Talena Winters's Blog, page 9

Peaks and Valleys

It’s easy to post when I’m feeling good. But on days like today, when I feel as though there’s a weight on my chest that may never leave, it’s harder.

It feels a lot like depression. In fact, that’s what I’ve been thinking it was for the last several months, because I was also burned out and depressed.

But the depression is lifting. And this feeling came back, right on schedule.

Image by Johannes Plenio (@jplenio), courtesy of Unsplash.

I know that’s a weird thing to say. But about a month ago, I figured out what this general feeling of the blahs is—premenstrual syndrome. I used to get it for three days. It has now extended to two weeks.

In fact, not just premenstrual syndrome—though I haven’t confirmed this with a doctor yet, I’m pretty sure what I’ve been experiencing qualifies as Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD.

I was in the depths of one of these weeks when I saw someone talk about this on TikTok. So I went and looked it up, and holy cow. Of the long list of symptoms on the Hopkins Medical site, I’ve experienced most of them. Regularly. For most months of the last several years.

Yes, I need to see a doctor to confirm this is the issue. In fact, I just put on my list to make an appointment with my naturopath on Monday—since the resolution to this won’t be drugs, but rather supporting my body and getting back in balance. (Even the John Hopkins site says that’s basically the “treatment”.)

In fact, this realization has been a big part of the motivation to start making the lifestyle changes I’ve been blogging about.

Speaking of which…

How this week’s Slow Productivity went

I’m going to be honest: I fell off the wagon a bit this week. (By fall off the wagon, I mean, of course, that I worked more than I planned to or probably should have.)

I did have a couple successes: I got up an hour earlier every day but one, and I even managed to take a couple of naps (which wasn’t hard, because I felt jet-lagged from that hour time difference for several days).

I had planned to exercise every day, as well. Which didn’t happen a single time after Monday, which was a holiday.

And, on Tuesday, I started a project with the website update that consumed me for several days with the same ferocity that jigsaw puzzles do. That is to say, I couldn’t stop working on it until it was done.

Tuesday was the worst day for Slow Productivity. I was up until one a.m. working on my website, despite that early rising I was planning to have the next morning. (Wednesday was the only day I didn’t get up by six. I slept in for forty-five minutes.)

However, the rest of the week went better. And also? My book pages are so beautiful and simple to use now. The plugins I installed and put on those pages this week solved a pain point I’ve had with selling books directly on my website for years—how to have a simple, beautiful, easy-to-navigate book landing page with easy access to purchase all the formats available. Keywords: simple and easy to navigate. And now I have them. (Thank you, developers of the Squarespace plugins I found.)

Besides making a great deal of headway on the website update this week, I also managed to update one of my patterns: Mermaids & Dragons. That means I’m nearly halfway done my main project for the year for my knitting business, which is to update my website and all my knitting patterns to make sure they are better formatted for ease of use, are branded the same, and, most importantly, are screen reader accessible so low-vision knitters can use them.

I say “nearly halfway,” but I think it may be more. I finished with all but one section of my website knitting pages early in 2022. I’ve updated nine patterns now. Of the patterns I have left, some of them haven’t sold in years, so I’m thinking of retiring them. Some of them are good designs, but I need to work on the marketing package (photos and samples and yarn choice, specifically) so they look more appealing. But some of them just don’t have much appeal as a purchased pattern because they’re just too simple and people can figure it out themselves. So I think I’ll either retire them or make them newsletter bonuses or something.

Also, I have several designs waiting to be published, and I really want to finish at least some of those up this winter.

This is the tough part about being a multi-passionate entrepreneur: I have several aspects of my business, all of which I love doing, but there’s only one of me. Whatever I’m focusing on moves forward. The other languishes and I feel guilty for letting it.

At some point, I’ll be able to hire help. But I’m not at that point right now.

Anyway, I hear a book calling my name, so I’m going to leave this post with one final note: I found out yesterday that my grandmother is probably on her last few days of life. She will be turning ninety-four in October, or she would if she makes it that long, which doesn’t seem likely. While her passing will be a blessing for her in a way, as dementia has meant she hasn’t had much of a life the last few years, I and my mom’s family are still sad, and that certainly doesn’t help the heaviness I’m feeling. So, if you think to pray for us and for her, please do.

I’ve been at way more deathbeds (and sickbeds) than I’d like in the last few years, and I have to say, I’m not sure if anyone ever dies completely peacefully. But I pray Grandma has as much peace as possible as she goes home to Jesus.

Getting Serious about Rest

There’s a certain amount of appropriate irony to the fact that during my Labour Day weekend, I consumed an entire audiobook about rest.

Square blue book cover showing a beach chair. Text: Rest: Why you get more done when you work less* by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang.

On Friday, I got an email newsletter from the Calgary chapter of Editors Canada, in which Rest: Why you get more done when you work less* by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang was listed as their next book club pick.

*I am an affiliate of some of the platforms available through this universal link. That means if you purchase the book from those platforms, I get a few cents at no extra cost to you.

I’d heard of the book before—I don’t remember where. I’d even looked it up. But this time, I was primed for it. When I saw the title in that email, I went straight to Amazon and bought the audiobook.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears, and all that.

I’m glad I got the audiobook. My friend Brenna, who happens to be one of the co-leaders of the Calgary Editors Canada twig, said she found reading the book a bit dry, and I can see why. Mr. Pang uses a lot of studies, facts, and figures to back up his thesis about how the different forms of rest he covers in the book have been regular parts of the lives of some of the most accomplished people in history. Listening to those figures delivered by the narrator breathed some life into them and made it much less dry. Also, it’s easier to stay engaged when you’re listening while doing some other task that doesn’t require much engagement, such as cooking, knitting, or driving.

