Resourcing the Revolution

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Why I Hustle During the Holidays (It’s Not What You Think)

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Let’s get one thing straight:

I hate the word “hustle” and everything it has come to stand for.

You’re an entrepreneur? Good for you. Now give up everything else in your life and dedicate it to your business.

Personal life? Who has time for that?

Health? You’ll sleep when you’re dead.

Anything that’s not directly related to growing your business? On the back burner until you “make it” and finally have time for other things.

The problem is: this moment we have right here… it’s the only one we get. The past is past. And the future is shaped by what we do in this moment.

So sure, it’s good to work toward building the life you want. But if you spend one hundred percent of your life hustling, the rest of your life is passing you by. Minutes you never get back. Moments that you might otherwise cherish for the rest of your life gone, passed over.

So why would I write a post about why I spend the holidays – a time that should be spent with family and friends – doing something that I just claimed to hate?

Because I think there’s a way to transform our relationship to hustle.

Hustle 2.0

I went to church when I was younger, but my belief system has shifted significantly as I’ve aged. I moved away from observing traditionally religious holidays (and don’t even get me started on the commercial holidays here in the States).

So while other families are spending time around the Christmas tree or celebrating other holidays, this time of year is just another calendar month for me.

(Also, almost no one sends emails on Christmas Day. This year I think I got a grand total of 5 emails the whole day. Talk about a good day to be productive!)

Don’t get me wrong, December isn’t all hustle. I took the day to observe Winter Solstice, which is the closest to winter “holiday” that I celebrate these days. And I went caroling with a group of folks back home on Christmas Eve, because it’s become a tradition of sorts and there’s hot mulled cider to warm up after.

And while we did head over the mountains for the week to spend time with family, I brought along my laptop and a list of priorities that will keep my business moving forward as we head into 2018.

Priorities, you can haz them

While many others in the US are powered down, taking a break for the last couple weeks of the year, I’m gearing up.

I’ve got a 5-week class series (MindFULL to Mindful) that starts at the end of January, and there are still spots available.

Hustle = doing promotion that gets butts into seats.

I’m planning a retreat for the spring (not yet announced) that needs to be planned and promoted.

Hustle = getting those details squared away.

And I’m working on turning MindFULL to Mindful into a digital offering, so that it’s not limited to students within driving distance of Charlottesville.

Hustle = setting the foundation for this new offering.

So with all this holiday hustle, when do I take time away?

Holiday = going totally off grid in two weeks. Heading to Sayulita, Mexico again for a yoga retreat with one of my favorite teachers.

That week at Haramara? THAT is my holiday.

My time to relax. To recharge. To sit by the ocean and listen to the waves crash against the shore. To delve deeper into my yoga. And to step away from the hustle and evaluate the past year.

Knowing that kind of holiday is on the horizon gives me a great reason to spend the weeks leading up to it with my head down.

It’s your life, so define your terms

When I say that I’m hustling during the holidays, what I really mean is that I’m working during what someone else defines as “holiday” – and then taking my own downtime, on my own terms.

It’s not about the “hustle.”

It’s not about conforming to a schedule that’s predetermined by centuries of religious practice or large corporations.

Rather, it’s about finding the mode of living that works for you, for your family, and for your business.

Because that is the kind of hustle I can get behind.

Continuing Education (or: always be learning)

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education_640Two points, one post:

1. As a former teacher, I lament the loss of school systems that actually teach children how to think; with the advent of No Child Left Behind and a strict adherence to the SOLs (Standards of Learning), we are slowly building generations of young people who have learned how to memorize and regurgitate specific information – nothing more, nothing less. If it’s not on the SOLs, it’s not important. I know that there are still teachers in the field who are fighting the good fight, attempting to teach their students how to think independently and how to learn on their own, and I am incredibly grateful to know that such teachers still exist.

2. Recent news from the education front seems to indicate a trend: traditional higher level education is worth less than it used to be. This might not be the case with more specialized fields, but it holds true in many progressive (read: constantly advancing) job fields. Especially in technical fields like software development (with a never-ending cascade of new programming languages and ever-evolving technology coming down the pipeline), a traditional four year degree may see students graduating from college who have spent obscene amounts of money on a piece of paper that proudly declares that they have a degree in now-outdated languages, technologies and methods.

Those two points being raised, it makes me wonder how well we are equipping future generations to forge a path for themselves. Being of the college-graduate-who-no-longer-utilizes-her-degree category (hello, music education major who changed career paths less than 5 years after graduation), I can say that my college experience was highly beneficial, but more for the experience of learning how to learn, and widening my horizons. It’s still a good idea to go through college if you want to be a teacher, being that it’s one of those more traditional, specialized fields that requires licensure after degree completion.

