Starting a business is hard. Running a business is hard. Often, working in a business is hard. It's all hard. And right now, when the world is so nuts, it can seem TOO hard. Some days, getting out of bed, putting on pants, and showing up to do the work just seems like too much work, especially when the siren song of the couch is so loud.
Today was one of those days. I woke up fine, but then everyone else in my house woke up grumpy, which started a cascade of anger and resentment (the two least useful emotions a human can feel) and I began a spiral downward. I shoved everyone out of the house and did my stretching and meditation, but it was a struggle. I got dressed and put makeup on because I have a zillion Zoom calls today, but I wasn't looking forward to any of them—they were all volunteer stuff or things for Legion, which was going to eat up an entire day that I was supposed to be spending on my consulting business.
My spiral continued as I sat down to write. My schedule dictates that I write some mornings from 7-8:30, either blogs or for my book, and today was one of those days. Except, I didn't have anything to say. Well, I had things to say, but I'm pretty sure none of y'all want to read a long page of complaints about how freaking hard it is to keep my emotional equilibrium while the world burns and my family grumps at me and apparently, no one wants to attend the seminar I'm putting on. Not exactly the inspirational/informative stuff I'm known for.
Honestly, I thought about just not doing it. Not writing. Just sitting on the couch and wallowing in self-pity and spiraling further into self-recrimination. I had an hour and twenty minutes before my first meeting, I could definitely score some good wallows. But then I thought further through it and realized that if I were to do that, I'd feel even worse, and not just because of the wallowing. I'd feel like a failure for not even TRYING to write anything, and just giving up. Since I launched my consulting company three months ago, I've faithfully gotten up every day, sat down at my desk at 7 a.m., and gone to work. It's the only thing that's keeping me going on this business most of the time—the fact that if I treat it like a real job, it will be a real job and I will be successful.
So, I poured a cup of coffee, shoved the dog out of the way, and sat down at my desk. I looked at my planner to try to come up with SOMETHING that would form a blog, and figured out the easiest topic I could tackle (yesterday's blog about SMART goals.) I put in my earbuds and I wrote. And after that blog was done, I wrote this one.
Is it Shakespeare? No. Not hardly. It's two throwaway blogs that, by the time they are published in a few weeks, I won't even remember. But I did it. I pushed up my sleeves and I did the work. And that's what really matters.
I'd love to be able to end this blog by saying that I had some kind of epiphany and now my day is awesome or whatever, but the truth is, I just feel marginally better than I did before. I'm still grumpy and low, but at least I can check something off my to-do list. I didn't wallow in the couch, and I don't feel like a total failure.
And some days, that's the best I'm gonna get.
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