That’s not to say that I think he overdid it on examples. Not at all. In fact, as I just saw in another reviewer’s headline, “You need all those examples to prove to yourself ‘rest’ is valuable.”

At least, us hardened workaholics do.

I Rested—Honest, I did!

I was raised by a mother who firmly believes in the value of rest. As a Seventh-Day Adventist Christian, she always taught me the value of putting aside one day a week not to work. After all, if God rested on the seventh day, who was I to do otherwise?

For the most part, I’ve honoured this establishment throughout my life—though, for me and my driven self, rest often looked a lot different than the strictures the SDA church put on me as a child. In fact, my sabbaths more often embraced the maxim A change is as good as a rest, filled with creative projects I saved only for that day that allowed me to rejuvenate in ways that simply sitting around not swimming, creating, or doing other forms of forbidden “work” would not. (More on that in a minute.)

Yes, believe it or not, rest has actually been a high priority to me for most of my life. Thank the Lord he gave me both a mother who taught me as much and the conviction to revive the tradition in my early twenties, or I probably would have burned out many more times and a lot sooner than I did.

Lest you get the wrong idea, Seventh-Day Adventists don’t sit around doing nothing on Saturdays. They usually fill their sabbaths with church, potlucks, nature walks, naps, and visiting friends and family, at least in my memory. The older I get, the more appeal these activities hold for me—but, since I’m not a Seventh-Day Adventist and have attended church on Sunday for my whole adult life, I wasn’t embedded in a system or social circle which also embraced these Saturday activities. So, in order to honour the Sabbath and ensure I had a weekly rest, I had to find my own way.

When I was younger and had more energy and my daily work was raising little boys, my sabbath rest often looked like sewing, scrapbooking, and other forms of creative expression that allowed me to make something tangible that would last, as opposed to the continual cycle of cooking, cleaning, and child-rearing, where the benefits were harder to see on a daily basis.** And on Sundays after church, rather than spend the day relaxing, I usually do house and yard work for the rest of the day.

Seven years ago, when I was suddenly torn from the life stage of parenting a young child, I turned to work as a way to both heal and avoid my grief.

That’s when I started into my current cycle of overwork, and working on my career from Sunday night to Friday night with pauses only to eat and sleep became the norm. Soon, I didn’t know who I was without work—what I did had become my entire identity. And despite my strong internal fire for what I do, after seven years, the lustre had begun to dull.

Which is probably why this quote from the introduction of Pang’s book resonated with me so much:

“When your work is yourself, when you cease to work, you cease to exist.”

— Alex Soojung-Kim Pang

That sounds extreme, but that’s how I have felt for some time.

A Day Off Isn’t Enough

Thanks to my belief in sabbath rest (which my own body and experiments reinforced time and again), even in my worst workaholic phases, I have always usually taken one day on a weekend to relax—but, with my shift in schedule seven years ago, the way that rest looked shifted from the active rest I had so long embraced to more of an all-out coma a do-nothing day, since I had expended literally all my energy during the week. I had nothing left to give my friends, my family, or myself.

Eventually, I realized this wasn’t good for me or my relationships, and set aside Saturdays as the day I would get together for friends with coffee. No more saying, “No, I can’t, I’m working.” Instead, it became “How about we get together Saturday?” (Fortunately, by then I had trained my circle to understand that working from home doesn’t mean always available. Now I just had to train myself that connecting with those I care about on a Saturday would still energize me, even when I was dog-tired.)

Ever since I hit the pit of burnout in January 2021, I’ve been on a journey to full recovery. And, as writing coach Becca Syme teaches, it’s often not a straight trajectory. Especially once you get to a point where you’re feeling mostly better, you tend to push yourself too hard and it can take super-long to heal the last twenty-five percent because of it. I can attest to that—I think it’s why I was veering so dangerously close to burnout again this year after the major upset to my life system this spring.

But even during my recovery phases of burnout, working days from 8:30 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. with a few hours in the middle for meals were my norm. It was a rare week when I didn’t log less than forty-nine hours of butt-in-chair work time, and sometimes as much as sixty when nearing a deadline. (My massage therapist and I get along great. We should. I see him more often than most of my friends.)

But after returning home from my two months away this spring, with a looming book release deadline and several weeks of reduced capacity due to catching COVID too, I pushed myself harder than I should have, back to working those sixty-plus-hour weeks I knew I shouldn’t, the ones that had sent me into burnout in the first place.

And, at the same time, I was sinking into depression. For the first time in my life, I woke up unexcited for the work I had to do that day. I’ve always loved Monday mornings—until this summer.

Now for a brief aside about why I do this to myself:

I’ve done a lot of work on myself over the years, and especially since I lost my son and began my career as a writer. But this spring, I was introduced to the enneagram, and that tool has revealed some things about myself to me that have woken me up like never before to how my patterns are hurting not only those I love, but myself—and the motivation behind it.

As a type Three on the enneagram, which also sometimes goes by the name of my top Strength on the CliftonStrengths test, Achiever, it’s no surprise that I’m a workaholic. But it was the enneagram that helped me to see why:

I’m driven by expectations.

And no one’s expectations of me are higher than my own.

But more than that, I’m in a constant battle to live up to the expectations of others. Over the years, thanks mostly to my husband’s influence, I’ve started to develop boundaries to keep out some of those expectations that don’t belong to me. Still, thanks to the enneagram work I’m doing, I’m starting to see more and more how often things I do or have done in the past were motivated by an expectation I didn’t even consciously register before I tried to meet it.

