Oh it’s almost Christmas and this is the first year that I didn’t stress out until the last minute about gifts and whatnot. It will be so nice to just enjoy the weekend and not worry about who got what for who and what I’ll have to re-gift later on!
Since it is a holiday weekend I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite holiday videos because who doesn’t love a good holiday video? (That and I’m too lazy to write a whole post today. I have 5 hours of driving ahead of me people!)
Many of these are new this year but some of them are just good old favorites that I have to bring up every year.
Typical One year old +
Working from home on client projects AND re-branding project
x
Not enough time in the day
=One crazy stressed out Mom/Wife/Woman!
Everyone has those days when things get overwhelming whether it’s your job, your family or the dog that won’t stop humping the neighbor and digging tunnels to China in your backyard (I love my dog, I love my dog…) If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Congratulation! I hate you. I award you no points and my god have mercy on your soul.
I started my business to help alleviate some stress in my life because riding a bus into the city everyday meant a 10 hour work day (if I worked overtime it was longer than that) and the childcare would have been redicutarded expensive. Now, I LOVE my job and am so happy I decided to stay home with my daughter and watch her grow up. I get to work with people I want to work with, work when I want to work and see Aerith with her funny little dances and giggles as she watches the dog chase his tail outside!
BUT
Now I have new stress that I hadn’t planned on. Watching Aerith is a full time job, being a good housekeeper is another full time job and running my virtual assistant business is a full time job. I hadn’t really considered the fact that I would have three full time jobs but here I am, and some days I want to quit and run away to distant shores and open a mom and pop porn shop!
SO
I have devised a new strategy to help me ease some of my stress and hopefully make me a happier person in general (which I’m sure everyone would enjoy). I started planning out my meals ahead of time, focusing on one area of the house at a time to clean and yesterday I signed up with a local babysitting service called BabySitEase to give me some ME time each week. This babysitting service is a big step because trusting someone else with my daughter might be the hardest thing I will ever do but I need to do this for my sanity and hers.
If you are getting overwhelmed by life and you are a planning kind of person like me I invite you to come along with me on my journey of organized chaos!
Write it down. Write down everything that is making you stressed out. Making dinner, cleaning your office, going through emails; whatever makes you want to run away screaming when someone reminds you that it has to be done.
Plan it out. Instead of waiting until the last minute to make dinner, plan out your week’s meals so you don’t have to come up with something off the top of your head. If social media is overwhelming, plan out times during the day that you check your accounts and/or schedule out your Tweets for the day, or the week, ahead of time to make sure you’re still involved.
Make time for yourself. Make sure to schedule in YOU time. YOU are the most import part of your business and your family because if you don’t work, it ain’t gonna work. Even if it’s just a weekly coffee break to a near by coffee shop or a Sunday bath/spa night, make sure you get a chance to decompress after all the hard work you do all week.
Hello from my corner of the internet where most, if not all, of my work is done virtually, digitally and intranetly. (Ok I made that last word up but you get the idea.) I work with several clients who I have never met before because I have the ability to work with them online. I would never have met some of my new friends if it wasn’t for Twitter and social networking. I LOVE the internet but maybe “going digital” isn’t good for everything.
At the begining of the month I saw an interview on The Colbert Report, one of the only news shows I watch – The Daily Show being the other – and Stephen had the author Sherman Alexie on to talk about his award winning book “War Dances” and how he believes the digital age will be the end of book tours and personal contact between readers and authors. Sherman believes that once books begin to be made into digital copies for use online, and for digital readers such as the Kindle, authors will start to have less and less interaction with their readers. He describes his Fall book tour and how he did magazine articles, newspaper interviews and book signings but not nearly in the amount that he has done in years past. He even jokes at one point about how he is the afternoon matinée now.
Reading a whole book on a little device is just too out there for me so I haven’t jumped onto the Kindle excitement train like some of my friends. I want to be able to move pages and highlight parts I want to remember. I want to be able to “lend” out a book and then have to buy another book because I know I’ll never see the original book again! (That reminds me, I need to get a new copy of “Q-Squared“…)
This got me thinking about my role in all of this. My job is to help authors to share their personality and their work with the world by using the internet. I use social media and tools such as Scribd to help authors take their business to the next level by putting their work out into the internet tubes. I wouldn’t say that by doing that I’m killing off book tours but I would say I’m giving authors a different way to interact with readers. It may not be face to face but Twitter conversations, Facebook updates as well as blog comments can turn into pretty heated exchanges that feel very intimate. Doing a virtual book tour is a great idea as well if authors want to feel connected to their audience and draw in some new readers. Instead of going to book stores and coffee shops, we go to blogs and podcasts and interact with readers in a great new way. Plus, this way you don’t have to look at the guy who just threw a shoe at you while you were reading a passage from your new poetry book!
This interview has been in the back of my mind all month so I decided to share it and see what you thought!
(When Sherman describes his people as “Paranoid Indigenous” it cracks me up everytime!)
Ok so I’ve been away for awhile and I’m not too happy about that but I hit a wall when it came to writing blog posts for some reason. My business is doing decently well and I have some super great clients but I feel like I am missing something.
I need to have fun!
I need to be creative!
I need to be me!
When I created my business plan last year I followed the rules that I read online. I looked at what other VAs were doing in their businesses and tried to make my business as similar as possible because that was how I thought it worked. It works for them right? Why wouldn’t I want to base my business on a model that works? So I created my website and started offering my services to anyone and everyone who would ever possibly need me! I forgot one thing though – me. I forgot to add my personality – my witty, silly, edgy, smart and sassy personality – into my business. So although I’ve gotten clients over the past 9 months (oh my gosh has it been that long!!!) I’ve been struggling to keep my personality in check because that’s what I thought I had to do.
Going forward into the new year there will be some changes. Changes to my business plan, my website and my attitude towards my business. Just because I make money doing this job doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy myself at the same time!
This will also mean a 90 degree turn in my business in regards to my target market. Who, do you ask, is my target market?
“Howdy! My name is Sara Carbaugh and I work with creatives to make their lives easier through my crazy awesome virtual assistant skills.”
(I am so excited about this I might pee my pants a little!) (more…)
