I know that I've said in the past that I want to stay away from the constant 'complaining' in blog posts, but I just needed to get something off my chest. I guess the best way to describe what these blog posts are, are things that I don't necessarily want to tell or burden my friends with, hence the vent to the Internet.

I know I talk/complain about the struggles and burdens that have come along with blogging, but that's because I'm struggling to figure out how to deal with it. When I walk into meetings with professional business people, people often forget that I'm just this regular 18-year-old who one day started a blog for fun, not knowing where it would go... Shit, sometimes I forget that I'm just some 18-year-old newbie, who's just winging life. The day I signed up to be a more, I guess 'productive' blogger (someone who takes it a little more seriously) I underestimated just how much work was going to go into it. It was only November 2014 when I became a 'professional blogger'. At that point, I had only been blogging 6 months!! I've talked about this a lot, but blogging for me was just somewhere I could rant and vent aimlessly, with somewhere to store it and reflect on it as I get older. I definitely underestimated the work that goes in. Because I blog for about a 20% domestic (Australian) audience and 80% for an international audience, I have an international agent as well as domestic and can get phone calls most of the day/night because of timezones. I have made a deal that I can receive phone calls (and urgent reply emails) between 6am and midnight, Monday - Sunday, in whatever timezone I'm in just so I don't miss anything. I keep a lot of this private from my friends so I don't annoy them with all the logistics. Basically, if I want to hang out with a friend and know I'm not going to be replying for a while I will divert all calls to my blogging agent (Lilly I know you're reading this, you're the best!!) so that I can hang out with my friends. I get up to 50 phone calls a day regarding post scheduling, upload dates, basic organisation, brand sponsorships/deals/promotions, book sales/deadlines, etc. Additionally, I receive about 100+ emails a day restating a lot of these things, as well as upcoming events, meetings and phone calls that will be happening. Once all of these are done daily, I need to ensure that I have blog posts written, edited (by me), then some are further sent to my editor and reedited to ensure all company details are correct and I can talk about certain things before then being scheduled to upload. This becomes hard when I'm overseas because of timezones and wanting to explore the local area but still uploading posts. For the most part, I push myself to the limit to ensure everything is perfect before the uploading part happens. As well as all of this, I am currently in the process of writing more of my book (and upcoming books), which is another thing I totally underestimated... Writing 60,000-80,000 words as a continuous story is hard!

Anyway, the point of this all is really to say two things. Firstly, I am trying my best to keep up to date with everything but I am finding it incredibly overwhelming. Secondly, please bare with me while I figure my way through this and learn how to be a professional blogger properly. 

Don't take this as me being ungrateful - there aren't words to describe how thankful I am for each and every single one of you who read my blog each week. You're all amazing, incredibly and lovely and I couldn't ask for a better or more awesome group of people to share this blogging experience with. I have been able to do so many incredible things in my life (and I'm only 18!) because of the love and support of you guys. I get super emotional when I stop and think about every single one of you being a real person and choosing to click onto, and read my blog each week. I love you all!

On a lighter note, I'm going to start using The Simple Emma Instagram more frequently -- so why don't you go and check it out?! 

https://www.instagram.com/thesimpleemma/?hl=en