And the weight of the expectations I carried has been driving me into the ground.

If you’re not a Three, you may not understand how gut-wrenching it is to admit something like this. My heart is literally constricting in my chest right now. This is tough stuff to face. (If you get into the enneagram, you’ll discover your own shadows to face, and then you’ll get it.)

This summer, as my internal flame sputtered low, I realized these expectations are killing me. But that led me to ask, “What’s the reasonable amount to expect of a human?”

I didn’t have an answer. I literally did not know what a reasonable amount of effort, love, work, time, etc. to expect of myself was.

All I knew was that the line was somewhere below the level I’d expected of myself up until now. But I didn’t know how to find it.

This was the quagmire I was sinking in when I took my stay-cation in mid-August.

Slow Productivity and Rest

Slow productivity is more than a fad I’m trying—it’s the new expectation I’m setting for myself. I literally have to tell myself that I need to achieve a slower rate of productivity—that this is the new expectation—or this thing is never going to work for me. And in doing so, I’m making space in my life to remind myself what a life well-lived looks like. To take time, daily, to refresh and rejuvenate, so that I’m not just a blob in a recliner by Friday night.

The book Rest found me right when I needed affirmation that this was not only healthy for me and my relationships, but was actually the right move for the longevity and success of my career. More than that, it has motivated me to incorporate a few new practices into my day to honour and boost my health and creativity—namely, getting up a little earlier to allow time for exercise and a regular nap before the afternoon’s work. (If it was good enough for J.R.R. Tolkien and Winston Churchill, it’s good enough for me.)

Still, this night owl can hardly believe I willingly got up at six a.m. today with a plan to nap this afternoon. Naps have been something I’ve only ever done when my reserves are so depleted that even coffee won’t keep my eyes open.

But, to be honest, my reserves are pretty depleted, though I’m feeling much better than I was a few weeks ago. That nap this afternoon is already looking pretty good. :-)

Even though it’s only been a week, I’m already seeing the benefits of the new routine I established last Monday, and I’m looking forward to a week from now when six a.m. will seem a little easier to manage. (By the way, this new wake-up time is also partly inspired by the fact that my husband has been getting up by six since starting his new job—I prefer our schedules to match so I can see him in the morning and go to bed around the same time as him at night. Yep, my night owl days are on hiatus, maybe for good.)

Here’s to new expectations—which will now incorporate deliberate rest like never before.

**I now know that achieving things gives me energy. I knew that then, too, but at the time, I used to feel guilty about this use of sabbath time. In Pang’s book, he calls this type of rest Active Rest, a time-honoured way to refresh for active, busy people like me. That change is as good as a rest philosophy has something to it.

View of the Peace River bridge on Saturday morning. I was walking along the dike with Jason. It was pretty hazy with smoke from some forest fires in BC and Jasper.

This is my favourite person to rest and relax with. :-)

How do you refresh and rejuvenate, friend? Did any of this resonate with you? Do you need to be more deliberate about rest? Let me know in the comments.

Happy Tuesday, and happy fall!

Stop to Smell the Cosmos

I’m one week in to my new Slow Productivity paradigm shift, and… I love it. I’m more relaxed, happy, and positive about work than I’ve been in months. I’ve spent time this week knitting in the evenings while watching shows with my family, and have even watched a few episodes all by myself. (My current binge watch is Star Trek: Voyager, because I never got to watch that one in the nineties.)

I did have a couple of long days at my desk that I’m feeling across my shoulders, but those “long” days were what I once would have considered a day where I slacked off and didn’t work much. Monday is the Labour Day holiday, and I’m even planning to take it off.

(For context: there were two days where I logged almost ten work hours, but the other two were around 8.5, which is a pretty comfortable length for me. Not so long ago, twelve to thirteen hours of logged work per day was not uncommon, and nine to ten hours was a “light day.”)

So, yeah, I’m feeling good about how this is going. Mostly because I’m actually feeling good, period.

This week, I was primarily focused on two projects:

Continuing to update my website, which I began last week while on holidays.

Publishing the Twisted Rope Fingerless Mittens knitting pattern, which I completed yesterday.

Website Overhaul

When you change templates, there are always some features you were using which no longer work, and some features you never had available to you before which you now do.

At the beginning of this week, my primary concerns were to find a way to get a blog sidebar back—which my new template doesn’t include, for some reason—and to make sure it was easy to navigate between pages in some sections of my website where the in-template navigation had gone away.

I found an excellent plug-in to solve the blog sidebar issue. It’s not as ideal as having it native to the template, but it works. I’m thankful for my lingering knowledge of basic CSS from back in the bad ol’ days of running a blog and a business on Web 1.0, because I was able to tweak the plug-in even more than the basics offered by the designer. I’m pretty happy with it now.

And fixing navigation was a matter of going and manually inserting links on pages myself. I still have one rather hefty list of pages to finish doing this on, but that project is coming along nicely.

In addition, while I’m focusing on my website, I’ve been streamlining some things and doing a lot of niggly back-end stuff to repair broken links and make the user experience smoother. Most of it isn’t going to be obvious to anyone but me, but that’s the way it should be—if a website is working well, you don’t notice it. If it’s annoying and difficult to find what you need, you do. I’d rather this work be unnoticeable.

New pattern: Twisted Rope Fingerless Mittens

This is one of those designs that’s been in the works for many years. (As most of mine are by the time they’re published.) A little over a decade ago, I made some sketches of design ideas in a notebook, and there was an early version of this pattern in there. At the time, I didn’t know how I would make those cable bands at the top and bottom work, but I knew there had to be a way.

