Returning After a Rough Season: My 2025 Income Breakdown

If you’ve been wondering why the blog suddenly went quiet for a few months, the short version is this: concrete won.

Back in May, I had a bad fall outside on concrete, which left me with multiple injuries. Recovery was slow, painful, and honestly — frustrating. Between medical setbacks, mobility issues, and the exhaustion that comes with trying to heal when you’re already managing chronic conditions, I didn’t have the physical or mental bandwidth to write regularly.

Once I started improving, I had to shift into survival mode and focus on earning income again. And over the past six weeks, a lot of my spare energy has gone toward building a new Zazzle store, Grace & Light, which I’ll be blogging about often from here forward — including what I’m learning as I grow it alongside my regular freelance work.

But for now, let’s catch up.

Here’s my 2025 income so far,

Not bad for a year that started with injuries, setbacks, and a lot of uncertainty. It’s proof that consistent part-time online work can add up — slowly, yes, but steadily — even when life throws concrete at you.

We still have our We Love Dragons store on Zazzle, and I will sometimes post products from it too, but for now, I am mainly focused on our new Grace and Light store. In each blog post now, I will post one product from it that has not made sales yet and then over time, come back and report on how it is doing so that those who might be contemplating Print on Demand work in general or Zazzle specifically, can get an idea on how products build over time. In future posts, I will also discuss how we are marketing our products (no paid ads at all) on social media.

Today's product is:

"Strength is built in the quiet moments when no one sees us trying again."