You do not need to get better at “managing your time.” You need to take action. This is not about getting more done. It's about spending the time on the things that matter to you (including your business!).
It's Friday, and on Fridays I usually post about the adventures of that week…but this week I wanna do something different. When I read Austin Kleon's list, I was immediately inspired to start my own list, as part of my year-end review. I've been adding to it for over a week, and since having 75 things to list is what I'm most grateful for this week, I wanted to share it!
(This is no particular order, I just started listing as things came to me.)
86 things I loved in 2014
Working with the CreativeLIVE team. It inspired me to think about teamwork in a whole new light and opened up a world of what's possible. Also, they made my experience magical.
The entire CreativeLIVE class experience – the students (online and in person), the work of putting together my best material, the teaching-in-front-of-thousands feeling…and the confidence it built. The experience was not one of my “goals” for the year (it came up organically and I stayed open to it), but I totally needed this.
Jess. She makes my entire life better with her feedback, editing, and smarts.
Meeting and falling into immediate friendship with Misty.
And our knitting video podcast together, which started in a moment of “sure, let's do this!” It's fantastic to have something on my schedule that's just for fun and just about fun. And the community is fantastic.
An afternoon with Jill and Amy and Veronique.
Watching TV snuggled with Jay and the pup: Arrow, Sons of Anarchy (OMG!), Game of Thrones.
Having the remote to myself when Jay works late: The Good Wife, Scandal and Gilmore Girls (!!)
The “podcasting revolution” (I've been listening to podcasts since 2005…so, it's not really new to me) and especially Startup and Serial and Elise Gets Crafty.
Leading the Starship. The friends I've made, the growth I've been witness to, the celebrations of their awesomeness + fearlessness.
Headspace. For the first time ever, I have a morning routine, and it's all about Headspace.
Actually, the entire Isa Does It book. I made more meals from this book than any other resource.
Alpaca farmers! The Fiber as Business Conference was an amazing experience and the fallout has been fantastically unexpected.
Wooster, OH and the road trip we took to get there. Mission Savvy is all-vegan, in the middle of West Virginia (kind of a shock!); a (small) vegan menu at TJ’s in Wooster, OH; a great breakfast at Spoon Market in downtown Wooster.
Capsule Wardrobe! Totally changed my relationship (which was pretty hateful) with my closet.
Stitch Fix! I get one every 3-4 months and I never feel like I “should” be shopping. (I avoid it like the plague, but still need to have some nice things to teach in, ya know?)
Every day is an adventure. I share the view, the gratitude and the news on Fridays – you’re invited to join in. You can find all my adventures here, or follow along via email here.
A fantastic launch of the Starship + meeting the new Captains!
The Finds:
I’m reading:
I love that Pinch of Yum shares their monthly income report, but the best part is how the answer the question, “What does it take to make money blogging?”
Not much else! Spending all my time writing class materials + welcoming in new Starship Captains.
THIS was amazing. My lasagna noodles totally broke apart, so instead of rolls, it was more of a lasagna with pieces of noodles above and below a layer of DELICIOUS pesto-y vegan ricotta. Topped with more pesto. I could eat this every day.
Every day is an adventure. I share the view, the gratitude and the news on Fridays – you’re invited to join in. You can find all my adventures here, or follow along via email here.
The view
I am so grateful for…
A lovely weekend with my family, exploring Nashville
The Moves app, it's totally changing my days
Clarity of purpose. Is there anything better than knowing that you're doing what you should be doing?
The patience of Jay, Mom, and my friends while I freak out over what I'll wear (and how I'll do my hair) for my CreativeLIVE class. It's so obviously the least important aspect, and yet the one I talk about the most often.
Next week I'm sharing a much-requested (free!) mini-course on How to Say No. Get the whole thing in a handy PDF (with worksheets!) here.
What adventures have you had?
PS. The beautiful embroidery of birds, above, was made by my great-grandma. You can see the whole thing in the header of my mom's shop here. (Did you know you can get wool from her sheep?)