Then, in February 2020, I finally started work on an even more complicated version of this design called Lothlorien Fingerless Mittens (which I’ll be releasing next). It was a major challenge to my skills, which is what I wanted, but when I finished the prototype, I knew I had to refine some of the more basic aspects of the design first. So I set that aside and began work on the Twisted Rope design.

The good news is, now that Twisted Rope is out, Lothlorien won’t be far behind. And there will be two lovely designs available for knitters wanting to tackle different complexities of projects.

It feels wonderful to finally complete these projects. They were supposed to be “fast and easy” designs to complete… but with my limited energy levels the last few years, I only worked on them sporadically. And that definitely made everything take longer.

Unblocked prototype of Lothlorien Fingerless Mittens.

Check out the pattern

In other news, this has been one of the most gorgeous summers we’ve had in the Peace Country in years. I was telling my husband this morning that it’s one I wish we could bottle, rinse, and repeat. And I’m so very thankful for it.

In fact, I’ve been practicing gratitude a lot this week, which has probably contributed to my healthier mindset. But, to be honest, it’s difficult to be grateful when you’re stuck in the quagmire. However, now that I’m slowly working my way out of the muck, I find that focusing on gratitude is accelerating the process.

And, as I so often do, I record the things I’m grateful for with my camera (such things as can be captured for posterity this way).

Napping cats beneath my desk.

A surprise petunia beneath my steps that reseeded itself from my planters last summer.

Bees in my cosmos flowers.

So many blooming cosmos flowers!

That my daisies haven’t died yet, despite my almost-total neglect. (I’m babying them a bit more now, hoping to save them. Daisies are my favourite flower.)

Neither have my hostas.

I have so much to be thankful for! (Including the chance to play with my camera this week.)

Happy Friday, friend! What are you thankful for this week?

Morning Lite

I’ve been changing up my morning routine the last few days from what I normally do—not least of which, I’ve been getting up an hour earlier. This is motivated by not wanting my son to be alone when he’s getting ready for school (and not wanting him to miss the bus, to be honest), but it has also opened up my day in small but unexpected ways.

For instance, as someone who works from home, I rarely put on makeup. I don’t go to work in sweatpants or anything (mostly because I hates them, precious), but my look is usually to throw my hair up in a clip or a ponytail and put on the same jewellery I wear every day and call it good. Even putting mascara on is a stretch for me.

But, not long ago, I told my husband that I missed the days when I felt like I had time to put on makeup every day. Not because I want to do it for other people, but I like playing with the artistry of it. (And I like how it makes me feel, to be honest again.) However, with every second of my day scheduled, none of it for playing with makeup, it rarely happened.

This morning, I put it on, just because I had time and I wanted to.

And I even used a curling iron and wore my “special” hoop earrings today! :-)

I’ve been “settling in” to this new work mindset, and loving it. I’m still figuring out my new systems so I can keep myself on track—both toward my goals and with using lower-stress methods to get there—but I definitely feel more relaxed than I did even a week ago, when I was on holidays but pondering going back to work and what that would look like.

Here’s what it looks like so far:

No More Time Blocking

I’ve been ignoring my daily time-block schedule completely. I haven’t erased the blocks, because I’m not sure that’s what I want to do, but, other than to check what scheduled commitments I have in a day (such as running kids to work or doing coaching calls), I haven’t even looked at my calendar.

Setting Intentions, Not Goals

I created a Kan-Ban style board in Asana called “Intention Planning”. (I thought I’d call it “goal planning”, but even that seemed too lofty and rigid and something in me rebelled.) The columns on the board are labelled with time frames, like This Week, This Month, This Quarter, This Season, This Year, Next Year, and Future.

My Intention Planning Board this morning.

I also have three extra columns on the far right for Book Ideas, Knitting Ideas, and Other Ideas. I wanted to keep these handy when looking at my planning board without having them right in my face. But that way, I can keep those great ideas I had in mind for when I’m ready to slot them in.

I used to track these intentions in a monthly BuJo page, and I still have that (for the moment), but the Asana board has a few advantages that my BuJo (Bullet Journal) doesn’t:

Since I already use Asana for my to-do list and business planning, it’s very easy to add tasks and projects I already have in here to my Intention Planning board with a general time frame of when I hope to get to them.

It’s also super easy to move things between columns as new opportunities arise, if something takes longer than I anticipate, or as the Spirit leads.

In my BuJo, it’s too easy to lose track of the million ideas I’ve had that I want to become priorities, because I’m not going to write them all down on my “future” category every month and I rarely remember to go look through my “ideas” pages. This way, they stay in an easy-to-access place on a page I intend to look at every day. With a simple scroll right, I can see what I hoped to pull onto the priority list and how soon I want it to be a priority without a bunch of time-consuming copying and pasting. And, if priorities change, reordering them is a simple drag-and-drop away.

Note: I set this up yesterday, so I expect it to fluctuate some as I dig into using it. It already has—I originally had a Today category, but found that got a bit too granular and required too much fussing around with re-ordering things. My normal My Tasks pane is suitable for tracking today’s list, and since the projects on the Intention Planning are easy to drag around, on my Intentions board, I simply drag something up the list if I want to tackle it today instead of later in the week, then change the due date.

Overall, this feels like a much more sane and intentional way of working for me right now. I’m enjoying work, I’m honouring my creativity, and I’m even taking walks sometimes. And when I’m doing things for my family (such as attending the auditions for the new kids’ musical last night for Jabin—more on that in another post), I don’t have a voice in the back of my mind saying, You should be working right now.

