In the weeks before your wedding, you find yourself doing things you haven’t done since, well, since you had the time to do them. Exercising regularly. Eating healthier. Sunbathing. Getting a mani-pedi. Having your hair done. Buying a new dress (or dresses…damn Modcloth for being so awesome). But you do them in this half-mad frantic pace that turns you into a jittery chatterbox during your facial and a text-message checker during your mani-pedi (which you crammed into your overbooked schedule, making you late for your father-daughter dance lesson – and then you find yourself trying to drive in canary yellow Styrofoam flip flops with cotton between your toes, which is not safe.)
While I was in the midst of working 14-16 hour days trying to run my writing business and prepare for the wedding, I didn’t make any time for myself that wasn’t directly wedding related. No weekends, or weeknights for that matter, and no sanity breaks for a year. For a year!
But those moments of forcing myself to have a facial, instead of working and saving, gave me the idea that maybe I should allow myself to rank my personal well-being a little higher.
After coming through the other side of the work-wedding gauntlet (please read the historical wiki-definition of the word gauntlet), I want to make some permanent changes to my lifestyle that will place my peace of mind and wellness of body higher on the To Do list.
- I’m going to draw a hard line with my clients and ensure that I have WEEKENDS. Every weekend. Working weekends should be the exception to the rule and not the other way around.
- I’m going to delegate more. Thanks to having to refer my clients to two of my writer friends, I’ve not only learned that I don’t have to do everything myself, but I can trust someone else to do a fine job. I’ll also be formally partnering with these two writer friends so we can share clients, review eachothers’ work, talk shop, and not do what freelancers do best: work alone.
- I’m going to allow myself to unplug for a facial, or a mani-pedi, or a hair appointment, or a sunbathe, or a hike, and make sure I actually take a lunch hour to decompress and take care of myself. Sounds self-indulgent, and it’s that idiotic thought that has prevented me from taking care of myself. Like I don’t deserve to. Or people need me SO MUCH that not to bend over backwards and deny myself “me time” (I loathe that term, it’s so loaded) is too selfish to contemplate. How many of us women fall into that trap?
What it comes down to is re-balancing my life to help me keep sane, healthy, happy, and productive. Creativity needs space to happen, and my job is almost entirely creative. And, as Rogue Husband says, “happy wife, happy life.”
I know. I know. It sounds self-indulgent to me too. Men sooo don’t have that mental hangup, you know? I’m sitting here writing a blog post while Rogue Husband is playing a computer game three feet away, not feeling remotely guilty about it.
