I have been missing in action for about 3 months and it has been eating me up inside. I have been feeling incredibly guilty for not being present on my social media platforms or writing for my blog. I felt the fomo creeping in but as much as I wanted to keep up appearances that I had everything under control it was a moment of growth for me. For once I chose not to say "yes" to everything and risk spreading myself too thin.
What have I been doing all this time? Why did I choose to take a step back from my growing website and my blog? For starters, I was fortunate enough to receive a promotion at work. Meanwhile, TEDxPortofSpain 2019 also started gaining momentum as we announced tickets going on sale and naturally my marketing role with them became more demanding as we started the countdown to the big day. Soon after all this I also found a new apartment and found myself moving! The blog may have been quiet but my life certainly was not.
The old me would have found a way to make all the moving pieces work: settling into my new and more demanding portfolio at my 8-4, managing TEDxPortofSpain's marketing, the hunt and subsequent move into my new apartment and managing my budding blog and website to attract new clients.
The new me took a step back and with a heavy heart said... enough.
I could not say no to the promotion and the new challenges and responsibilities that come with it. I could not put my TEDxPortofSpain duties on hold and risk disappointing our team. I could recognise my limitations and acknowledge that straining to keep up with everything would not be healthy for me and would result in sub-par performance for any or all of the above. I knew that in my efforts to please everyone, I would not be able to offer my best and I did not want to disappoint myself or worse, those around me.
It was a hard decision to make. I had invested a lot of time and energy in my website and my blog before all this had happened and I was starting to gain momentum. It was hard to watch that momentum fade. It was hard to feel like I was neglecting my "baby" that I had so carefully nurtured for months.
I am sure some of you can relate. You want to say "yes" to every opportunity that comes your way. It is hard to admit to yourself that you are not superhuman and cannot be in several places at once or constantly juggling several projects.
At some point you need to put something down or risk it all falling apart.
It is not always easy to look at the bigger picture. It is not easy to admit you have limits when you are driven and have set such high goals for yourself.
For anyone exploring starting their own business, especially if you are doing it on the side while working a full time job, there's this "hustle" culture that pushes us to keep going no matter what. However, I think that beneath the genuine inspiration and motivation bloggers and vloggers portray, there also seems to be a layer of unhealthy glamorization of overworking yourself.
While I do recognize that starting your own business requires A LOT of hard work I also think it is important to set boundaries for yourself as you go. It is one of the perks of having your own business after all.
It is important not to underestimate work-life balance. What would be the point of working so hard all the time if you didn't get to stop and enjoy the fruit of your earnings once in a while?
The more time passed by I contemplated whether or not I should even do a post to explain my absence or if I should just jump right back into the marketing and communications content like before and not address it. Honestly, this is not the type of content I expected to delve into when I started this blog. I did not plan on getting too personal.
However, the more I thought about it, I thought about what I would like to see from people I enjoy following and what they would do. I thought about persons who might be going through something similar and that maybe they would like to hear they are not alone.
So for those of you who may need to hear it I just wanted to say, it's okay to say "no" sometimes. It's okay to shift priorities.
It's okay to shift gears and focus on doing a lot on a little rather find yourself struggling to do even a little on a lot.
More importantly, don't spend time beating yourself up for being human and having limits. Give yourself all the time you need to make sense of all the chaos that may surround you and then when you're ready... move forward.
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