A few months ago my publisher sent me an email that said something like, “Just wanted to forward this in case you missed it, I think you'd be great.” Attached to her message was an email from The National Needlearts Association inviting teachers to apply to teach at their national conference in San Diego.
I immediately thought: that's not really what I do. This isn't for me.
But I left the email in my inbox (which is uncommon – I ruthlessly delete or file or boomerang) because the idea of it appealed to me. Half my family lives in Oceanside and I visit them every year or two anyhow…wouldn't it be nice to get paid to do that?
The email sat there, waiting, until I opened it again to see if it had expired, if it was already too late to apply (I assumed and kinda hoped it was). No, I still had a week left. So even though this still seemed like absolutely the kind of thing I wouldn't do, I put it on my calendar, to remind me when applications closed, and I boomeranged the message to come back on that day.
On the very last day, both my calendar and inbox both reminded me to apply. And I thought: What's the harm? I'd already developed classes that could serve the needs of TNNA attendees (shops, designers, dyers), so I had material ready. In fact, at the last TNNA conference, several Starship Captains attended…and if I was already helping them online, why not help them live?
So I applied. And...I got accepted!
And I worked super hard rewriting the classes (and workbooks) for this particular audience.
Things went all wrong (flight delays meant I didn't land in time to print workbooks so I had sprint across town at 11pm to print + collate…) and yet, it was great.
I met smart, generous, interesting shop owners and clever, ambitious, talented designers. I got to hug two Starship Captains in person. I got recognized in an elevator, which made me feel like a rock star (it was Corrina and we had a great time hanging out…because I'm not actually a rock star.)
And it was awesome.
This morning, while I was in Introvert Recovery, I was thinking that I almost didn't do this. All because I had an image of what I do and what I'm building with my work and I wasn't open to something new.
This is something we all struggle with – so many people (perhaps well-meaning family members?) give us suggestions for what we should do with our business, that we get into a default mode of No-Saying. “No, that's not really what I do.” “No, I'm too busy with other projects.” “No, I'm not that kind of X (teacher, writer, artist, maker)”
And that's smart. You don't want to do everything. Everything isn't for you. No one knows your work better than you do.
But what if you changed your default position from No to Open?
You might still say no, but you'll first take a moment to consider it. You'll be open to possibility. Open to opportunity. Open to connecting to disparate ideas into something new.
This is different from saying an indiscriminate YES to everything, because it comes from a different place. Instead of feeling desperate and needy (for approval, for validation, for acknowledgement), you're coming from a place of willingness and curiosity. What if you DID say yes? What if you took a moment to explore the idea and see if it might work?
This is exactly what I'll be asking myself this year, as I explore my new word of the year: Open.
It's about opening to opportunity, opening to ideas, opening to flow.
Being open in expression, in enthusiasm, in my own power.
Today I'm delighted to have Mercedes Tarasovich-Clark, knitwear designer, teacher and Starship captain, sharing what a life (and business) as a knitwear designer is really like. You can take her awesome online class for the lovely Artemisia sweater or drool over her patterns.
You're a full-time knitwear designer and teacher , which sounds like you get to spend all day knitting with beautiful yarns…what's a typical work day actually like for you?
Not too many days are typical, exactly. I usually need to fit in some combo of marketing (either by blogging, email, or social media), email, freelance writing (I do craft writing for a few websites, besides my own blog), designing (making up submissions for new work, or doing the technical writing for current projects), and production knitting. The knitting is usually knitting while taking exacting notes, but is usually the more relaxing part of my work. I have a sort of rotating to-do list, where new things get added in and prioritized as old tasks get shuffled around or accomplished as needed. I love the iPhone and online app called Orchestra for this; a fellow designer introduced me to it, and it’s been my fave to-do list app so far because it lets me prioritize well.
For the new year, one of my big goals is to try to make out a weekly schedule to have certain regular tasks assigned to fairly regular weekdays, since the place where I lose the most time and momentum is switching between tasks. That’s one of my Starship goals for this quarter!
