2019 Year Review: The ‘Difficult Second Album’ Year
Sometime around October the thought struck me: “boy, my year in review is going to be quite an epic this year.” My year bounced from burn out to heartbreak to bereavement; I made £20k less than I did last year; I spent a lot of the year not trusting myself, not committing to decisions and flip-flopping over every little thing. After last year exceeded all expectations and was very on-paper successful, 2019 has very much been the difficult second album of my business – trying to mature who I am and what I do in the shadow of a success I didn’t feel I was living up to.
I like to publish these year end reviews in order to share with you a little behind the curtain of what was really going on, things I wasn’t ready to share at the time or that didn’t seem relevant, so you can see the reality of what was going on underneath it all. Take my hand, let’s go in together.
The first quarter of the year started in a whirlwind. I’d crashed high speed into the end of 2018, took a few weeks to shake off over Christmas and then jumped right back behind the wheel again. I was co-launching a new podcast, running a course, fully booked with coaching clients and taking on more. Looking back I think there was certainly a part of me that still felt this was what ‘work’ and ‘running a business’ had to be like – doing more and more, striving and pushing really hard. The thing was, that that mentality had become a habit, and I didn’t even really know what I was striving towards anymore. I was on an endless conveyer belt to nowhere, and I was miserable.
I remember feeling very trapped at this time. I felt vividly like I had a glass box around me wherever I went – I could see life going on outside, but I wasn’t allowed out. With hindsight I also realise that the old striving mentality was spilling over here as well – I wanted to try so hard to find a hobby or an activity or the thing that would give me that work/life balance. I felt fraudy that all I really had was work, I was swamped with comparison with friends and people around me who had those easily defined hobbies and ‘life stuff’, and felt that I was less of a person for not having them.
All the while underneath these feelings I was trying to shift around things in the business to help strive forwards to that point I couldn’t quite define. I was trying to force my brain to have ideas, I was bringing out new courses, or I was quitting coaching altogether, or maybe not quite altogether, I signed with an influencer agency so I could do more of that work. Essentially, I was throwing shit at the wall but nothing was sticking.
In April we went to view a house. I was getting more and more lonely in the isolated area we lived in and browbeaten by the noisy neighbours who disrupted my working days and evenings. This house had been on Rightmove for a few months, and I’d always disregarded it because it was too good – too much of a dreamy forever house to be our first home. Then one day, as I did my near-hourly Rightmove search, a thought dropped into my head: “why not us?”. We walked around and it was everything I’d ever wanted as a history-loving little girl. A few weeks later, our offer was accepted.
This set a fire under me as I had to make up a couple more thousands to get our deposit pot up to where it needed to be (incidentally, for transparency, 100% of the money for our deposit and costs came from my earnings from the last two years alone – no help from parents or partner). I had a new goal that helped me to be productive and that got me into a good state of flow. This wasn’t sustainable, because the goal was so short term and didn’t have the legs to change my approach to the business altogether – but at least I remembered I could do this when I needed to. Of course, this also knocked the burn out recovery back a little bit as I took on a lot of new clients, but I don’t regret it. It was worth in for the end result.
The summer was, frankly, horrendous.
At the end of June, a pivotal friendship in my life was abruptly ended. Someone I trusted told me that our friendship didn’t serve them anymore and from that moment on we were no longer a part of each other’s lives. I mourned this for months, like a break up or a death. It dominated my summer months, the wondering why, the self-flagellation, the withdrawal. I felt so ashamed, and thought for a long time about stopping the business and the blog, withdrawing altogether from public view because I couldn’t bear the shame of being unwanted, nor risk the pain of being rejected.
Thankfully I had started working with a counsellor a little before this happened, and having someone (who wasn’t my boyfriend) say “you know, I don’t think you need to be taking as much responsibility as you are here” was a gift. Both she and another friend made me entertain the possibility that I wasn’t an completely unbearable human being and saved me from a damaging downward spiral. I am so grateful for them.
A month later, my family were shook by a shocking and traumatic death. It redefined relationships, triggered huge changes in daily lives and leaves us all still reeling. In many ways too it brought us closer and, for me certainly, realigned priorities where my relationships are concerned. But of course, life for none of us will be the same again.
…but this year does have a happy ending.
Come October, I was determined that the last quarter of year, at least, would be a good one. Underneath all of the summer’s emotional turmoil was also the stress of the house-buying process – sending millions of sheets of paperwork to the mortgage company, agonising waits, more paperwork, chasing solicitors, the buyers going AWOL. The house was my ray of hope but I was convinced it was all going to fall through at any given moment. Until in middle of October, when we got an email asking if we could be ready to move in seven days. Hell yeah we could.
We moved in properly at the beginning of November and felt immediately at home (although I think this might also be because I’d spent every day of the last 6 months walking through all the rooms in my mind). I had been worried that I was pinning my hopes on the house magically transforming all my troubles, but in a way it really did. Suddenly I was rooted, permanently attached to this ground, these stones. I’m not someone who ever felt truly at home in a rented space, and suddenly I felt a belonging. This was what I’d been striving for all along, and the striving reflex inside of me started to evaporate away.
During this time I began to feel more creative around my business again. I had a vision in my head of a life unhurried where I could potter in my garden without needing to stress about something I had to do or somewhere I needed to be. That became a strong motivator for me and I began developing the idea that became The Playbook. Having learned from the burn out of the previous year I paced myself on this course creation project, pushing the start date back so I could relish a slow creation process – breaking the habit of getting it all done and out and as quickly as possible with The Playbook is one of the things I’m most proud of this year. I also gave notice to the influencer agency as I knew I didn’t want to care about the things (read, Instagram statistics) it was necessary to care about to do that kind of work.
Feeling more settled in the house made me feel more at peace in my personal life too. While I still feel an occasional pang of hurt, I do feel relieved that the old friend is no longer a part of my life. I have felt freer and more able to be myself the last few months and in their absence can recognise that their influence was not as positive as I’d thought. I’ve focused more energy and attention on existing friendships, and also with connecting with new ones here where I live.
I feel now, at the end of the year, like I’d had a VR headset on for so long and was going about my life in that augmented reality, but that now it’s been taken off and I can see the world, and myself, what it really is. So what have I learned?
I’ve learned that balance is something you can find, it’s something you surrender to. You can’t be proactive about finding the thing that’s going magically make you enjoy life, you need to let go of the controls and look around you. I’ve learned I won’t break in the middle of the storm. I’ve learned how to plan my work in a way that avoids months of burn out. I’ve learned that things are always possible, and if you trust and believe in yourself enough it becomes infectious and other people do too.
I’ve learned that actually, I’m pretty good just as I am. I am my own version of whole.
My word of the year for 2019 was fulfilment. I wasn’t always conscious of it, and there were times at my most stressed and hurting that I looked at the post-it on my board and laughed at the idea I thought it was possible. But actually, in a strange, convoluted way… I think I’ve found it.
Check back in January for the second instalment – my goals, plans and word of the year for 2020.
