Don’t get lost in the big picture
What I’ve learned this week: remember the little details as well as the bigger plan, and don’t lose sight of your why.
I recently had something approaching a meltdown about my working life. When I started this job, it was a two year contract, which would have ended in November this year.
Though it was changed to a permanent contract shortly before I started, I don’t think I’ve ever lost the impression that it was fleeting, temporary, short lived. I’d used it as a springboard and a deadline – that by the end of 2014, I’d be fully, gainfully and profitably self employed.
background photo credit: j-dub1980 via photopin cc
Yeah. It’s June, and while The Website Beautician and Ink Drops are thriving, realistically that’s not a goal I’m going to reach in five months. Not least because, inspired by some awesome friends of mine, I have closed my books for TWB until September to rethink and plan and rework my ideas and my goals and my dreams.
You see, though I love making websites, I’m not sure I want to carry on making them for clients. Or at least, I think I’d like to change the way in which I create websites for other people.
And in admitting that, and making the decision to give myself a couple of months to finish current projects and then *breathe*, it feels like a weight has lifted.
I’d got so bogged down in the *must quit by December” deadline (which was entirely in my head), and the how of such a massive task, that I’d forgotten why I wanted to be self employed in the first place, and indeed, why I left London and took this job.
There is a post in my archives (originally posted on Ducking Fabulous) about what I was looking forward to after quitting the City and I think that says it all.
Time and freedom and ease. Freedom to create, freedom from worry about finances, time to spend with loved ones and with my camera and in my studio. Ease in what I wear, what I do, how I live. Space to make healthy choices, to indulge, to enjoy every moment of my life, no matter what I’m doing – and space and time and freedom to grow my businesses with ease, free from the pressures of having to make a living wage from them from day one.
I cannot create from a place of desperation – worrying about money is one of the things that saps my imagination, ability and desire to create faster than anything else. With the run of bad news relating to people I love recently, perspective has shot through my life in a blaze of colour – giving me clarity, and sanity, and a renewed vision of my WHY.
photo credit: Ava-forever catching up.. via photopin cc
And so I have pulled my head and shoulders out of that dark, panicky, suffocating tunnel of a deadline. I saw the doctor on Wednesday and am going for blood tests which will hopefully help pull the rest of my body out of that tunnel as well.
I have made my peace with my day job, which I actually rather like, but was beginning to resent with all the other commitments that have been necessary in recent weeks. I have started an art journal, begun to blog regularly again, and picked up my camera to create rather than to capture snapshots for the first time in months, if not years.
Though I miss lots of my lovely friends, for now I am saying no to social things so I can get my head together, and hopefully by late summer will be in a better place emotionally and financially so I can catch up with them all again.
I feel better already for just making the decisions – and it means I can get on with creating for my amazing existing clients without worrying about how to fit in future ones for now.
And already an opportunity to collaborate and create custom themes has presented itself, and I’ve bumped into an old acquaintance who I suspect is going to be a really good friend. Cheers, Universe – you do know what you’re doing really, don’t you?
It’s a good place to be, if not what I expected or planned for. But the best things are often unexpected. I’m excited to see what the next few months brings!
Have you had a massive rethink of your plans (entrepreneurial or otherwise)? How did you manage it? I’d love to hear your stories!