When I talk to new designers, who have just one pattern on Ravelry, it seems like a ginormous leap to go from there to an actual, regular income. What was that leap actually like?
My path to full-time designer was so circuitous! I went from being a dedicated knitting hobbyist with a degree in fiber arts (Savannah College of Art and Design, 1999), to owning a local yarn shop, to designing part-time for magazines and yarn companies, to being a yarn dyer selling online and at fiber events, to designing full-time. At any point in that path I would usually be juggling more than one career goal. Even now, when planning toward 2013, I would have thought I’d have been more focused on moving to selling my self-published patterns wholesale, but instead I’ve found myself picking up increasing income from freelance writing and teaching. When I developed the Artemisia Seamless Sweater class with Craftsy, it was an unfamiliar experience, and a little scary, but it’s been a great step forward for my indie biz!
I think you have to plan your path up to a point, but not get your focus so honed in on one thing that you miss other opportunities. I’ve gotten to a place in my business where flexibility is key to my success. I say no to some projects, but more often I say yes, because it’s worth exploring and extending past my boundaries.
What's surprised you most about life as a full-time designer?
How many different business models there can be! As I’ve talked to other designers, our ways of planning for our businesses are so different and individual. While some friends make most of their income through their self-published patterns, others make more of their income via traveling and teaching, while others work for yarn companies for their main income source. It’s all based on full-time design work, but the business goals are incredibly tailored to the individual and his or her needs. We get great ideas from each other, but there is no one “right” answer for everyone.
What's the next destination you're working towards?
I just signed on with Interweave Press out of Loveland, CO, to write a book to be published (tentatively) in 2014 (it’s all super top secret for now). Most of this year will be dedicated to the project, with tons of designing, knitting, and writing to be accomplished. It’s exhilarating and terrifying, all at once! While that’s going on, it will be hard to juggle too many other projects, but by the end of the year I’d really like to revamp my pattern collection to get it ready to wholesale to indie yarn companies and local yarn shops.
What new thing are you exploring?
Better organization and planning. From using spreadsheets to organize my projects for the book, to utilizing better apps for my to-do list, to planning out dedicated personal time so that I don’t burn out. I tend to be pretty laid back and just wing it most of the time, but as my schedule gets busier, the chance of missing sight of a long-term goal or dropping the ball on an important task increases. It’s one of the reasons I signed up for the Starship, so that I could begin to put some better planning habits into place, and check in with other indie biz owners for ideas and support.
For me, it’s partially about income goals, like knowing I’ll have enough money every month to pay for my health insurance and build a nest egg, but also having a truly healthy balance of doing the work that I enjoy and having personal time to spend with friends and loved ones (and my dog, Leelu). I’ve been through burnout and health problems that have followed it in the past, so having enough time to take care of myself is a huge goal for me.
What's a recent lesson that you're now applying?
Ask for help when you need it! It doesn’t make me (or any other indie biz owner) less independent or successful. We really do need to take advantage of community, both emotional/moral support and making it clear how people can support us through our business. Make it clear that buying those $5 patterns or signing up for a class really does help us keep producing great work.
On the other side of it, getting together with other biz owners is important, too! My word for 2013 is “collaborate,” meaning not only actual collaborative efforts, like a joint design project or a project with a yarn company, but meeting up with other creative business owners to bounce ideas around and use each other as sounding boards as we plan and grow. The Starship has been a great place for this! I’m finding that as I make an active effort to extend outward and make connections rather than being overly independent, my business has been better for it, and I’m less sabotaged by feelings of self-doubt as I work.
Thanks so much Mercedes!
I love Merecedces' focus on flexibility and collaboration! How do you stay flexible in your planning?
A few (uh, many) months ago, I read a blog post at Made in Lowell that I just loved. I know Liz on Twitter, so I just had to ask her more about it. Below is our conversation…
You said, “I had about 20 years prior experience making and selling things at craft shows before the popularity and ease of internet shops existed.”
