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Posts Tagged ‘music’

Plan, Plan, Plan, Stumble, Plan…

Thursday, October 13th, 2011

I talk a lot about planning here on my blog but there are times when planning still doesn’t cut it and you end up at square one again.

Source: epherielldesigns.com via Sara on Pinterest

That happened to me this week. This was supposed to be my business vacation week but because of scheduling conflicts and other issues I’m not in Chicago like I wanted to be, I’m still at my parents house. Not that I don’t love my family (Hi Mom!) but it’s just not the week I had planned out for myself, with peace and quiet and lots of no-baby business time. Once again I will remind you that I love my family, but listening to my daughter run around like a crazy person with her grandparents is not quite as relaxing as it would be if I was tucked away in a coffee shop in Chicago observing all the hipster youth getting their ironic hot chocolates.

So what did I do when I realized my plans were going down the proverbial toilet? Did I stand up straight and say, “No problemo. I will make this work!” ? No. I was pretty weepy, had a “poor Sara” party that included Chipotle and THEN I made a new plan. My new plan involves some dedicated business time in the mornings and then family time in the evenings. The Universe must be trying to tell me that I need to spend more time with my family and that’s why everything is keeping me here with them right now.

I’m also going to cut back on the number of items I wanted to accomplish this week. I had some grand plans for all of my uninterrupted Me time so now that I only have Mini Me time I’m not going to beat myself up about not getting it all done.

Making a plan is so important but being able to roll with the flow can be even more important because everyone will have a wrench thrown into their plans at some point. The trick is not to get stuck in the “poor me” vortex because it’s really hard to drag your mind back out once you’re in there. You won’t get ANYTHING accomplished if you stay in your little sad sack. For me, I was pretty stuck until I decided to put on my dance music and shake all the sad sackery out of my system! (Watching the wee one dance around with me was kind of the icing on the cake! )

How have you rolled with the flow when your plans have been derailed?

What’s your favorite thing to do to cheer yourself up?

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Tags: #blogboost, business planning, Chicago, derailing, music
Posted in Business Planning | 2 Comments »

“Stressed” is “Desserts” spelled backwards

Sunday, December 20th, 2009

Typical One year old
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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!

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.

I’m going to try and tie in songs or movies with my blog posts from now on because I think it will be fun! SO, I shall leave you with this creepy version of “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads as performed by Kermit the Frog. (Yup, it’s just one of those things you need to see…)