End Of Year Thoughts 2020
For the last three years I have published an End Of Year Review here. They have always been some of my favourite things to read and my favourite things to write – a chance to share everything that happened behind the scenes that made up the whole year. This year, however, is a little different. This year there are too many untied loose ends, too many still misplaced hopes and too much not processed that it just isn’t the right time to share my usual warts and all review. I did think, though, that I would share some end of year thoughts for 2020 that are arising as I reflect on the changes that I have been making – and I actually think this has worked out better than usual.If you would prefer to listen to rather than read this post, you can do so via Grow With Soul here:
Reflections on word of the year
Most years I set a word of the year and most years I tend to forget about it by the Spring. This year, although I wasn’t always completely conscious of it, I’d say that I certainly feel the reverberations of my word here in December more than any other I’ve chosen.
My word for 2020 was Powerful, and my intention for picking this word was to externalise less and instead connect with myself, embody my innate power and emanate it out into the world – to use the wellspring within me (you can read the post about choosing this word here). When I think back to January 2020-me I can see all the pure intentions, and can’t help but smile at all the ways she didn’t expect to be Powerful this year.
In many ways, I have been more powerful than I’d ever thought would be possible. I faced things in my personal life that I had ignored and explained away for years, making the decision to end a long relationship as I am about to enter my thirties. Although I hadn’t expected it, this was the purest form of the intention behind my word – finally listening to the truth within me and believing in my own power enough to stand behind it. In my work, I have also embodied and emanated from my central truth, both in the way in which I’ve diversified what I talk about (more on this later) and in the way in which I have taken ownership of my working day (more on this here).
There are also ways in which I have felt less powerful than ever. I have felt small in relation to others and unable broaden my reach and message at a scale that others have. I have felt, at times, out of control of how I make money. In the last quarter of the year I have also felt my power ebb away as I allowed my hope and wellbeing to depend upon the whims and decisions of others.
On the whole, though, I must be fair to myself: I have been pretty fucking powerful this year. (Excuse the swears, but I think the emphasis is appropriate here). At the start of 2020 I didn’t realise just how much and in how many ways I needed to reclaim my power, and I will always be grateful to myself for being strong enough to do so. This was one word of the year that will vibrate throughout the rest of my life.
Moving away from marketing in my work
This is something I noticed recently as I was categorising a blog post and realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I tagged something in my “Simple Marketing” category. The more I thought, the more I realised that marketing hasn’t been nearly so central in my business this year – not just in the blog posts but in what I share in my newsletters, and in the products I create (The Trail is only about a third marketing).
It hasn’t, necessarily, been conscious this year that I’ve moved away from marketing as a core topic – or rather, it wasn’t intentional. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure how I feel about it as I write this now. I still love to delve into strategy, discuss content and campaign ideas, problem solve a channel plan; this is the stuff that comes easy to me, you can sit me down with someone and I can just do it. I know that when I’ve had a marketing-focused call with someone I feel enlivened afterwards. Marketing, and my approach to it, has always been the foundation of Simple & Season and is what has got me where I am today.
And yet, clearly something has pulled me away from it this year. All my ideas, all the things I’ve felt drawn to write and create have been more on the experience-side of business – about busy-ness, stuck-ness, decision-making, expectations, self-trust. Maybe this is because I’ve wanted to create content that is more personal and less “how to”, and therefore I’ve written about what is personally affecting me and what I’m experiencing.
Mostly, however, I think this is a natural maturation of my work. As more time passes and as I go deeper, I understand what really makes a difference. It’s easier to believe that if you just “know how to do marketing” then all your dreams will come true and you’ll be totally fine. But the truth is, that’s not what’s going to get you doing it. You can have all the marketing knowledge in the world but if you’re out of alignment with what you truly want, if you are blocked by unhelpful work beliefs, if you can’t trust yourself to stay the course – then you’re not going to do it. And so maybe my job, actually, is to provide what you really need to do it.
Writing a book
A month or so ago I did a call out for questions for a Q&A podcast episode. Over the summer I shared that I was writing a book proposal, and one of the questions was asking about that process and whether there was any news. When I read that question, I recoiled because there was no news. Is no news. I sent the proposal to some agents and got one really lovely rejection and several automated rejections. There was no success to share, and therefore there was nothing to share.
It wasn’t until last week that I caught myself here and remembered there being no success to share meant there was everything to share. I have always talked about what happens when things don’t sell or work or go well, and I suppose that in this case I still felt ashamed that it hasn’t worked out. YET.