How do you think all that past experience has informed what you do now?
I think doing shows and trying to sell things for years and years did not dampen my hope that my business would at some point catch fire, but it did give me perspective on how people react to handmade items and their purchasing patterns. I knew that you could really bust your butt and not sell a thing or you could sit back and collect showers of money, each show is a gamble. I learned to take a long view to appreciate the slow build of my business.
Do you consciously pursue PR? If so, what's your plan look like? (I completely suck at this, so I'm fascinated!)
If not, how in the world do you keep getting it? 🙂
Ha! I do not consciously pursue PR. Or if I do, this is my method: I make myself available online, make all my accounts (Etsy, Flickr, Twitter, blog) have the same username.
I try to represent my personality in my online presence.
And I answer every email, every convo whether I think it might be a waste of my time or not.
I graciously, and in a timely manner turn down vending opportunities that don't suit me instead of ignoring them, follow up on every question even if it to politely decline to share technique secrets or to kindly say no to sending a “sample” for a blog review.
I want to be approachable and friendly online because I think people want to buy things from people they like! I know I do.
I hope this doesn't discourage anyone, but a lot of my PR exposure has been luck! For instance, Kari Chapin befriended me on Etsy back in the very beginning of our online market adventures, who knew that would turn into being a contributor to her amazing book The Handmade Marketplace?
And getting a spread in Studios magazine happened after Pokey Bolton from Interweave Press stopped by my studio randomly!
How did you get on the Martha Stewart show? What led to that?
Martha Stewart’s producers regularly trawl Etsy for show segment possibilities! One of them contacted me through Etsy. She said she’d seen my polymer clay eggs and ALSO that she’d seen my name in Kari’s book. That gave her the confidence to approach me.
I still wasn’t in though, it took a month of emails before the whole thing was a lock. A long, nervous-making month! I blogged the experience, if you'd like to read more.
Anything else you'd like fellow crafty businesses to know about what makes you or your biz tick?
I think the heart of my business is craftsmanship; the careful, painstaking time I invest in each item I make is something people can really see.
It also means I won’t be expanding my little biz into an empire, but that’s not really what I want. If you make things beautifully, photograph them beautifully, transmit your personality to the world and make yourself available for interaction, people are going to notice you.
Thanks Liz, for the peek into what's worked for you!
I particularly love Liz's point about responding to every query.
What was your favorite part? Share it in the comments!
(Want to share how you craft your business, leave a comment and I'll interview you)
Remember how, in the last episode, I said I was coming back to weekly episodes?
Yeah, the very same week, DCS called to ask if our girls (who were with us for 6 months of 2019) could come back to our house…with their 7 month old baby sister. We didn't hesitate! OF COURSE!
So…I went from one newborn to four kids, overnight. I have a (now) 4 month old, 9 month old, 3 year old and 4 year old. Needless to say, finding time and quiet to podcast isn't happening. It probably won't happen until 2021. I wanted to pop in and THANK YOU for listening for the last 6 years (!!) and to let you know that this podcast is one of my most-favorite projects and it will be back!
In the meantime, stay subscribed, sign up to get the news via email, and hang out with me on Facebook and Instagram!
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After publishing an episode every single week for 6 years, the pandemic and life really threw me for a loop and it's been four months since a regular weekly podcast.
Well, I have good news – the podcast is back to it's normal weekly schedule!
This week we're going to talk about the big changes in my life in my business, why I made the changes that I did, and what lessons you can learn from my process. Next week we'll talk more about navigating the transitions you may be experiencing in your life and business.
We have a baby!
First, the biggest, most life-altering change is that we are adopting our son, Judah! We have been his legal guardians since he was born, on July 6th, 2020 and the story of how he came into our lives (not foster care, not traditional adoption through an agency) is amazing. We're going to wait to share that story until the adoption is complete, which will be around January or February.
In the meantime, just know that I'm over here with a newborn and I'm loving it. You can see the birth announcement here.
