Working 9-5…
As Dolly Parton once said, working 9-5 is a way to make a living… for many small business owners who left the standard 9-5 to start their own thing or follow their passions we know full well that working something as simple as 9-5 is a very distant memory!
Running your own business means that you put the hours in, and the reality is that you don’t mind it that much because you’ve made a choice to do this. I never minded working long hours, especially because it meant I could flex my day around my children and around things like the hairdresser or getting my lashes done!
But just lately (I say lately, I mean the last 2 years) it’s gone from flexibility to crazy. My business has grown and I have worked hard on bringing on new clients but it’s not just that – it’s that the demarcation between home and work has evaporated completely and I have literally no idea how to stop! I used to pick the kids up from school and that was the end of my working day, unless there was something I wanted to finish up or a blog has inspired me. Without the school run structure to the day and with nothing changing hour to hour it meant that I literally never stop working… I work whilst I watch TV, I work whilst on the bus on take calls whilst walking somewhere. I squeeze every bit of work out of every minute of the day – in between that I was home-schooling, moping up tears and refereeing fights, cooking dinner, doing chores… running life.
They’re back at school now, life is slowly and hesitantly returning to normal, but my working routine isn’t and I don’t know if it ever will. So much has changed and so much seems unable to change back that I don’t know if this is now just how I am. In an effort to deal with this I am taking a week off – a proper one where I tell people I’m not working and I don’t have my laptop on me at all times. I don’t know if I can do it, the very thought is scaring me and giving me massive anxiety. I need a reset though, I need to sort my balance out and get back to having some real downtime.
I’ll let you know how it goes!