Building-Up: A Honest Update on the Journey So Far
Introduction
If you’ve been following along since the beginning — thank you. Genuinely.
When I started Building-Up almost a year ago, I wasn’t sure what it would become. A hobby? A side hustle? Something that quietly faded out after a few posts like so many blogs do? I didn’t have a clear answer then and honestly I still don’t have a perfect one now.
What I do have is this: 20 posts. A redesigned website. A Pinterest account that’s starting to get traction. And a lot of late nights showing up when I really didn’t want to.
This post is an honest look at where things stand — the progress, the struggles, and where we’re headed next.
Where the Blog Stands Right Now
Twenty posts feels like a milestone worth acknowledging. Not because the numbers are impressive yet — they’re not — but because getting here required showing up consistently through a period of my life that hasn’t always made that easy.
Here’s what Building-Up looks like right now:
We’ve built out a proper home buying cluster covering everything from the 10-step plan and down payment strategy to the FHSA, hidden costs, and how much income you actually need to qualify. We’ve got a growing personal finance cluster covering the TFSA, dollar cost averaging, budgeting as a couple, and The Richest Man in Babylon. And sprinkled throughout are the personal posts — the Mexico trip, the year-end review, and now this one — that I think give the blog its soul.
The website got a complete overhaul. We switched to the Kadence theme, built a proper homepage with a hero section, removed the sidebar, rewrote the About page, and just this week migrated to faster North American hosting. It looks and performs like a real blog now rather than a default WordPress template.
Pinterest is starting to move. We’re sitting at over 100 impressions a month with real engagement starting to come through. It’s early, but the trajectory is right.
The Honest Part
I’d be lying if I said the last few months have been easy.
Building something on the side of a full time job is genuinely hard in a way that’s difficult to explain unless you’ve tried it. It’s not just the time — it’s the mental energy. I finish a day at work and the tank is empty. Not physically tired, just cognitively drained in that specific way an office job does to you. By 8pm I often don’t want to try anything. I want to decompress and exist for a few hours before doing it all again tomorrow.
And then there’s the guilt. Miss a week of posting and the voice in your head starts up — you’re falling behind, you’re not consistent enough, nobody is going to take this seriously. That guilt is probably the least productive thing about this whole process and I’m actively trying to let it go.
Then there’s the deeper fear. The one I don’t say out loud very often: what if I put all this work in and nothing comes of it?
And if that wasn’t enough, England got knocked out of the World Cup. As someone originally from the UK, that required a few pints and a period of quiet mourning before I could function again. Some weeks the blog has to wait while more pressing matters are attended to. What if I’m still at the same job, same place, same feeling of being stuck — just with a blog that nobody reads?
I don’t have a neat answer for that fear. What I do have is a decision to keep going anyway. Because the alternative — not trying — guarantees the outcome I’m afraid of.
The Career Bit
Without going into too much detail, I’ve been exploring other opportunities lately. Ones that might give me more meaning and better align with what I’m actually interested in — which, if you’ve read any of my investing posts, you probably already know leans heavily toward finance and helping people understand money.
Nothing has materialised yet in a way that makes financial sense for where Rachel and I are right now. And that’s okay. The right opportunity at the right time is better than the wrong opportunity right now.
What the process did remind me is that I have more to offer than my current role gives me credit for. The blog is part of proving that — to myself as much as anyone else.
What I’m Most Proud Of
Two things, if I’m being honest.
The website redesign. That was a full day of wrestling with WordPress, switching themes, building a homepage from scratch, and problem-solving things I’d never done before. It didn’t go perfectly — nothing ever does — but I did it. The site looks like something I’m genuinely proud to send people to now.
And showing up on the days I didn’t want to. That sounds small but it isn’t. There were sessions where I opened the laptop purely out of stubbornness, produced something, and scheduled it. Nobody saw that happen. But it happened, and the blog is better for it.
What’s Next
Three things are on the horizon and I’m genuinely excited about all of them.
Getting the Pinterest strategy properly dialled in. Now that we’re at 20 posts, the plan is to create 3 pins per post — different templates, different angles — and schedule them out consistently. That’s around 60 pins total running on autopilot. If Pinterest keeps trending the way it has been, that’s going to make a real difference to traffic.
Finding a career path that gives me more meaning. Whether that’s a different role, a different industry, or something that doesn’t exist yet in the form I need it to — I’m not done looking. The blog is part of building toward something, not just a hobby to fill evenings.
Building something that isn’t limited by a postcode. My family have always said I should run my own business — and they’re not wrong that it’s where I’d thrive. But having run two businesses on PEI, I know firsthand how hard it is to break into a small market with a limited customer base. Coming up with the right idea is one thing. Making it work here while still paying a mortgage is another. What feels different about Building-Up is that it has no geographic ceiling. Someone in Vancouver, Toronto, or anywhere else in Canada can find this blog just as easily as someone in Summerside. In a lot of ways this is the business — it just needs time to become one.
Fifty posts and a microphone. The longer term plan is to hit 50 posts and then start recording content to go alongside the blog. By that point there’ll be a proper body of work to speak on, enough authority in the niche to show up with confidence, and hopefully an audience that’s been following the journey long enough to want to hear it in a different format.
That’s the plan anyway. Ask me again in six months.
To Anyone Following Along
If you’ve read more than one post on this blog — thank you. You didn’t have to and the fact that you did means more than the numbers ever will.
This blog exists because I believe that young Canadians deserve honest, experience-based financial content that doesn’t talk down to them or pretend that everything is easy. I’m not a financial expert. I’m someone a few steps into the same journey you might be on, sharing what I’ve learned along the way.
We’re just getting started.
Cheers,
Alex.
If you’re new here, start with the First-Time Buyer 10-Step Plan or the TFSA guide — those are the posts I’m most proud of and the best place to get a feel for what this blog is about.
English