The Final Starship Boarding
The second big change is what I want to talk about with you today. Before I even knew Judah existed – I opened the Starship for the very last time in mid-June.
As you may know if you've been listening for a while, I opened the Starship in 2011 and it has guided hundreds of makers, artists and designers through building profitable businesses through classes on marketing, pricing and following-through on your goals. Those classes were combined with a community of fellow business owners (Captains) who got together each week for a check-in and in a forum where Captains could ask questions and get feedback as they built their business.
The Starship has been my primary job for the last 9 years. It has generated multiple six figures in sales and some years has been 80-90% of my family's income. The Starship was the first community and had the first classes of its kind.
2 reasons I won't be opening it again
The first reason, which is something I've been thinking about for the last year or two is that there are now more classes available, really good classes, classes that dive deep into one particular thing, and I recommend many of these classes to makers.
Also, the online business and social media landscape has changed dramatically.
When I started teaching people how to build their craft businesses, the culture around business and selling was completely different. The women I worked with told me that I was the only one in their life saying “hey, if you want to do this, you CAN do this! It's worth your time and attention to make it profitable. It is ok to make money from this.”
Now, of course, the messages we receive as a culture have shifted dramatically “follow your dreams! Make money at home! It's not that you CAN sell what you make, you SHOULD sell what you make! Create another income stream! Do what you love! Not only CAN you grow your instagram, you SHOULD grow your Intstagram! Why? So companies will pay you talk about their products – you can get paid just by living your life!”
Lemme be clear, I am super happy that the cultural beliefs about what we can be paid for, what counts as “work” is shifting. I think that a more holistic approach to our life and work is healthy. But the problem is that the message has been, especially during the pandemic, shifting to you SHOULD make money online. You SHOULD build a business. If you can sell something, you should!
And here's the truth – owning a business isn't for everyone. Just like being a doctor or a teacher or an engineer isn't for everyone. It's a great career, but I don't think we help anyone by glamorizing one career path over another.
So although my message never has been “everyone should do this!!”, I just feel less comfortable shouting online about a profitable business.
But here's the thing – at this point, it doesn't come down to knowledge (all of the knowledge you would need is out there – watch my CreativeLIVE classes or read my books) it comes down to follow-through.
In my experience, Follow through comes from 2 areas –
knowing yourself and what you need and building the structure around you that supports YOU and
Your mindset – getting real about what it takes and committing to it and continuing to have a growth mindset as you work.
The more I think about it, the more I realize I’d rather spend my time helping you follow-through on your goals and dreams.
So all of that, that is a big change in our culture and how we think about businesses that has really affected how I think about what I'm doing here with y'all and what I communicate in my own marketing.
*Here's a takeaway for your own business – you are never marketing in a vaccuum. Your marketing messages (talking about what you sell) is in context with everything else going on, both in our work at large and in the lives and subculture of the people you're talking to. So what might have worked 5 years ago, may not work today. What mattered to your customer in December may not matter to them in July.
Now, I want to be clear – I could absolutely keep selling and marketing the Starship and my business classes in the new environment. I feel I have shared my business classes in a very authentic, encouraging way that stayed in integrity with my values for my entire business life. If I still wanted to, I absolutely could.
That brings us to the real reason I won't be opening the Starship again or selling more business-based classes.
I feel done. I feel like it's complete.
I don't feel bad or negative or anything, it just feels like it's come to its end. I've thought about marketing and social media and profitability and learned and researched and then packaged into courses and podcast episodes that would clearly communicate it to you in a way that would help you transform your business – I've done it for a decade and I feel like that's enough.
There is absolutely so much more I could learn – i could learn about the different platforms, I could dive in to what's going on with Etsy or Ravelry, I could learn more about what's new and different in email marketing or Instagram or YouTube and create classes from that but…well, I don't want to.
I think this is the hardest thing to do as an entrepreneur – to see that paths you could take and just say “nah, I don't want to“. But this is also the most important thing – to really be clear about what you want to do and what work you can do consistently, sustainably, and build a business around that.
