I experienced several years in 3 months this summer, leading to what I have already dubbed The Great Reset. Join me on the journey as I reflect on the rollercoaster of Summer 2024.
Flying High
This year, I set the intention of tapping into flow, by selecting Flow as my word of the year, but by the beginning of May, I was starting to feel rather blah. My in-laws decided to come visit us for Mother’s Day but didn’t connect with us until Friday. So Saturday, while my husband was at a tournament (don’t ask me why they decided that would be a good day for it), I did all my spring cleaning. Thankfully, my child was in an independent mood because she was able to play on her own most of the day.
Having a clean house felt great, but best of all, it sparked a positive rhythm in both work and home life. For weeks, I was flying high with a surge of energy. As a birthday present for myself, I set aside May 23 as a CEO day, dedicating the whole day to mapping out my projects, plans, and dreams. By the end, I had an exciting new Notion dashboard to highlight this new vision. My husband and parents also had an awesome present in mind and surprised me by showing up at the house as I was winding down my day! It is a 14-hour drive to get to me, so it was a big undertaking.
I also started a new position as copyeditor for the Journal of Critical Dietetics, did a ton of edits for Studiosity, had 4 mental health presentations with the Stigma-Free Mental Health Society, and had a fair number of dietetic clients, so it was a great month financially too.
But as life often reminds us, energy can’t always stay sky-high…
Bare Minimum Living
Shortly after my birthday, I came down with a massive head cold that forced me to pull back to the bare minimum tasks. Most days, I had a bit of time in the morning that I could work before the eye strain got too bad, but then I would have to put the screens away. I read a lot of books because not only was it paper instead of screen, but I could get really into it and numb my brain a bit.
This was doubly painful because I had been on such a high. To come crashing down to the point where I could barely work and struggled to keep up with basic dishes was more than disappointing. I thought I had finally “figured it all out.” Unconsciously, I expected to be able to maintain the momentum from now on. I have the answer! But instead, I was brought down by a head cold. The books were more than a painkiller for my head, they were a numbing escape from the disappointment of not meeting my unconscious expectations.
I talk with my clients all the time about the importance of accepting that our abilities will shift — sometimes overnight. But that doesn’t stop the frustration. Even with the frameworks and knowledge that I have, it was hard to accept that I simply couldn’t keep up the pace. It was a stark contrast to the flow I had been in just days before. Yet, it reminded me of the importance of letting myself rest when my body needs it, without the shame.
After 3 weeks of the cold, I was finally able to get back into the office. But it wasn’t the same; I wasn’t able to find the energy again. I tried to catch up on what was left behind when I was dealing with the acute illness but I also needed to wrap things up because we were leaving on June 30 for 2 weeks!
On the Monday before our trip, I noticed the car making some noise as I took my daughter to daycare. I also felt some resistance, like the brakes were slightly applied as I was driving. We had gotten the brakes replaced a couple of weeks earlier and the shop had initially ordered the wrong ones, so I thought maybe there was something misaligned. So the next day it went to the shop.
That was stressful enough, what if it needed new brakes and we couldn’t get it back in time? But it was worse than that. One of the wheel bearings was completely shot — and the shop in town couldn’t get the parts. The silver lining was that the car is new so I called roadside assistance and they arranged things to take the car to the city (the joys of rural living). But they weren’t able to take the car in until Thursday! And we needed the car on Sunday to drive for our vacation.
Worse, the dealership wouldn’t even confirm whether they had the parts in stock. They just kept saying that they needed to diagnose it first. I get that, but I felt confident in our guys’ abilities and if the dealership didn’t have wheel bearings in stock then there was no way we’d be getting the car back before the weekend and we’d have to rent a car to get to the first destination of our trip.
So clearly, in all this, work wasn’t the top priority, except for the critical tasks.
One of those critical tasks ended up being applying for a dream job! I have always had a interest in public health nutrition. However, most places require a master’s degree and the local public health dietitian was not much older than me, so I didn’t really think it was a possibility… until an opportunity opened up. When I saw that job posting, I leapt for it and got everything together to apply before leaving for our trip. I fantasized about what it would be like to have financial stability again.
A Pause
The first half of July was fantastic — it was vacation! We drove to my grandma’s place and met up with my parents. They were taking our dog and child while my husband and I went to Great Bear Lake in Northwest Territories and Tree River in Nunavut.
