It’s been a lousy few days here. While I’ve been fixated on trying to build more business, I lost two contracts after the government froze all grants and loans yesterday. While the order has now been rescinded, it was too much uncertainty for my clients. They’re going to preserve their resources for now. For me? I’m out significant work.
Honestly, I’ve been pretty angry. Anyone who knows me knows that I’m incredibly cautious. My business plan had backup contingencies and I even made sure I had a year’s cash on hand, just in case something bad happened. But, to work your tail off and then lose something because it’s totally out of your control is incredibly frustrating. Not gonna lie: I’ve shed tears.
But now? I’m letting go. I started at 5 p.m. today. I turned off my phone for at least the next 24 – if not 48 hours. I may even keep it off over the weekend. I need to de-stress and outside stimuli won’t help that. Then, I shut down email for the next 21 hours. Honestly, I don’t need to check email again until before my client call tomorrow at 3 p.m. Up until then? Email can stay off. It goes without saying that I’m also staying away from the news and have generally shrunk my existence to this house and the seven heartbeats inside of it. For now. I need to rejoin the land of the living soon enough. But for now? I’m in recovery mode.
In the past two days, I’ve had to accept that my little micro-business – of which I was incredibly proud – may not survive. I’m not sure if I’ve done the seven stages of grief yet, but I’m close. 😊 Now, it’s about moving on. In the end, I’ve decided to pursue two paths: one is my microbusiness, which I love and the idea was relatively safe as I’m a subject matter expert in the niche services I was offering. I will try to keep it going. But the other is a life outside of healthcare and a life I could only dream of: writing for me and for a living. It starts with this blog and it ends with a novel, which is already half-written. In between? I hope both explore the pieces of life that are so relevant to me: certainly loss and defeat as I’m experiencing now as well as triumph and the pursuit of simple peace, which is what I want my life to really be about.
It occurs to me as I enter this recovery phase that I genuinely couldn’t have prevented – or even predicted – what happened to me. But how I respond? That’s all me, baby. I’m not terribly proud of my very rough few days, but there’s a message for me going forward: it’s not how you start, it’s how you go on. So my start was rocky; my “go on” is going to be wide-eyed and cautious, but determined. Hence, the radio silence. For now, I need it to be my own voice I hear and when I’m not listening, I need to be in the safest and most soft place I know: my home and with my heartbeats.
And then? I need to get excited about the challenges that lay ahead. Right now, we need to economize a bit. That’s not something I’ve had to do for the last several years and I’ll admit it was nice, but perhaps a little wasteful. But I was once a great little saver. I’m ready to exercise those muscles again. While we don’t have many monthly expenses – food, taxes and utilities – I can certainly find ways to save more. Particularly with my out-of-control grocery bill. Just today, I was able to save $15 off of my $60 grocery bill, by shopping at a few stores and making substitutions with the things we already had on-hand. Given the chance, I’m looking to reducing our monthly bill by at least 20%. And you know what? I’m really looking forward to this challenge. Now that renovations are over, we can also reduce our home improvement store bill substantially without it causing a wrinkle. Other little changes I intend to make? Once the Super Bowl is over, we will likely cancel our regular TV streaming service and do single-service provider subscriptions. That will save a small sum, but it’s money we don’t have to spend. We never really watch TV anyway.
The other challenges I’m looking forward to? Really digging deep to finish my novel. I’m 100 pages in. It should be about 200 pages total. There’s a lot of story left to tell and it really takes me sitting down each day and just writing. The story nearly tells itself, but I need to hack at the keyboard to make it come alive. The same with this blog. What you don’t see is that I write everyday – sometimes multiple times. But then, the story is too personal or too boring to make the pages of my blog. Committing to digging a little deeper isn’t too big of an ask. The posts readers react the most to are the most honest posts I write. Time to let that voice be heard.
The biggest challenge I’ll have, though, is financial planning. Quite honestly, I can’t spin straw into gold and there’s only so much gold we have now. As much of the gold we do have is going to have to go into future planning as possible. That’s okay – it’s good for us to save. But, I’ll need to get more strategic about investments than I was before. My “hey, let it ride” philosophy worked when there was more where that came from. Now? I have to be a little more careful and a lot more insightful.
But just like that – in eight paragraphs – I’ve worked myself from a very dark place back into a place of hope and light. It doesn’t mean that the world is brighter than it was eight paragraphs ago and I face the very real possibility of shuttering my little microbusiness. But the world feels brighter than it did.
Right now, I’m watching my two littlest rescues cuddle in their poppa’s clean laundry basket and they don’t have a care in the world. That’s what life really is all about, you know. Being home in you safe, warm, comfortable house with the heartbeats that mean the world to you. Soon enough, I’ll let the outside back in and there are in particular some very important heartbeats that I both want and need in my life. But for a little while, it needs to be just us in the nest. We need the ability to curl up in the laundry basket with a sibling and let the world go by or sleep with abandonment on momma and poppa’s bed and know that no one or no thing will disturb our peace.
I don’t want to sugarcoat what the month of January has been for me. It’s been nothing short of a disaster, with the exception of my alma mater winning the national college championship. (Go Buckeyes!) I likely made a big mistake in taking a sabbatical, no matter how tired I was, because that meant intense pressure on January to produce new work. I could ill-afford something untoward happening – and it did. But I’m smart, tough and resilient. I have the added insurance of an employed spouse to help support us and a bankroll built after a very busy summer. And I won’t give up on my business just yet. But I will move forward. I will always move forward. That starts with letting go.
The Yuppie Homesteader 