Rest & Invest

Rest and invest. My mantra for this year and why I have been so quiet on here. I’ve spent the first half of this year trying to take better care of myself so that I don’t overwork myself. I had to give myself permission to do my work as an organizer and save projects and ideas for the second half of the year.

Three years in to self-employment, I’m realizing how important it is to spread out my work and schedule in rest time. If I don’t, it’s easy to get caught up in the “when will my next project show up” and overbook/overwork myself. I know I’m not the only business owner or consultant who falls into this vicious cycle of chasing the work when we really need to set boundaries around scheduling clients further out, determining how often we want to work, deciding when to take real time off.

It will take a lot of practice for this to feel normal and part of my routine but this is a healthy way to invest in myself, making this kind of work sustainable for the long term.

I’m excited to look back at my list of possible projects and see what feels like the most fun to kick off summer. It’s hard for me to schedule out the time when it’s not billable hours and the “just for fun” kind of work, but I’m going to try building in a work day each month (or weekly?!) to see what happens. When I plan a “co-working” date with friends, I find that I can catch up with them and still get some kind of work done. So that might be how I tackle these projects (both work-related and not) - who wouldn’t want to be at this co-working session pictured below??

If you have ideas or tips on how you rest/invest in yourself, I’d love to hear them! I like to know what works for other people, whether you are self-employed or doing the corporate thing, it’s critical to take care of yourself. I’m always interested in talking about this with others so it normalizes the need for rest, moving away from glorifying busy-ness.