And that feels freakin’ amazing.

Morning sun on my office wall…

About a Girl…

For the last couple years, I’ve had a morning journaling routine. I haven’t exactly “switched” to a morning blogging routine, as I’m still making quick notes in my journal every day (not everything is meant for a public blog, after all), but I find I’m enjoying this return to posting my thoughts here. The writing here is slightly more structured and creative, and I also know it’s more likely I’ll come back and look at it again later.

So, for as long as I feel the urge, I may be blogging pretty regularly, at least on weekdays, but I won’t always be reposting them to social media. If you’re the kind of person who likes to see these types of posts and you want to keep tabs on my progress into Slow Productivity (and daily rambling thoughts), you can subscribe to this blog through the form in the sidebar so the posts will be emailed to you the day after they go up.

And please, when you read, leave a comment here. One of my favourite things about blogging is the conversations it sparks. Once Facebook came along, people stopped commenting on blogs as much, and, for the bloggers, this can be tough. Your comment on Facebook goes away, lost in an ever-moving tsunami of links and content. Your comment here remains, and when I look back at this post in years to come, I remember you and that you were part of my life at this point and the connection is strengthened all over again.

Just food for thought.

Happy Wednesday, friend. What’s your favourite part of your morning routine? If you don’t have a favourite part, or if you don’t have a morning routine, what would you like to start incorporating?

Last Firsts

Today is my baby’s last first day of school.

Jabin on the first day of kindergarten at age almost-five.

Jabin on the first day of Grade 12 at age almost-seventeen.

How did this happen? Where did all that time go?

My boys have all grown up, and soon, the little birds will be flying the nest.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot, actually. I feel pretty blessed to have this moment in time when all of my kids are home, because I know it will end very soon.

Since Jude got home from Bible college last fall, he’s been living at home, but he’s planning on entering the military soon.

Noah just got his first job, and he’s loving it. He’s a ways from flying the nest, but it will happen eventually.

Jabin is working hard to save up for Bible college next fall.

Everything is changing for them. For us. It’s exciting and nerve-wracking, and I couldn’t be more proud of them.

Because last firsts always mean the beginning of new firsts. And that’s life in a nutshell.

Happy Tuesday.

Slower

All three of my sons are learning to drive right now, all at various stages of experience. Driver training is being provided by us, the parents (so far). Mostly by Jason, thankfully, because I’m… well, I think I tend to over-teach. This can be confusing and overwhelming for the student, which, in a driving scenario, isn’t great.

Anyway, it’s interesting to see how each of their personalities plays out in this arena, and what tendencies they have. My oldest, Jude, drove the family to a wiener roast at my mom and step-dad’s the other night, and I (literally back-seat driving, since Jason was in the front) kept exclaiming about how driveways were not the Indy 500. Noah needs encouragement to go faster sooner. And Jabin needs encouragement to be aware of everything around him.

Free stock photo taken by Cory Bouthillette. Courtesy of Unsplash.

Jason and I spent the last two weeks on holidays. We did a stay-cation at home, and it was wonderful—exactly the break that I needed. Except, maybe not enough.

I mean, I was so close to total burnout again. Jason sees it, and he’s concerned. I’m also concerned, of course.

In fact, I was initially only going to take one week of holidays and ended up extending it to two. Even today, as I am supposedly jumping back into work, I’m doing so with fear and trembling (and kind of slowly, as evidenced by this blog post being my first priority). Because I know my natural tendency is to treat my career like the Indy 500—to lay on that gas pedal until all my fuel is gone before I’ve even reached my next pit stop.

And that needs to change.

The Productivity Trap

I’ve always been very driven, and that drive has led me to pursue ever-more-demanding ways of being as efficient and productive as possible. It’s so ironic that I spent the last six years since I decided I wanted to be a writer for a living learning how to be as productive as possible, becoming hyper-focused on my goals and productivity. Did it move the needle? Yes. But slowly, and at the expense of things I’m not sure were worth the cost, such as my health and precious memories I could have made with my kids if I hadn’t been working so much.

So now, I need to hyper-focus on doing the opposite. I need to learn to slow down.

For the sake of my mental health, I need to get excited about my other interests again. Last week, as a “for fun” personal project (that was a little bit worky, I admit), I updated my website template for the first time since moving to Squarespace in 2014. It was definitely due, but it's such a massive project that it’s not something I would normally prioritize. I like working on websites—I find it very creative, and solving the unique problems presented by the design and purpose of the website combined with the template restrictions is very satisfying.

Anyway, in the process, I tackled a project that’s also been hanging on since 2014—updating the outdated and broken category tags that Squarespace converted all the Blogger tags to on my imported blog posts. (Still not done, but I made progress.) And that means I was reading a lot of blog posts from 2006 to 2014, and reminding myself of what I used to do before I worked fifty to seventy hours a week.

I was in a different stage of my life then, when my career was something I had deliberately put aside for the sake of child-rearing, so I’m thinking back on those times with a grain of salt. I remember how frustrated I often was at my lack of progress on even my hobbies. Even if it wasn’t career-oriented, I always had a lot of projects going on, stuck in at the edges of my very full life. (These were the years I embraced the mantra “Slow progress is still progress”—which I’ve now put on my merch.)

But seeing all the things I was doing for hobbies—which I still love, but rarely make time for—rekindled the spark to do them again. Especially scrapbooking and sewing.

