What would you do without "the guilt"?

​I'm having a work-cation...

… a work vacation… not a vacation FROM work… a vacation TO work…

... which should absolutely NOT be a thing!!!

As a healthy-boundaries-setting business owner (and mom) a vacation from my LIFE to JUST do work is like... a billion red flags for all the depression and anxiety and nonsense that I spent all of last year (and most of a lifetime) acknowledging, growing through, and moving past.

But here I am. Sick with covid. My daughter is with her grandparents (thank GOD!!) and (mostly) not missing me, because Grandma and Grandpa are ALL the fun. So I’m trying to tune out the Mom-guilt… I’m settling into the fact that my husband is sick too, so absolutely does not need me… and I’m recognizing that my body isn’t up to much, but my mind… is. So….. I’ve invented the work-cation.

And it’s been surprisingly wonderful.

Think back to the start of pandemic when we all told ourselves “YES!! Finally!!! A chance to focus on all the things that I’ve been putting off!! Because the whole world is on pause and there’s nothing else going on so I have no distractions and can switch into TURBO-BUSINESS-OWNER-MODE. Finally!!!”

… And then think about how tremendously that all backfired... Because the truth was that what we all REALLY needed, then, was to tune out. Shocked and traumatized by the world crumbling around us, unsure of what was coming next… it’s completely understandable that we did NOT do all the things… and maybe just survived it.

But now? Now I’m 99.999999% sure I’ll survive. I know my daughter is safe. I know my parents are safe too. This is NOT my first Covid rodeo and I have a relatively clear picture of what I can expect the next handful of days to look like.

So…. I’m doing the things… and it feels INCREDIBLE!!!!

Yesterday, I spend the whole day drawing and coloring-in self-portrait zentangles as part of the Brand Therapy Group, I did a facebook live about it, saved loads of videos to my drafts folder on Instagram, and even implemented those zentangles as new cover images for old blog posts!! Which is a longwinded and overly complicated way of saying, I feel really good right now because I’ve actually had guilt-free work time.

There is literally NOOOOTHIIIIIIIIIING else I could have done with my time. So doing the things, the brand-related things that have lived at the bottom of my to-do list FOREVER, just feels good.

And here’s where the brand advice comes in:

When you look at my blog, now, you’ll see something that looks pretty professional and TOTALLY on brand. The thing that had been bugging me for AGES was that I didn’t have a path or pattern for how to figure out the graphics for my blog posts. So… I just… didn’t write blog posts…? Or at least not as many as I’d have liked to. And sometimes I actually DID WRITE blog posts… and then didn’t post them… because I didn’t know what to put for the graphic…

… and I am literally a GRAPHICS PERSON.

IT’S LITERALLY MY JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So let me ask you… what are the things that you’ve been waiting on?

What are the things that you’d love to do for your business, but you don’t know what they’re supposed to LOOK like? What gets in your way when you’re excited about new things and how much of that comes down to not knowing how to present them?? And WHAT would you do... if the world didn't need you... and you could tackle your own brand-related to-do list WITHOUT the guilt...?

OK. Now, let’s tackle them together.