Don't Let Human Check the Cupboard...

What a silly, sneaky, cupboard loving little girl 😆 This video had me wondering what the heck she was doing the whole time, continuing to go back in to the cupboard as if she forgot. Some mini sense of doom on her face as well, oh what a lovely character ❤️ This is Arrow, and she's a 13 year old baby trying to fool her human, Anna. You guys get to decide how much of her story is true or not. For all I know, these are all full truths she's telling and I am just being a big ol' presumptuous butthead. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Maybe she really did re-seal the foodz containers and she should be getting extra scritchies. Anna says, "Arrow was adopted from our local shelter. She’s currently 13. Her shelter name was Dorcas (hated it), so I named her after the song “Me and My Arrow” by Harry Nielsen. She’s a great snuggle buddy and still has the zoomies every now and then. I swear sometimes she might have been a dog in her past life. 😆"

Aaaah hello familoves! What an interesting weekend I had... Got in a good amount of hours on some long form videos and promos! Close to releasing something else for ya'll. I added some products to my shop, including a set of caps! or "dad hats" as they're called 🤭 Here's a little promo sheet I made for em. There's more colour options, and if there's a design you want to see that isn't there just let me know ☺️

Click to go to shop website

I have also picked up an idea-project, and it's probably the best thing for my head after what happened with facebook and all of that channel souring it did...

I know this is going to sound repetitive, but this has a point to it I swear 😆. When I first started out, I had soooo much drive to do anything and everything for anyone who showed my channel love or appreciation in any way. It was easy, because I was and still am, in all honesty, so grateful to everyone for showing love. It was so easy because that would give me dopamine, and my brain is wired to be driven by dopamine. Knowing that chatting with everyone, doing a million things, all of that was leading to growth, a stable job, a stable income, healthy cats, moving to my mom's province, etc.. It was such a clear "do this, get that" equation in my head that it was a breeze and I was so happy. But when facebook and instagram weren't recognizing my efforts anymore, the equation wasn't adding up. Doing all of the extra work every day was noticeably not giving me what it was supposed to anymore and I got really confused. Why am I not seeing a return on my investment anymore, when I was doing everything by the equation? Logic was going out the window because things weren't adding up. They weren't following any particular guide lines, and I realized what was happening. The dopamine stopped. Not because I didn't want to chat with anyone or do any extra work "unless I were getting growth out of it" or anything like that, but because my brain literally struggled to do anything that wasn't the bare minimum, because it had been proven to not be making a difference and I was feeling used by the platforms. Posting had all of a sudden become something I did for Meta, and not for my followers or my mental health. I thought that once I was finally set with content monetization things would go back to the way they were. And I thought that they had, sort of. But I still wasn't feeling the absolute joy I felt in finishing a project like I used to. And I'm pretty sure it's just because that dark time went for quite a while, and returning my mental health to where it was beforehand is just going to take some time.

(I get to the point, I swear) As you know, even though Meta refused to reward me for my hard work with a pay check, they were still shoving my "lack of progress" in my face on every screen. "Your channel is huge but your reach is awful!" I could not log in without being scrutinized. Every single time I would go on facebook or instagram, there would be writing in red that said that I needed to do more. That I "wasn't responding to messages enough", I "wasn't responding to comments enough", I "wasn't posting enough", I "wasn't going live!! Why not go live?!" I "wasn't creating classes to sell, or trying to shove products in your faces or anything all the time!!!!!" it was constant, and so incredibly belittling. and I couldn't help but respond to all of those questions with WHY? First, artists don't work that way. Creativity can't be logged as successful with a pie chart. Second, you don't pay me, you should, but you don't. So I slowly began to resent my project. It was hell being treated that way.

So now that I have finally been taken off of whatever ban I was on, (I guess I'll never know what the problem was) and I am making money from facebook ads, finally, I thought it would come back. I was expecting it to all come rushing back, and just take over my body and be a driven, productive queen dancing from step to step again. But I guess more time is needed. Or I needed to find more of a push, or a different push... well I think I found one ❤️ I've asked Whisker Rescue (Calvin and Susie's saviours) to send videos of rescues they have, especially ones that they've had for a while, and I'm going to make videos from those 🥰🥹 Something about helping these kiddos really brought some of that fire back that I've been missing. And it is making me realize too that the submission videos are also doing that for me... So, I guess that was a really really long winded way of saying thank you for your cat submissions 🥹🫂 Most of you have been talking like it's something I'm doing for you, but it's something you're doing for me, too. ❤️ I needed to find something that gave me an even stronger drive to make you guys happy and this was it; making it even more personal. Knowing that each and every one of my videos is in my hands because it was sent to me specifically for this reason, and that I can make whoever sent me the video really happy, it's perfect. Wasn't even planned to work out this way, it just did ❤️

I hope any of that made sense, because I've been having trouble putting into words all of this brain fog. I'm grateful for you. Every single one of you. You keep me strong, you keep me humble, you keep me grounded. I love you. (P.s. I haven't had to skip any submissions yet! They're all so awesome, and so many cute names! 🤗 thank you thank you for helping me find my joy again.)

Love always,

Alex, Susie, and Calvin