Over the past two weeks, as I started to unpack that feeling of retraction I had every time I thought about going back to work, I realized it wasn’t that I don’t want to do things. I always want to do things. (I haven’t logged the hours I spent on my website and blog project last week, but I bet it was at least 20 hours.) It’s that I didn’t want to have the pressure to output so much.

And most of that comes down to social media.

I’m always experimenting with marketing, and as an experiment while launching Every Star that Shines, I had the most dedicated and broad social media push that I’ve ever done. That included starting a TikTok account, posting on Instagram at least six days a week, and blogging once a week.

By far, the biggest time and energy suck was TikTok, because making videos and coming up with interesting content for the platform required me to develop whole new skillsets and exercise my creativity in completely new directions.

Even though I admit that I entered that arena begrudgingly, by the end, I was enjoying it more than not—though I was definitely not in love with it. I learned new skills, like video editing in Canva, and got way more comfortable in front of the camera. I definitely see the value of connecting with my audience through video in a way I never would have otherwise. But, looking back, I think it was TikTok that contributed to my burnout the most.

I’ve been on an almost-total social media fast for the last two weeks, and it’s been wonderful. I’ve broken the habit of checking social media first thing in the morning. And I don’t want to go back there.

The problem is, with my personality, I know that if I’m posting regularly, I’ll also be checking regularly. And I don’t think that added connection with my audience is worth sacrificing my mental health.

Speaking of slowing down, I got to enjoy this treat with my hubby on Saturday morning at our local coffee shop, Java Domain. It was amaze-balls. And I totally didn’t post it to social media. (Not yet, anyway, lol.)

Baby Steps

One of the first things I did on my holiday was to rethink my weekly schedule, the one that had been running me into the ground. I ran numbers and made projections and got comfortable with the idea of slow, steady growth for the next few years instead of the big jumps I’d previously been shooting for. It helped that my husband is on board with this plan. (I definitely wouldn’t be okay with doing this otherwise.)

But, as my holiday went on, I continued to rethink how I approach work. I’ve been the Productivity Queen for so long, with a super-time-blocked schedule and the knowledge of exactly how much I could accomplish in a day. And I’m just so tired of that pressure.

So, I’m going to try something different for a while. My plans will look more like choosing the top priorities for a week and working on them as my spirit moves. There will still be a loose plan of when each of those things will receive my attention, but I’m going to let my internal compass decide what needs to be done when.

I know me. I’m not going to slack off and do nothing. (I couldn’t even manage it for two weeks of holidays!) But I hope this will take the rigidity out of my schedule and allow me to make space for more time with my family and more time for myself.

And if that means my next book (a Christmas story) isn’t published until February?

Well, that’s the way it has to be.

Because, for the sake of my mental health, I need to take things slower for a while.

This is me remembering to take a moment to breathe and think.

Do you struggle with the pressure to perform? Or always feeling like you’re behind or missing out on what others are doing? How have you addressed that, or do you feel like you even need to?

Let me know in the comments below.

Happy Monday, friend!

P.S. While on holidays, I discovered the podcast Live Free Creative by Miranda Anderson through her episode about Slow Productivity. I’ve really been enjoying her other episodes too, and recommend you check it out.

The concept of Slow Productivity was previously discussed from the angle of ways to address burnout in this thought-provoking article in the New Yorker. Looks like I need to start thinking of my “Slow Progress is Still Progress” mantra from a different angle—instead of a boon for a workaholic frustrated by lack of progress, I need to see it as a life goal, a state of being to aspire to—to make progress slowly enough that I have room in my life to enjoy the life I’m living now.

One of my mugs in action for morning coffee while I was surveying my garden and yard recently.

What's weird about being a writer

When you’re a writer, there are so many things that are just plain weird. Writers often talk about the emotional rollercoaster of publishing a book.

It is no joke.

For instance, you write a book. By yourself. (Fun, agonizing, lonely, and grueling. If you don’t have at least one existential crisis, you’re probably not doing it right.)

Then you start showing it to people. (Terrifying.)

The people you show it to (editors and beta readers) help you make it better. (Satisfying.)

You send it to ARC readers. (Scary.)

They (hopefully) give you positive reviews. (Exciting and satisfying and validating. Or heart-wrenching and self-doubt-inducing and the cause of another existential crisis or three.)

Then you do a huge marketing push, in which you need to be SUPER EXCITED for however long you have until the launch. Also, you’re using a completely different skill set than actually writing. (Exciting and fun, but also draining and scary.)

And then, launch day comes. And people (especially new writers) think it’s going to be this big deal, but usually… it’s not.

It’s like this huge anticlimax at the end of all that build-up, because all you can do is wait and see if all that work that got you to that point is paying off. Did other people catch your vision? Are they as excited to read your book as you are for them to read it?

Sometimes, even often, people are, but when you’re a small-pond author like me, even those excited people aren’t necessarily going to rush out and buy the book on launch day. (But some do. And to those of you who have—thank you!! It means so much!)

Writers waiting for sales on book launch day.

So, in unrelated news, Every Star that Shines released on Wednesday… :-D

Every Star that Shines (Peace Country Romance Book 1) is all about big feels and second chances in a small northern Alberta town.

I’ve been recording myself doing some readings from my books on TikTok. Last Friday, I read the first page of Every Star that Shines, so I thought I’d share it here, too:

As a bonus, I did another scene today, one of my favourites:

“Why is he sending me heart-eye emojis?” - Reading from Every Star that Shines

And in other other news, I celebrated my birthday on Wednesday, too. My oldest son, Jude, made whitefish and homemade hashbrowns (fish and chips) and a dark chocolate cake to celebrate. I’m gonna miss that kid’s cooking skills when he heads off to the army. (Not him. Just his cooking. ;-D)

And I’m looking forward to taking all of next week off. Mostly off. I’m très behind on drafting my next book, because I have a really hard time focusing on marketing one book and writing another one. So I’ll be writing next week, but other than that, I won’t be at my desk.

