I’m so embarrassed I’ve been journaling about this for so long but I think I figured it out.
My pre-pandemic self used to get up every morning, get dressed and walk or bike to a coffee shop with a journal and laptop. This routine kept me quite consistently productive and motivated.
It took me a long time to sort out my habits and routines as a creative entrepreneur - to mix self care and structure to support myself in being as productive as I could AND do my best work. This particular routine just WORKED for me, as a way to get my work day started.
I felt like the pandemic steamrolled over that. And then a lot of other steamrolls have joined in, in the years since.
And this year I’ve been exploring my routines from new perspectives and this month I tried to REALLY come back to this. I made a commitment to get up, get dressed and show up in the world every day.
This has not gone well.
But this is exactly how creative dreaming works. There is even a section on this in the Dream Plan Kit about planning for when you have no clue how to do a thing. I had an idea, I made a plan to implement the idea, and I did it, I noticed what happened and now I am learning from it so I can refine my plan and try again.
I don’t need to make judgements about how it went, I can just learn from it.
While this routine used to help motivate and energize me and get my days started… these days, this alone can take so much energy I don’t have enough left for my work.
What used to energize me now depletes me! This is good information! Not just to know where I am at now but to know how dramatically these things can change for me.
So I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on this. Even though I feel so embarrassed that something that seems to small is frustrating me so much. As a self employed person I do need to have a routine, or some way of doing my days, that works for me.
I do LOVE to go to a coffee shop with my journal. I see now that my old routine relied on this for motivation and productivity… it’s like I was plugging into this joyful thing to extract whatever I could from it. I was trying to extract the best quality and quantity of productivity that I could from myself.
And I don’t want to make my past self wrong! I am grateful for everything I did when I had the energy to do it. It’s just time for a new way.
I feel like this might not make sense to anyone but me and that’s ok.
I guess… I am breaking up with life hacks! And appreciating the magic of honouring my actual capacity.
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