I don't think that focusing on how to use a specific tool is really where most of my community needs to spend their energy. Yes, I could sell you a class on it – but is that what's best for YOU? Will your business be revolutionized by optimizing Instagram?
Eh, I don't really think so.
So doing that wouldn't be in integrity for me.
What WOULD be in alignment with what I find fun and what I think will actually help most of you listening is to talk here on the podcast about follow-through and emotional well-being and accepting yourself enough to build a life that actually suits you. We’ll dive into what I mean by emotional well-being in upcoming episodes. It’s what is holding a lot of us back from following through on our dreams and goals.
Now, here's the thing – you might still really want to learn about Instagram or email marketing or whatever, and the good news is – you can! There are so many places that are teaching about it with integrity and smarts – for example, I heartily recommend you check out the book and podcast, Hashtag Authentic, and the Instagram classes taught by Sarah Tasker. Check out the business classes by my friend Megan Aumen, she teaches on Pinterest and marketing basics.
What does that mean for me and my business? What's next?
Well, I'll be honest with you – I don't know.
I was going to wait to record this episode until I DID know, but then I realized that it would be much more authentic, much more REAL, to share it now, while I still don't know. Then I can share the journey of figuring it out, of building the next phase of my business, with you here on the podcast.
That's one aspect that I am sure about – i love doing this podcast and it feels in integrity (hey, it's free! If it's not helping you, you don't have to listen!). So I'm going to keep doing this podcast every week, and I'm thinking of this next period of time (I'm not sure how long it'll last), as Season 2 of the show. Yep, Season 1 was 6 years long! In Season 1, I helped you build your creative business through marketing and pricing.
In season 2, I'll walk alongside you as I pivot my business and I’ll share that process. I’ll share how I’m making decisions and thinking things through. We'll still be talking about goal-setting, follow through, mindset, enthusiasm…and whatever else comes up as we navigate a very weird time that is full of transitions and change for all of us.
If that doesn't sound like what you need, unsubscribe!
If you know others who are going through transitions right now, whether it's related to business, or the pandemic or general life stuff, please share the podcast with them! I've always had listeners who don't have a business but season 2 will be even more accessible for those who are looking to build a life with enthusiasm, whether that involves a business or not. Share the podcast in whatever app you're using to listen, share it on social media or send them to TaraSwiger.com.
I hope today’s insight into why I chose to make a huge change in my business was helpful or interesting to you! If so, come tell me about it on Instagram, right here.
What if you are just not getting things done? What if you just can NOT get things done? Before you start beating yourself up, ask yourself: is this just a season of my life?
I recorded this episode over a year ago, when I was a brand-new mom, but it's so appropriate for what we're ALL going through right now – a completely new season in our life and business. So we're rebroadcasting it (it will come automatically to your podcast app if you've subscribed), in hopes that it will help you feel some peace about where you are right now.
Today we're going to talk about how to identify the season you're in, and what to do about, to be both as productive and GENTLE as possible.
My aim is to guide you to living an enthusiasm-filled life…which includes doing work you love, spending time with people you love, and feeling GOOD while doing it.
I was recently asked the question on Instagram: I feel like I'm in a season of my life when I can't get a lot done. Am I alone? Can you talk about this?
First, let me preface today's episode with some background: two months ago I didn't have any kids. We became foster parents last September and on December 17th a two year old girl came to live with us, for an undetermined amount of time. And let me tell you – one of the first thoughts I had about my business, when my head came above water, several weeks later was: I can't believe I ever talked about how to get stuff done. I had NO IDEA what it was like to have a 2 year old at home. It is insane. Especially when you have no warning and you're a stranger to the 2 year old, and they've gone through some recent trauma. But even if you’ve been with them from day one, it’s bonkers.
So here's the truth: I have no idea what you're going through. Maybe you have 4 kids. Maybe you have a sick partner. Maybe you just lost a parent or loved one. Every situation is different, and my situation and way of dealing with things is built from what I need, from what works for me (and sometimes it doesn't even work for me!). So you'll have to take what applies, leave what doesn’t, and find what will work for you.