And maybe I won’t even do that at my desk, who knows?

I’m looking forward to some time on my deck, and in the garden, and on my couch reading, and hanging out with my family.

But don’t let me being on stay-cation deter you from picking up your copy of Every Star that Shines. Or, you know, any of my other books.

Just saying. :-)

Happy Friday!

Don’t mind me…

Sugar, No Spice, and Everything Nice

This is supposed to be my Friday morning coffee chat, but honestly, I’m done coffee, my stomach is picketing for breakfast, and I might need to make it my Friday afternoon tea chat this week, lol.

It’s been a productive week around here, all things considered. “Things” being the short-lived heat wave Alberta had this week. Today is the first reasonable forecast we’ve had since Sunday, and I’m grateful to be back in the optimal operating temperature for my brain.

Because, you know, my brain is kind of important in my job, lol.

Let’s see how many times I can lol in this post, shall we? It’ll be like having an actual conversation with me, because boy, do I laugh a lot.

Anyway…

Hagrid hanging out with me and my tea while I work…

I’m happy to report that I finally made progress on my new book draft this week. Though plotting a Christmas novel in a heat wave was a bit interesting, I have to say.

The solution to my writer’s block from last week was partly a matter of remembering that in an enemies-to-lovers romance, they actually have to not get along for at least the first half of the book. (Like, duh, right? We writers are super-smart sometimes.)

The first act is really solid, and I’ve got some of the highlights for the rest of the book, I’m still just moving the pieces around and filling out the details there. But the first part is usually the most important for me. That, and knowing the Black Moment. Once I have that, it’s just a matter of noodling things around in my brain to make all the pieces fit and add colour and texture.

But, since I’m very behind on this, I’m going to be shooting to finish the first draft in only five weeks, starting next Tuesday. Since my first-draft goal is 60,000 words, that’s only 12,500 words per week, or 1,000 words per scheduled writing hour. This is very doable for me… assuming I actually have my butt in the chair for all those writing hours and don’t have to bump some, because life.

And assuming I don’t get stuck on anything. Arg.

Let’s hope I don’t get stuck.

After breakfast…

Alright, I couldn’t wait. I’m back after eating breakfast (I do intermittent fasting, so that was a little early for me) and I now have a tea on my desk. Last night’s supper of fruit smoothies was awesome for a heat wave, but didn’t stick to the ribs as long as normal.

So… we finished Stranger Things Season 4 last weekend, as planned. Loved it. The show keeps getting better. I’m a little in awe of some of the writing, and how they pulled everything off. Looking forward to Season 5 already.

And… we are now less than two weeks from the release of my first sweet, clean small town romance Every Star that Shines. WOOT!

This week, I hired my oldest son, Jude, to make some character art of the leading man. Here’s his version of Caleb:

Caleb from Every Star that Shines, drawn by Jude Winters.

I love it! One of my projects today is to turn this into swag for my readers, and I’m super excited.

Who wants a Caleb bookmark or signed book plate?

There’s always lots to do for a book launch, but since I’m launching a new series in a new genre for me, this one has felt extra intense. But it’s also been fun. I’ve been trying new things (TikTok), learning how to do some other things better, and getting to play with types of marketing that work well in romance but less well in fantasy.

And I’ve been learning a ton, which is always fun.

Anyway, I better get back to work. I’ve got to do writing and client editing and marketing, oh my!

Happy Friday, friend. How was your week?

(By the time I got to posting this, it was nearly supper. Jeepers. Better late than never? Have a great weekend!)

Happy Friday, friend!

P.S. While working on some promo stuff today, I found a great excerpt from Every Star that Shines that I want to share. Check it out:

“Look. First star of the night…”

Caleb pointed out the living room picture window and helped Delanie to her feet, pulling her to come stand next to him. “Make a wish.”

Delanie gave him a long, uncertain look, then glanced at the pinpoint of white light before closing her eyes for several long seconds. He stared at her, drinking in her presence, knowing she couldn’t feel uncomfortable about his gaze if she couldn’t see it.

Her eyes fluttered open, and she blushed. “Were you looking at me the whole time?”

His face warmed. “Maybe,” he mumbled.

“Didn’t you make a wish?”

He shook his head. “I don’t need to. My wish is standing right here.”

He pulled her into him and enveloped her in his arms. She stiffened, then relaxed and wrapped her arms around his waist, leaning into his chest.

“I have a confession to make,” he said. “I never got over you. Not for a single second.”

After a pause, she said, “A wish isn’t enough to overcome all the obstacles between us.”

“No. But it’s enough to make me believe we could. This time, I have no intention of letting you go anywhere without me. Whatever happens, I want to give us a fair shot.”

If you haven’t already, please go check it out and pre-order. Thanks!

Searching for Rainbows

Welp, this week has been interesting, folks.

I finished the deadline-y projects for clients I needed to finish. Then my big project for the week was to outline my next book.

Except, that’s not what happened.

Coffee… mmmm.

I’m stuck. Ish. I haven’t found the thing about this book that makes me super excited to write it yet, and I think that’s because the original premise I had wasn’t fleshed out enough. There’s something that’s not lining up between the problem and resolution, but every time I think of a “fix,” it starts taking the plot into a direction I don’t want to go, or into a totally different genre. (Yikes.)