This trip felt like it was never going to happen for a while. We tried to go last year, and we got to Yellowknife before the wildfires. Unfortunately, the airline computer systems were down the day we flew up and we missed our flight from Yellowknife to the fishing lodge and were ‘stuck’ in Yellowknife for a week. We made some pretty good lemonade out of that trip. We looked at all the local spots, museums, art galleries, and got out twice to fish. And luckily we were able to rebook for this year to go all the way to Great Bear Lake (and we planned to go to Yellowknife an extra day early so the same thing couldn’t happen this year).
So when the car was out of commission the week before our trip. And then a couple of days out from our trip this year and Westjet was striking… We started to wonder if we were ever going to make it.
But we did! (BTW, my husband has a fishing YouTube channel and he just posted a video about our trip!)
Limbo & the Weight of the Unknown
The day we got back to Yellowknife after the trip to Great Bear Lake, I got an email from the dream job inviting me to schedule an interview! It was towards the end of the month so I had plenty of time to try to prepare. Too much time. When I realized my brain was stalled because I didn’t want to build too much, given that I may be scaling back on my projects soon, I tried to motivate myself by “wrapping up” projects… But my brain also didn’t like that.
Instead, I was stuck in limbo.
And stuck was the right word. The little bit of contract work that I had, I was able to focus on, but otherwise, I could not get my brain moving. All creative projects were completely stalled. I didn’t even restart my email newsletter after my vacation.
The day of the interview came and I was so nervous. I don’t think I have been that anxious about speaking since my first dietitian interview in 2013. I still felt like it went well and I knew one of the interviewers so I thought that would work well in my favour, because she would know how I normally speak. There was a written component to follow and I put a lot of effort into putting that together.
But I was still stuck in limbo. The HR person was going on vacation the following week, prior to August long weekend, so I would have to wait 2 weeks to follow up. In fact, they didn’t give me a timeline, except to share that the HR person would be gone for that week.
The Heartbreak of Almost
I told you that this was a dream job. When I consider going back to full-time employment after being self-employed these past 3 years (with a year maternity leave preceding that), this is the only full-time work that appeals. I know the office is quiet and every time I have stepped in there, it feels calming. It is an area of my field that I have always been interested in. The job pays well, so it would alleviate basically all our financial stresses. It even starts with 4 weeks vacation, so there would be no issues with that. All in all, it seemed like the answer to a lot of questions.
After the interview, I hadn’t heard from them so I sent them a follow up email. 2 weeks after the interview… 4 weeks of limbo… Only to be told that they went with another candidate. The world stood still for a moment.
I couldn’t even feel disappointed at first. I just felt numb. All that stress. All that pressure. All that waiting and limbo… And I’m not even sure if they were going to tell me if I didn’t reach out to them.
Like everyone, I’ve had plenty of disappointments in life. The sharp pain never gets easier to deal with. But this was a dull, numbing sensation. After all my mental and physical health journeys, I recognized it for the red flag that it was.
As soon as I could find any words in my brain, I reached for my journal. The first thing I wrote in my journal after getting that email was “So… back to the grind.” As soon as those words came out of my pen, I knew I needed to take a step back and actually process my thoughts and emotions:
I feel like the past 2 months have been a different life. May was the best month I’ve had in along time. I was in the zone at home, dancing with entropy. I had a fantastic month for income and I had a plan for maintaining and building. But then I was sick for 3 weeks and then the car’s wheel bearing went and then I applied for the full time job and then was on vacation for 2 weeks and then interviewed and was in limbo — confident, anxious, and desperately wishing — and then crashed yesterday.
I completely crashed to the point of numbness. Yet, it is in these moments that I am super grateful to my past challenges and the work that I have done on my mental health. I have the mindfulness to recognize the numbness and heavy emotions and the skills to work through them.
I was able to give myself the space to marinate in the depression hangover of disappointment. I was also very grateful that I emailed them on Thursday and not Friday because I got a day at home alone to just exist with my emotions and thoughts with my daughter in daycare for the day.
Then, I was able to gather my thoughts. I didn’t get stuck there. With that door firmly shut, I knew that there was nothing coming to swoop me out of the challenges of self-employment. And the fact is that I love this lifestyle. I love that I get to work from home and I get hours every day to myself. I have hours every day where I get to decide what I am doing, when, and how. As much as I love my family, if I was stuck in an office all day and then had to come home and take care of my child until it was time for us both to go to sleep… I would have to work hard to carve out that time for me.
The Great Reset
The past 3 weeks, I have been in the mud, hoping that getting the job would take me out of it. Today, the goal is to knock the dust off. This weekend, I will reset the house so I am ready to hit the ground running on Monday.
I love my lifestyle. I love my work. The only thing that isn’t working for me is the financial stress and pressure. That is just one problem and there are a million ways to solve that problem. That in itself is a secondary problem, but regardless, I just need to keep working towards that goal and I will reach it.
