What To Do When Life Gets … Busy

So, remember about a month ago when I was lamenting how I had no momentum and my current spirit animal was a turtle?

The last month has been ALL MOMENTUM.

I just reread my last blog post, and it’s actually funny. I totally forgot that I wrote the following:

But what I’d really love is a flurry of productivity, where I get a lot done AND I GET IT DONE FAST.

Me, What To Do When Life Gets … Boring, September 11, 2023

The last time I asked for a sign I got a big one – and turned my sudden compulsion to leave my job and pursue writing full time into a reality.

This time I asked for more work and a tight deadline, and man oh man did Someone deliver. Three days later I was given a huge task and a series of crazy deadlines, and the day I started this post was the first day I’ve really come up for air since.

So What Does That Mean?

What’s truly exciting is that soon – possibly very, very soon – I can probably share what the heck I’ve been alluding to for what feels like most of 2023. Honestly, I don’t even know when this process started. It feels like an age and can’t be more than ten months.

But here’s what I can say. The days immediately following my last post where a whirlwind of emotions. I learned that I needed to take my project in a completely different direction and basically start all over again, tossing away about 60 pages that I’d already written and re-written. I’m no stranger to losing something and starting over, but in addition to the despair at being back at the beginning of a seemingly endless process, I was also hit with a hefty dose of financial panic. A week earlier my largest writing client had told me that – to no fault of my own – he no longer needed my services.

Not good when I’m barely making ends meet.

Really not good when I’m relying on making progress on this particularly large project to infuse some cash into my business. And now I’m back at the beginning.

But Wait …

The next day, I learned that yes, I have to start over, but the new project should be done by mid-October, with a big payday coming by the end of November.

Which meant a series of very tight deadlines where I had to deliver brand new, highly polished material.

And actually, the new direction was pretty fun and exciting.

Cue that flurry of productivity I’d been so desperate for. Although I’ll admit it – right now what I’d really like most is a nap. (If I put it in writing does that mean it will happen?)

And On Top Of All That …

And oh yeah, in the middle of all this “writing like the wind” as I for some reason starting calling it, my pastor reminded me that I’d once again agreed to pen the Christmas Eve drama for my church and “Surprise!” it was time to get started – and finished – with that.

I’m thrilled to report that I’ve received outstanding feedback on the new secret project material, I met my final crazy deadline last Friday with an hour to spare, and I managed to draft the play in a rare window when I was waiting for feedback before I could continue on with the Secret Project. Although it took me longer to get that draft revised than I’d hoped – and there was one panic inducing, “So, is this finished yet?” phone call – I finished my first script revision this week.

And so, what lessons have I learned from this period of channeling my inner rabbit? Besides the fact that I use rabbit and hare interchangeably, just like turtle and tortoise, even then I know technically there’s a deference?

Sometimes God Clears Your Schedule

This has happened to me before, often when I’m overwhelmed and overscheduled and suddenly a meeting gets cancelled so I don’t have to admit that I desperately wanted to cancel it myself. But I can’t recall it happening in quite this huge a way.

During the past 5 weeks, not only did my largest client dry up, but another long term client also told me they don’t need my services right now. Neither had anything to do with the quality of my own work; both were strictly business decisions or reaction to their own clients’ needs. None of that made me feel any better about it while receiving that news.

But the truth is, I didn’t have time for either of those clients once this secret project took off. Sure, the money is nice (and necessary) but the work is just a stopgap measure until I figure out how to make it writing books and not other people’s blogs. And in a month where I literally had to crank out new creative content day after day and go from basic idea to polished, well executed (nearly) final product in just over a week, trying to research and write these articles would have been a major distraction that would have compounded my stress and forced me to work even more hours – even though I also had so much going on during my nights and weekends that I didn’t have many hours to spare. But I’ve never been much good at saying no to things – nor am I going to bail on commitments I’ve made. So my Father took care of it for me.

It’s still a challenge to feel at peace when I look at my bank balance. But abundance is coming, and it finally feels close. And momentum was a lot easier to embrace when I was laser focused on one (okay, two) exciting projects instead of thinly spread over a whole legion of tiny ones.

You Can’t Keep Sprinting Through a Marathon

Momentum is amazing, and yes I asked for this. (Funny, how I totally forgot I asked for this.) But the past five weeks have been like running a marathon at a full sprint. As I’ve come to learn, that’s not sustainable.

Yes, there are times when you need to flat out hustle. NaNoWriMo taught me that. There’s a kind of magic to embracing a seemingly impossible goal and just making it happen. I skipped NaNoWriMo last year for the first time in 20 years, and I missed that insanity, even as I acknowledged that it was nice to go into the Christmas season a lot better rested. But every month can’t be NaNoWriMo. At least, I’d say that it shouldn’t. If a runner starts a long race at their top speed, they’re going to run out of energy before they reach the finish line. They need to pace themselves.

While I’ll always do what I need to do to hit important deadlines, this isn’t a pace I can – or want to – sustain all the time. I lived my entire first career in a state of constant burnout. When I left the non-profit world, I endeavored to never let myself fall into that awful state again. I haven’t always succeeded. But I know that I need time to rest, and space to let ideas percolate before forcing them finished into the world.

Take Time to Celebrate

Surprisingly enough, this is a lesson I first learned at my previous manufacturing job. I was part of a team that made a conscious effort to celebrate our successes instead of only focusing on challenges and what we still had to do. And as the one who often made the PowerPoint slide listing those celebrations, it was on my mind month after month.

I’m pretty awful at living this out in my own life, though. I usually take five seconds to absorb good news and immediately launch into something else. I have a friend who often asks me, “What are you doing to celebrate?” Sometimes the answer is ice cream. But most of the time this question leaves me flummoxed. Why friend, I am celebrating by finally doing all the things I wasn’t doing while I was doing the thing I excelled at.

The feedback I received last month was all generally positive. Some of it was “screenshot the email and text it to your friends” flipping fantastic. But every paragraph of praise was followed by another absurd deadline. So I really had little choice but to dive immediately into the next section and keep going.

But celebration is coming. This is a two person project, and my collaborator and I have made plans to go out for a nice dinner as soon as everything is actually wrapped up. We’re going to laugh and relax and talk about things that have nothing to do with this project. And maybe that will help me be better at celebrating in the future.

Just Keep Swimming

Remember when I kinda wanted to give up five weeks ago? Yeah … good thing I didn’t do that! Circumstances can flip in an instant. Your life can be going a certain way for months or even years, then take an unexpected turn at any moment. It’s not always instantly clear where those turns will lead. I was freaking out when I first got that email about “a different direction” but it turned out that direction was exactly where I needed to go.

So keep going, be ready for anything, and rest up while you can!

I hope to have great news to share with you all soon!