long-awaited book review since I haven’t done one in nearly 2 years. The books I chose to review are:
‘A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder’ trilogy by Holly Jackson (Audio)
‘Top Ten’ by Katie Cotugno (Book)
‘Don’t Hate The Player’ By Alexis Nedd (Book)
‘The House Across The Lake’ by Riley Sager (Audio)
And
‘The Last Invitation’ by Darby Kane (Book)
Along with an honourable mention which was ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ by Sarah Adams. (Audio)
These books were a fraction of all the books I had read/listened to throughout 2023. I could’ve also done 2022 but I felt 2023 would be a better option since it was much closer and therefore I would have a better memory of it.
Also, it’s not specified in the episode so I figured I’d specify which books I read and which ones I listened to. Being so busy with work, school, and trying to get my health back in order I’ve fallen behind on reading physical books so I’m glad I’m able to listen to audiobooks in order to keep up with my reading goals. Not gonna lie though, audiobooks are hella expensive. Understandably so since there are more people involved but some of them are honestly ridiculous. Still gonna continue listening to audiobooks though, I love it when they have sound effects and some of the voices are really amazing.
If you liked this bit of content and would like to see more like it, then feel free to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials in order to stay up to date on episodes, recipes, sales, publications, and so much more!
In this week’s episode, I updated everyone on how my stocks and investments are doing for the first quarter of 2024, as well as went briefly into REITs (Real Estate Investment Trusts) and which ones I am keeping my eyes on. Though I do personally wish I had gone more into depth on what they are, how they work, and the history of them but I can see if I can do that for the next quarterly update.
Within the episode, we could see that everything other than Clearway Energy is doing quite well for themselves with both my Questrade and Wealthsimple TFSAs nearly reaching a $100 profit.
Also, shortly after finishing recording, I discovered that I am struggling to whistle. Which honestly hurts cause being able to whistle was practically part of my identity growing up. But I’m sure it’s no big deal, it’s likely just because I’ve been sick for over a month now so my body is likely struggling to do what it needs in order to whistle.
Also, my newest publication, My 2023 Collection Of Short Stories, is now fully published and available for purchase. It was also recently added to Barnes & Noble so you all will be able to grab a copy there as well if you’d like.
If you enjoyed this bit of content and would like to see more like it, then please don’t hesitate to subscribe/follow this podcast and/or my other socials in order to stay up to date on publications, episodes, sales, recipes, and much, much more!
3 hours ago I woke up from a 14-hour-long snap and, to my surprise, messages from two different people asking how I am. 1 was my dad just doing a regular old check-up, nothing major, but the other was from my boyfriend who was, understandably, much more worried. After all, I had been sick for over a month now at varying degrees and systems and at this time I’ve had the same sickness for over a week that has left me unable to clean up around the house, unable to cook for myself, difficulty to write and record, left me unable to go to the gym, and, this morning, I ended up coughing up some kind of black substance that looked kinda veiny, so that’s fun. Thankfully I haven’t coughed up anything like it in the past 3 hours, but my symptoms haven’t gotten any better. But at least I managed to do some dishes and take the trash out, so that’s something. Google is telling me it might be cancer but I don’t have healthcare yet here in Montreal, so I’d rather not panic and go to the hospital just to find out it’s a mere cold and I swallowed a bug in my sleep or something. But honestly, that would be hilarious, I live a healthy life for 18 years, then I move to a province with water harder than a diamond and an apartment with no air filtration and all of a sudden, well, after 6 months, I get cancer. Granted, I am genetically susceptible to it, along with like dozens of other health issues, but I also lead the healthiest lifestyle in my family. And even though I do understand healthy people get sick too, I once again don’t have healthcare here so I’m choosing to make excuses for myself to not go to the hospital.
Anyway, waking up this morning was also weird, and not cause of my sickness. It’s because for the past few months, I had woken up alone at 5am, immediately got ready for work, and left. Then on weekends, I wake up next to my boyfriend and start my day then cook breakfast for him to wake him up. I’ve always had something to do. But this weekend my boyfriend is away on a trip in Quebec City, so I woke up alone, not needing to go to work, and completely unsure when I need to get out of bed. Cause I don’t work today and I don’t have my boyfriend that gives me a purpose to get out of bed. I eventually got bored laying in bed after an hour with no one to talk to so I decided to get up and start my day cause I didn’t want to risk losing a subscriber between the time that I was lying down and before recording the update, so that’s what managed to give me purpose today XD.
Now onto the purpose of this post. We’ve seen a +1 subscriber on YouTube between the months of January and February, as well as a +1 follower on Spotify between the same time frame. We also noticed a more broad audience for this month with female listeners at 38.1%, men at 28.6%, non-binary at 23.8%, and not specified at 9.5%. Which is certainly a change compared to women being dominant at the 80-90% range for several months, but, hey, I love seeing the range, I feel it tells more of a story. We’ve also found that the age range of 23-27 has finally overtaken the ones at 35-44, so that appears to be quite a nice shift as well.