Everything will work out in the end. If things haven’t worked out, it’s not the end.
(Paraphrasing a quote from a speech at a conference I attended but the details are lost.)
So what did the reset look like?
I cleaned my house. Depression looks like a pile of dirty dishes, piles of dirty laundry, and a cluttered dining room table. To put it more accurately, when I don’t tidy regularly, it is a sign that I have had very low energy, but it also saps my energy. The bigger the mess, the more overwhelming it seems to get started and the more I avoid looking at it and the bigger the pile grows. So cleaning the mess, whether it is caused by illness, life busy-ness, or flares, is a clear outward sign to myself that I am getting a fresh start.
I journaled. A lot. I thought about my journey to this moment. I wrote my journey in the most raw, unfiltered way possible. And I promised myself to continue to come back to this story as often as I need to in order to process these months, including writing about it for Substack. ;)
I thought of the strategies that I feel would be helpful for my business but haven’t fully committed to. I thought about what would be the most effective uses of my time. I confronted my mental block with sticking to a schedule and created a template weekly schedule. I started my new journal.
Building the Future
The first day in my office with my new template schedule and routine truly felt like a reset. I felt a new and different energy surrounding my work. I have some baggage from my past work who insisted that I start work promptly at 8am, despite the fact that I rarely interacted with anyone before 9am. So when I started self-employment, it felt like luxury to be able to take my time and start work whenever I started (unless I had a client appointment, of course).
However, as part of this reset, I’m able to reframe the whole idea. It’s not a schedule and there is no accountability for following it (which is necessary for the rebel side of my personality). It’s simply the rhythm that allows me to make progress on the projects that are important to me. I have a vision but in order to get to that vision, I need to make progress on the projects. It is putting the emphasis on rhythm and flow that have made a difference.
Just the past week, I was following a Yoga with Adrienne video and in it she said the phrase “honor your time” in passing. That is really what I am seeking to do. I am seeking to honor the time I have to work on these projects.
This reset is an ongoing process. I’m still building my future, each day. In the past month, I had one week where my energy was really low. I was struggling to engage my brain at my desk. And when you’re doing creative work, you need your brain to be engaged. I was also starting to get some burnout signals from my body. So I listened.
I set myself up in the living room, wore cozy clothes, and put on comfort shows. And I was able to do some low energy work, but mostly I took some rest days. In doing so, I was able to come back to the office and get back into the swing of things. In fact, I started craving the routine.
Casting the Line
One of the strategies that I have been planning to do for a long time is to connect with complementary healthcare providers to increase referrals. I have been able to distract myself from the idea by being ‘busy’ and chasing other ideas. In this reset, I am putting the focus on taking strategic action so I finally started making the calls.
As I was telling my husband about the phone call and how great it felt, my husband (the fisherman that he is) said, “You’re putting in the work. You’ve caught a few small fish and you just gotta keep going until you reach the trophy.”
So going forward, I need to keep casting those lines. I can call complementary providers to make connects to network, collaborate, and pass referrals. I can look for bundles and summits to grow my email list. I can continue nurturing my audience by writing emails and publishing a podcast. I can create blog posts to attract new people and serve my existing audience. And I can continue to build products, especially the modules of my course.
Flow is not able a single task or a single cast. It is about building an environment, routine, or method that keeps the momentum going, even when I don’t feel like it. At the same time, I deeply believe that paying attention to where my energy is going, taking proactive, intentional breaks, will allow me to create a sense of flow over the months and years.
Returning to Flow
It comes back to Flow. When I spend a few minutes to move my body first thing in the morning and do yoga before lunch, it builds energy in my body. Creating a plan for my week and using that as a guide each day helps me keep time with the rhythm of my day. Its like I am floating in a river that is carrying me along.
On the other hand, if I open social media and start scrolling, it is like I get pulled into a stagnant pond, spinning around in place. There may be the illusion of movement, but I’m going nowhere and end up feeling dizzy.
When I am aligned with my vision, honoring my time, and keeping the rhythm, my energy can flow. Just like some sections of a river are swift and others are gentle, my energy will fluctuate day to day and hour by hour. It is all just a part of the process.
Until next time,
-Samantha 💜
PS. In reassessing my projects and priorities, I’ve decided not to write regular income reports & updates here. I mostly write for me, though I hope people read it and find it enjoyable and/or useful. This type of reflective writing for publication is a style of writing that is both enjoyable and useful for me, so I’ll continue as the mood strikes and time allows.