While I think the concept of the proposal is really great and it’s a piece of work I’m proud of, I do feel on reflection that it’s a concept for a really great course. I went into the proposal writing process focused on creating a marketable product – which I did – but it’s not a book. It lacks the human heart and central story that is what sets a book apart from, say, a digital product.
I’d also set myself a deadline to get the proposal done by September so I could get a book deal in the New Year. I will never not be astounded by own optimism! While I am proud that I put together 18,000-word proposal in five weeks, I am also now realising that a ticking clock is not in service of the book I want to write. I don’t want to write a book to say I’ve written a book; I want to create something that is meaningful to people. And if I’m going to do that, I need to take my time to let the story reveal itself.
In a conversation with my friend Jen the other day, I realised something else. As I look back on a year of upheaval and towards a year of untetheredness I feel a need to accomplish something. My brain wants to complete something in 2021, goddammit, and a book is the thing it picked. As Jen oh so gently pointed out, this is a trap – something to distract me from the journey I’m supposed to go on to recover myself over this next year. I have noticed a tendency in myself to externalise my fulfilment and hope into projects and people – and I, and the eventual book, deserve better than that.
When did I start prioritising comfort?
Following The Great Burnout of 2019 I radically shifted my working habits. I was brutally efficient, doing only the most effective tasks I knew would track to the goals I wanted to achieve. I said no to interviews and opportunities and stopped pitching. I lowered my financial expectations. My focus was on creating ease and space, and very rarely did I work more than four hours a day.
But then, later in the year, I met someone who was fresher into self-employment than me – about 9 months in. They were so excited by their work, so consumed with it, getting so much pure pleasure from it; yes they were working a little too much, but the pure love of it was infectious. I remembered the part of me that had loved doing the work for the act of doing it, not just because of what it would get me. I felt wistful as I observed this person all sprightly and enthusiastic while I creaked and moaned about my business aches and pains like a pensioner.
I realised a few things. First was that my frames of reference, the people in my personal life against whom I measured my ambition and activity, were very much not representative. Compared to them I was a Duracell bunny but in real, isolated terms I had become quite lethargic. Second, my fear of burning out was holding me back and contributing to the lethargy by giving me an easy excuse to just do nothing. I was no longer protecting myself from burn out and instead prioritising comfort over joy. Third, I remembered that the point of cutting down hours and reclaiming space was to be able to do other things – read, make, bake, decorate, garden, adventure – none of which I was actually doing. The space I’d created was just a vacuum.
Finally, and most importantly, I realised that I had lost a small but important part of myself: the go-getter. I had loved to work, to plan, to scheme, to feel the momentum under me, to hit publish and feel accomplished. My new friend was reflecting back an old version of me that I’d left behind somewhere and suddenly, having noticed I’d lost her, desperately wanted back. It has been a long time since I started a project because I wanted to – and it’s time to bring that back.
The relief of surrendering to a clean slate and a new life
Now feels as good a time as any to tell you that I now know I won’t be able to stay in my lovely house as it is not affordable for me to do so on my own. For so long this was something I gripped onto, the desperation to stay here – for a while it was a reason to stay in the relationship. But when the decision was finally made for me the sadness was dwarfed by a different emotion: relief.
I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to scrabble every month to make the bills, relieved that every penny I saved wouldn’t have to go towards maintenance, relieved that I wouldn’t be tied here physically, unable to take trips or live somewhere else if I wanted to. While I had feared that losing the house would be losing everything, it actually feels like an opening up. Now I have options.
This was the dream house – past tense. But that dream doesn’t exist anymore; it flickered and extinguished at some point earlier in the year and in the last month I have relinquished it from my sweaty paw and let it go. This realisation had a knock on effect: if that dream has gone, which others are no longer true? How many old dreams am I carrying around that can’t, or don’t need to, exist in this new life?
It feels exciting, now, to surrender to a completely clean slate. To sweep all of the assumptions about who I am and what I want off the table and start over again. If I was building a life from scratch, what would I want it to be like? What do I want to reclaim? How can I reimagine this life? All this is to sit with, experiment with and come to terms with over the next year.
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I was originally going to include my experience of transitioning my business model from one-to-one to -one-to-many in this post, but when I started writing it became a whole post in itself. You can read One-To-One to One-To-Many (And Back Again?) here (it’s also included at the end of the audio).
For those who are thinking about next year – I have bundled up my Kits and courses into curated packages to give you what you need where you are, and save 15-20% in the process. There is one for when you’re starting out, one for starting to up level your marketing and one for coaches and teachers. These are available until January 15th. See them all here.
