I moved; like, physical location. I moved my home and then since my studio was in my home I also moved where I work.
It’s an interesting thing because no physical location is familiar to me right now. It’s not like I’m getting acclimated to my new home while still going to the familiar place that is where I work every day. No — everything is different for me and it’s really weird. It’s rare in life that the most familiar environment that you find yourself in is like, a friend’s home or the grocery store.
With all of that comes that “getting situated” phase. I have to get settled into my new home enough to be able to unwind every day and then I also need to get settled into my new workspace enough to be able to be productive and continue the work that I have to do, (which I am incredibly behind on).
There’s a lot of lessons to be learned through seasons like this. When everything gets uprooted and you’re left to figure out what’s worth replanting and what you can let die and go without. There’s some incredible learning to be done in these periods of time but there’s one aspect I want to focus on for this quick read:
The world will continue to do its thing… whether you do or not.
And I don’t mean that in a depressing way, it’s just a very interesting dynamic that I’m currently observing. The world is undoubtedly a better place because of my contributions, (most of the time). When I’m working and providing great service and great products to people that solve problems and impact them emotionally, I’m undoubtedly making the world a better place.
I know this because I’ve observed this phenomenon in real time as a client views the work that I’ve created for them for the first time. It’s an incredible thing and it’s what keeps me doing what I do.
But the opposite is not true. The world continues to function properly when I need to take a step back and get my life situated. It doesn’t become a worse place if I don’t show up. I can make the world a better place by contributing, but my lack of contribution doesn’t make it worse… it just stays the same.
Now, it would be selfish for me to do that indefinitely. To withhold the impact that I’m capable of having in the interest of “curating my life” would be unhealthy for me and an outright injustice to those around me in a position to benefit from my impact. You might be able to tell based on that paragraph that I’m a fan of Seth Godin.
But my point is that on the macro scale of things, the world deserves the impact that I (and you) are capable of having. But on the micro scale of time, the world doesn’t even know I’m gone; the world doesn’t suffer for lack of my input.
I don’t know about you but to me, I find immense freedom in that. I can make the world a better place by showing up and I can take a break for myself and my life and not be a detriment. It’s kind of a, ‘can do no harm’ situation.
I create marketing content for distribution online and through social media. It’s hard to imagine an “industry” more fast paced than online marketing these days. The distraction culture is insane and attention spans are only getting shorter so there’s immense pressure to just be on 24/7/365 for these clients that I create for regularly. And there’s certainly something to be said for the fact that I have a contract and a committment to create for them. It’s an objective, measurable, empirical goal in terms of volume of content that I have committed to make for my clients. And if I wasn’t meeting that goal consistently, week after week, month after month — on a macro scale — I would be in breach of that contract and my livelihood would suffer. A lot.
But in the short term, I’ve been able to communicate with these clients and be up front with them and let them know that the next couple of weeks aren’t going to look the same because my life is currently being shuffled in fairly dramatic fashion. And they’ve all been, largely, perfectly accepting and understanding of that. Am I going to make up for the down period and double time it 3 weeks from now? You bet! Because I gave somebody my word on what I would deliver and, dammit, I’m going to keep my word!
But for the short period of time that it takes me to get settled so that I can actually do the work that I need to for my clients, for my business, for myself; it’s perfectly ok for me to just take a breather, the world isn’t going to spring up in rebellion against my clients because there were fewer instagram posts this month than typical.
The world will be fine with fewer social media posts; in fact the world would almost definitely be better with fewer social media posts but that’s a discussion for a different day.
If you find yourself in a season of transition, a season where things are being shaken up and you’re having to adapt, it’s fine. Take a minute, or two, do what you can with where you’re at and if that’s very little, don’t beat yourself up about. Accept the reality of the situation, communicate with the people that deserve an explanation and work on getting your situation back to normal so that you can get back to doing what you love.
Thanks for reading. Much love. Peace!
