This weekend I disabled the auto-renew on four of my domain names. When they expire, they’ll no longer be mine – and this is a rather strange feeling.
Some are old, some are ones I’ve not used yet, some I had great plans for but things have changed.
Mostly, there just physically isn’t enough time for me to maintain fourteen websites. Disabling these and letting them go leaves me with ten domain names and seven actual sites – carlalouise.com / carlawatkins.com / carlawatkinsphotography.com / runawaydays.co.uk / unfurlingyourwings.com / sillykittens.co.uk are all sites that I use and maintain and develop, plus of course inkdrops.co.uk which sits separately.
duckingfabulous.com / mermaiding.co.uk / mermaiding.uk / paperdollsburlesque.co.uk are all redirects, but valuable to me nonetheless.
So what am I giving up and saying goodbye to?
The Website Beautician
The Website Beautician is officially retiring when the domain expires in early December – I’ve been doing minimal maintenance work for a good 18 months now, and avoiding taking on any more website work. I loved the clients I had and their glorious small businesses, but it was one of those times where following your passion isn’t the answer to everything.
It turns out that though I enjoy fiddling with my own sites, and will happily sit up till 2am tweaking CSS, that joy turns to terror and heavy responsibility when someone else’s site, livelihood and money are involved.
Girl Meets Van
Girl Meets Van has also sadly come to a halt, because I accidentally bought a house last summer, it’s needed a lot more work to it than I anticipated, and the last of my camper van savings are going on the studio build which is starting at the end of October – I’ll finally have an office/studio space again and I can’t wait!
(I’m typing this to you from the bureau in my living room, where both laptops balance precariously among filing, the mic and piles of post its. My wall planner is draped over the sofa. It is driving me INSANE.)
While I’m letting girlmeetsvan go somewhat reluctantly, I’m also acknowledging that actually, my life goals and what I want have changed since I started that fund and blog.
I have my precious silly kittens now, and if their displays when it’s time for the vet are anything to go by, they’re not going to adapt to life on the road any time soon. I’m unwilling to leave them for more than a few days at home, and my cattery, though excellent, isn’t cheap, so actually my plans of buggering off for a month at a time are probably fairly unrealistic now. Plus now I have a mortgage to pay!
Side note – turns out the actual blog sits at girlmeetsvan.wordpress.com, so I’ll leave that up in case I do ever come back to it!
Ducking Fabulous (sort of)
I’m finally letting duckingfabulous.co.uk go – I didn’t use it for long before switching to .com, and now duckingfabulous.com redirects to here – so really, it’s completely irrelevant and just chewing money I could be using elsewhere, or putting towards my part time fund.
This makes me sad, as Ducking Fabulous was my first proper brand name, and my personal social handles are still @duckingfabulous everywhere – but it’s time to declutter and let it go. But when looking for screenshots, I was quite proud/intrigued to find the one I’ve included here, from when I first switched to .com and did… a surprising amount of the stuff I am still doing, if less clearly defined! It’s always good to see progress.
Unicornery
I’m actually still in two minds about this one, it was the hardest to decide on and the one that prompted this post. I love the idea of having a Unicornery shop, but I have neither the time nor the funds nor the energy at the moment to create one – even an affiliate one with Amazon listings. And it’s one more email to check, one more site to maintain, four more social media accounts to worry about.
But I think it’s quite telling that it says “coming late 2015” and it’s now late 2016 and I have done absolutely nothing with it – not even posted on Instagram.
So I am going to be brave and let it go – and trust that if I want it in the future, it will be there waiting for me. If I do want to sell mythical and magical things, I suspect I could get away with them alongside mermaidy gifts, anyway, right?!
Digital decluttering is nearly as hard as physical decluttering!
What are you letting go of before the end of the year?
