You know how Murphy’s law says whatever can go wrong will go wrong? Well that’s how I feel about 2019 so far. It’s been one hell of a trying year, which in some ways ABSOLUTELY HEALED me and my anxiety, but in other ways almost broke me. In 2018, I spent most of the year overworked, overtired and just busy busy busy. So when I woke up to start a new year on January 1, 2019, I vowed to make changes. I vowed to take on less projects, to take off Fridays and spend them with Hudson (AND REALLY SPEND THEM WITH HIM, OFF MY PHONE), I said I’d run more miles and home cook more meals, and most of those things I DID accomplish so far.
But what I didn’t realize was that outside of those changes, all of my life’s other comforts, routines and boxes I had built for myself would dissipate, and that everything would change and become hectic almost all at once. We moved into a rental to renovate our home on February 26th, less than two months into the year. Since then I’ve been non-stop planning, ordering things for the renovation, following up on timelines, etc. It has been an extra thing on my plate, but I think it all didn’t really catch up with me until a few weeks ago, when I found out I’d be saying goodbye to my amazing assistant Danielle. Our potential move-in date of June 1st came and went, so around the same time that I was focused on hiring a new assistant, my friends who we’re renting our house from had to move in with us (or us with them, haha). Right now there’s 4 adults, 3 kids and 3 dogs all living under one roof. It’s been a bit hectic to say the least!
In the entire process, I learned that while blogging gives me SO MUCH FLEXIBILITY, at the same time it also strips me of having the freedom to live in an unfinished home, filled with boxes while I’m sloppy and in sweats. It allows me to travel, but only with a suitcase filled with planned outfits and aesthetic hotels lined up. It lets me take a day off to live in sweats on a Wednesday, but then on Thursday I need to change outfits twice and shoot an extra instagram post for the week. It muddles my time off and my time on, and in the last few weeks I’ve sort of crawled into an uninspired hole, where my focus has been on getting my life handled. Even though PTO is a non-thing for bloggers, I felt like I had to let one thing go in order to get a proper amount of sleep at night, and that thing was this blog. It’s sad, because I’m pretty consistent about updating at least 2-3 days per week, but I realize that once we move back in to our home in the next few weeks and get re-settled and Matt stops traveling for work as much, when my new assistant is trained, and everything goes back to normal that getting back on a blog schedule will feel EASY compared to the struggle to continue blogging through hurdles the past few months.
I also learned that sometimes it’s therapeutic to relinquish control, and learn the hard way that no matter how hard we try, we’ll NEVER be able to control our lives completely. I’m super type-A, but it took basically running my business solo for a few months and living with bare minimum possessions while my husband worked a ton to realize that EVEN WHEN TIMES ARE HARD, I’LL SOMEHOW CONTINUE ON, and it will all be fine!! Look, here I am halfway through 2019 getting past the shit to see the other side – a gorgeous newly renovated home, the opportunity to work with a new person who will be amazing and so many exciting unknowns for the second half of the year.
Breaking down my own walls has allowed me to build new ones, and come back with a fresh eye! Tons of new content coming soon, and let me know your thoughts on it all in the comments!