You will be able to find the stats updates throughout the months here.
Now, finally, I’d also like to update you all on my newest published book which is currently available on Amazon at:
eBook – $2.99 CAD
Paperback – $12.99 CAD
Hardcover – $13.49 USD / $18.12 CAD
The paperback is a little delayed in publishing due to cover errors, and the spine text being too small, but you will be able to find all of the stories available to purchase by tomorrow at the latest with eBook and Hardcover already available. The collection has 20 short stories, the last one being a cut-off that is meant to continue at the beginning of the 2024 short story collection which will be published on February 1st next year.
If you like this bit of content and would like to see more like it, then please don’t hesitate to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials for frequent updates on stats, publishing, sales, episodes, recipes, and so, so much more!
Have a great rest of your day and make sure to look after yourself!
In this week’s episode, I read through 1 of the many short stories within my soon-to-be-published collection of short stories. The short story in question is called ‘Veiled Blade’ and the main character is named after a friend of mine because he asked me to name him after one of my characters sometime so I did and made sure he would be named after a powerful knight, I had also dedicated the entire short story collection to him and am planning on sending him a free copy of it because he’s just such an amazing friend and old classmate.
And obviously, me being me, I misread a few of the words in the short story despite knowing what they meant and actively choosing to use those words, which my boyfriend, rightfully so, corrected me post-recording XD.
Anyway, the collection of short stories will be published on Amazon during a midnight live between January 31st and February 1st. Then, it’ll be published everywhere else during a midnight live between February 29th and March 1st. Which you’ll all be updated on when I go live. The reason why I’m choosing to do two separate publishing is because the book needs to be an Amazon exclusive in order to run a promotion on it, so, I’m planning on having it on sale for the 1 week anniversary of it being published to make it more accessible, then I’ll be publishing it everywhere else, making it no longer exclusive.
– Here is what the short story collection cover will look like.
Anyway, it should probably be best to get into concluding this post update so then I can get to making breakfast for my boyfriend and I.
If you liked this bit of content and would like to see more like it, then feel free to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials for regular updates.
In this week’s episode, I read a short story that is based on my newest published novel ‘Shrouded Personas.’ Where the main character, Timber Narissara, goes on her first ever solo mission at 12 years old and the lead-up to it. The short story was written to be part of my 2023 collection of short stories, which will be published on February 1st on Amazon and then March 1st everywhere else, that way I can put the eBook on KDP Select and put it on sale for you all to enjoy.
The prices for the collection have also already been decided:
eBook – $2.99 CAD
Paperback – $12.99 CAD
Hardcover – $13.49 USD
The hardcover is set at such a strange price so then the currency conversion can be as close to 17.99 CAD as possible since the hardcover is unable to be priced in Canadian.
Also, the reason why the collection will be available on Amazon a month before everywhere else is because in order to put your stories on sale they need to be exclusive to Amazon, so that is why.
The collection of short stories is something that I’m planning on doing for the years to come to help me focus on writing more short stories and also get my name out there better with more publications.
And of course, once it becomes time to publish everything I will be going live at midnight which sadly will be the middle of the week and that’s an issue since I have to be up at 5am every day for work, but you know, I’ve been having insomnia issues lately so if anything staying up late will just make me appreciate it more the next day. I’ll also be going live at midnight for the March 1st publication which thankfully lands on a Friday so I can just go to work and then pass out for a bit once I get home, depending on if I go to the gym or not.
Damn, I didn’t think about the gym. This is gonna be bad for my cardio and gains.
But you know what? My dream is to make a living off my writing and my goal to run a 5k comfortably is just another side quest that I’ll easily be able to reach before June, so you know what? Imma stay up.
Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the short story, hopefully, I start to feel better soon. I’ll be sure to update you all on the publication and sale of the collection once the time comes around for it, but for the time being, feel free to enjoy gazing upon the cover I have designed.
If you enjoyed this bit of content and would like to see more like it then don’t hesitate to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials to stay updated on recipes, episodes, publications, and sales.
A new month AND a new year has finally arrived and we’ve seen both massive gains and simple remains. YouTube had managed to gain 10 subscribers over the course of a month, 9 of which was in one day. Spotify, however, hadn’t grown at all over the course of the month and still remains at 251 followers. Although, due to it being the new year, I had also looked into other platforms and we had a +9 gain on Amazon Music over the course of the entire year. So congratulations everyone, I am extremely grateful for you all and let’s keep up the good work for this year as well.
And with that all done, I’d also like to announce that I will be publishing a collection of short stories sometime in February or March so be sure to keep an eye out for that as I continue to update you all. Though reason why it’ll take a bit is because I still need to format everything and sadly my Office 365 account expired on the 24th, so I will need to use my boyfriend’s account to do all the formatting and he returns on the second. So for the time being I will be coming up with cover designs and promotions.
If you enjoyed this bit of content and would like to see more like it then please don’t hesitate to subscribe/follow this blog and/or my other socials to stay in the loop on publishing, recipes, and podcast episodes.
Porscha Aubrey 