In my experience, there are several different seasons in every business, that continue to cycle throughout the life of your business:
Idea/inspiration – when you start to dream and get inspired and slurp up Pinterest and blogs and videos
Creation/exhalation – if you inhaled a lot of inspiration, you need to let it out via creation. This is where you begin to turn your ideas into action, into real projects or relationships or products
Working away at what you started – After the initial super-creative part of the process a LOT of our projects have kind of a boring “keep going” part. It’s not new and exciting, but there’s more to be done. This might also be maintenance mode. As Kurt Vonnegut said, ‘everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.'
Rest – sometimes you’ll go right from creating to new inspiration and new creation but a lot of time your field will just need to lie fallow. You may just need to rest before you get another breath of inspiration. This is the time that you may worry that you’ll never have another idea and that everything is falling apart. But it’s just part of the process. Fill up your well and keep yourself healthy during this phase.
So those are the seasons in your business, but there are also seasons in your LIFE. Seasons where you’re actually not going to be in any season of creation or inspiration because you’re putting your attention on other projects in your life. It may be parenting, or a relationship, or getting well. That’s ok. That’s part of being a human!
If you are in a season of not getting stuff in your business done, you are NOT alone. I didn't work for 4 solid weeks. And now that I am back to “work”, my working hours are a fraction of what they were. Not only that but now the part of my brain that was free to think about strategy and business plans is now thinking about temper tantrum strategies and did she have any green vegetables today and is that a rash?
Now, I could be frustrated about that, or feel hopeless about it, or freak out about it (my income is 80% of how we pay the bills…so it's kinda important.)
But this is only a season of my life. Yes, she'll only be 2 years old for a short season. And because we're doing foster care, she may only be with us for a short season. But above that, the overwhelming NEWNESS of everything is ALSO a short season. We won't be in this everything-is-new-and-requires-decision-making season forever. Even after just a month of being together, so much has become easier. We have routines, we have go-to meals, we have regular activities to do together. I'm not saying parenting every becomes EASY or that I'll ever get back the huge percentage of my brain I used to think about my business, but the season of it being THIS INTENSE is fleeting.
And let me even more honest with you – before this season of being a new mom to a toddler, I went through a season of deep depression where I could not get my normal stuff done. Everything was hard. It started with fogginess, then things got physically hard, then hopelessness, then there was just apathy. (It’s real hard to get things done when you don’t care about anything.)
Even though that season was SO hard and I never want to repeat it, it was a season of healing. I needed to learn the lessons I learned in that season. It was NOT a season of ideas, creation or working. It wasn’t that restful (although I did rest my body a lot.)
Now that I’m more mentally healthy and I’m moving out of the intense brand-new-kid season, I’m in a season of transition, where I’m trying to find my new rhythm, my new normal. As much as I would love to just hop back to work-mode when I can work, I’m finding that I need to learn how to transition from mom-mode to work-mode. So this is a season of figuring-it-out. I’m not quite to creation, as I just transition into figuring out how to work.
And I know many of you are in an especially hard season. Maybe it's depression. Maybe you're taking care of a sick family member or partner. Maybe you've recently experienced loss. These are all seasons where your work is just NOT a priority. And hey, that's ok!
We are trying to build businesses that ENHANCE our lives, that bring enthusiasm and joy and connection to our lives, so those same businesses (and our plans for our business) need to allow for that life to show up and take over sometimes.
Are you in a difficult season right now?
If you're not getting stuff done:
Is it a season?
Is there a timeline?
Are your frustrated because you can’t do what you WANT to do? Keep track of your ideas.
Stick with the routines that make you feel like yourself (ie, shower, walk the dogs, get coffee)
Recognize the season and give yourself grace.
Realize when you’re in the NEXT season, and allow the change to happen.
I hope this has helped you navigate whatever season you’re in!