So… I’m trying to give myself grace and the time to percolate, but that’s hard for my task-oriented brain to do.

In addition, I’m starting to feel a bit burnt out, so some of this is just plain old resistance. Not Resistance-with-a-capital-R as in I don’t want to write. But just normal resistance of I really need a break because I’m worn out.

So I did take it easer this week, which has helped. A whole weekend off will really help.

Adventures on TikTok

Did I mention that I signed up for TikTok two weeks ago as an experiment?

I’m starting to get the hang of the TikTok thing, but it’s taking a lot more time out of my schedule than I want it to. However, I’m making some great connections in the reader and author community there, so that part is fun. If you’re on TikTok for the bookish community or don’t mind hearing me talk about books non-stop, please come find me.

One benefit of TikTok I’ve noticed is how I’ve started thinking about new ways to talk about my books in a video medium, and how much more comfortable I’m getting in front of the camera.

I’ve done some fun stuff the last couple of weeks while I’ve experimented and learned some new skills, such as how to use Canva’s video editor. (It’s a little faster for simple videos like TikTok videos than using Adobe Premiere.)

Figuring out how to repurpose that content has been a bit more challenging. I mean, if I’m spending all this time on social media, I want to make the most of it that I possibly can.

I just uploaded my first YouTube short today, which you can see here. It’s a clip from a TikTok video I made this morning of me reading the first page of The Undine’s Tear.

More rain lately means more rainbows. :-)

Honestly, there hasn’t been a lot more to my week. I mean, trying to avoid that feeling of being a failure I get when I’m stressed out and burned out (the perpetual driver of Enneagram Threes) takes a lot of time. ;-)

I’m managing this week by taking a little more rest than usual (but not too much, or it backfires on the mental health thing. Seriously, it’s exhausting being me). I hope that doesn’t translate to more stress and burnout later when I’m having to type like a madwoman to meet my deadline for my manuscript.

Author Interview to Check Out

I’d like to make note of this awesome interview between author and editor Jennifer Lindsay, who helped me develop Every Star that Shines, and Brenna Bailey-Davies, another talented editor and writer (both of whom are in my mastermind group and are friends of mine).

Brenna posted the interview with Jennifer on her blog today. Jen is the author of a fantastic book for authors called The Writer as the Protagonist, which helps you develop your writing career with you as the hero of your own story. I highly recommend it!

See the Interview

That’s it. That’s the update. Wish it was more exciting.

Looking forward to finishing Stranger Things Season 4 this weekend, and a book or two besides. And maybe getting some gardening done.

Which reminds me—every fertile ground needs rain to be refreshed. Maybe that’s all this week is. Just a time of refreshing. That means a rainbow must be just around the corner.

How was your week?

Making the most of my time… I hope.

Give me reassurance, not reality...

I thought about calling this “Friday Morning Coffee Chat” again, but something in me rebelled at naming this the exact same thing as last week. Maybe I’ll just make it a category. Because I kind of like doing these “week in review” posts. I’m going to see if I can keep it up.

The most exciting thing that happened in my week was that my hardcovers for Every Star that Shines came yesterday. And they are gorgeous!

There’s something so special about holding your new book for the first time.

Happy, proud girl. I even designed the cover myself.

Other than that, my week has been pretty full with a big writing assignment that’s due today. Thanks to COVID and the craziness of the last month, it all got kind of squished to the end of when I had to work on it, which isn’t my preference.

BUT!

After this, I’ll be caught up again!

And man, do I need a break. I’m thinking I’ll take a few days off next week. It’s not quite the “week off” I had planned for earlier this month, but it’s better than nothing.

However, now my publication schedule for Book 2 of the Peace Country Romances is seriously crunched, because I haven’t had time to work on it at all. (Except thinking and thinking. So much thinking.) So this isn’t the end of long days, I just need a break before I jump into the next batch.

I mean, it should be technically possible to outline and write and revise the first draft in nine weeks. Theoretically. I’ve never done something like that, but it’s possible, right?

(Just nod and smile. I need reassurance, not reality right now.)

One of the struggles I have in my author career is staying focused on multiple things at once. I’m currently in marketing mode, so I’m doing things like posting to Instagram regularly and blogging (two weeks in a row! Woot!). I even joined TikTok and started making and posting videos there about a week ago. I’m still getting my groove on, but it’s been stretching me in a new direction creatively, so that’s fun. I even learned how to use Canva’s video editor.

(That’s probably why I haven’t been pulling my hair out about not working on my book yet. I’m getting anxious about not writing fiction, but it’s not as bad as it could be.)

But once I hit drafting mode, will I be able to keep up all the posting? I don’t know. It will be tough. My brain can only put out so much content in a single day. I’ll have to look at more scheduled posts and create some in batches maybe.

There are always so many things to do. Always.

What I’m Watching and Reading

In other news, last weekend, Jason, Jabin and I started watching Season Four of Stranger Things. I don’t normally care for shows with that much horror in them, but there are so many things about this show I love, I can deal with the gross stuff.

We got through a little over half the season last weekend, and I’ve been thinking about it all week. Looking forward to wrapping that up this weekend. (See? I do take some down time, even in the midst of all the craziness.)

I’ve also been listening to the audiobook of Fable by Adrienne Young, which I’ve had in my Chirp app for quite some time. I’m really enjoying it. Do recommend.

Okee-dokee, I better get to work.

Happy Friday! What’s happened in your week that’s worth celebrating? Leave me a comment. I’d love to celebrate with you!

See how pretty my book spines all look together?