That being said, when I decided to switch directions, I chose to go a more vocational route. I looked at grad school as an option, but realized that as an aspiring digital designer, by the time I completed the program I would not only be broke (and very much in debt), but I would have invested my time and money into learning that was cutting edge a decade ago. Not so great as investments go!

So, what’s the answer? Good question.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ~ Gandhi

Many of my amazing colleagues in the design and development fields are self-taught. These folks have made the decision to invest in themselves in a less traditional manner, by jumping in and learning as they go as opposed to spending years chained to one institution or one course of study. Many of them have made a name for themselves along the way, carving new paths as they moved forward – not being molded by any one brand of teacher or academy, they are less stifled by other people’s methods and thereby more likely to be unique.

Personally, I have made it one of my goals to invest in myself and my business this year. I spent the first year-plus concentrating so hard on finishing up my last two semesters, focusing on clients and exterior projects that I never left time for myself. Reason number one I had a less than stellar website during that period of time? You guessed it!

Starting this past spring with my site redesign, and continuing into the foreseeable future, I’m changing that pattern. It took a while, but I finally came to the realization that it’s a win-win situation; I’m learning more and becoming better at everything I do, which benefits not only me, but my clients as well.

Coming full circle to my point about our youngest generations never being taught how to learn, I really want there to be a vector change in that situation. Without early education, it makes it incredibly difficult for these students to make the investment in themselves later in life.

But… maybe I’m wrong, and maybe these kids will be the first generation to really teach themselves starting from a younger age. With the wealth of information readily available at our fingertips, it’s possible to learn without a teacher, outside the establishment. Let’s hope that as education undergoes a massive transformation, we don’t lose our students in the wake.

As for me, I’ll be here in my little corner of the world, drinking in the world around me; always learning.

Giving Thanks (and why it matters most when things look the worst)

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thanks_640I have the feeling that if you’re carefully examining the title of this post, you may get the impression that I jumped the gun on posting it – that I meant to save it for later in the month, around the Thanksgiving holiday. Well, maybe you’re right, but wait until you have finished reading to make your final decision.

Going through a divorce has been one of the most painful and complicated and awful and terrible things I have ever experienced. Add in the stress of running a business, keeping up with a part time job and a nonprofit chair position, and it gets pretty hairy. Just for fun, throw in a totally mad 30 day challenge (see my NaNoWriMo post), and even a normally sane person would tend to get a little twitchy.

That said: today, when everything started to go wrong and all I wanted to do was crawl under my desk and sob uncontrollably… I had a realization. Despite my deep seated fear that my life was coming apart at the seams, never to be repaired, I felt this flutter of happiness.

What was it that made me smile, despite the rage and tears?

While I was walking to the post office, I passed this small, fuzzy dog who was trying to wrap its owner around a street sign. On this beautiful, sunny, 70 degree day in November, that little ball of fuzz made me remember the big black ball of fuzz who was waiting at home for me.

I am thankful for the unconditional love I receive from my fuzzy best friend.

That small reminder caused me to think about all the other things I have to be thankful for:

  • I am thankful for the love and support that I receive from my family and friends.
  • I am thankful that I live in a beautiful city where I can go car free.
  • I am thankful that I live in an age where, as a woman, I can vote (which I did today), have equality, and own my own business.
  • I am thankful that I have the opportunity to live life on my terms and the passion to carry out that opportunity.
  • I am thankful to truly be alive, and to be fully present in the moment (even when it sucks).

So, even on the days when you feel like punching a hole through the wall, or assuming the fetal position under your desk, never to reemerge into the sunlight, do me a favor.

Stop. Take a deep breath. And find at least ONE positive thing in your life.

Concentrate on that one thing, and allow yourself to be thankful. Even if that’s all you can do for today, it’s a good place to start. Be thankful for what you do have, and see if that doesn’t give you the energy to to get through until tomorrow. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

So yes, perhaps this post should have waited a few more weeks, but it felt necessary today. I’m a firm believer that you shouldn’t wait for a holiday to be thankful for the good things in life; maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think that Hallmark should decide when you thank your mom for being awesome, or tell us that there’s just one day a year to be thankful.

What about you? What are the things you are thankful for, even on the less-than-stellar days? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on twitter.

Ripples (or: throwing rocks in life’s pond)

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ripples_640There is a software developer in town who has become somewhat of a mentor to me over the past year and a half. He encouraged me to step outside my then-current worldview, and was one of the first to encourage me to start my own business. I had been hiding behind finishing school as a start date for doing anything, but he pushed me to believe that I didn’t have to wait for some magical event; he even brought me onto a team project as a designer – my first real client work. As work ebbed and flowed, we went our own ways, and it had been a while since the last time we had spoken. This past spring we ran into a small error on the site we had worked on together, and it gave us a chance to catch up. I was getting him up to speed on everything that had been going on in my life, and he said the following:

When you make big changes in your life, it’s like throwing rocks into a pond. You never know how big the ripples will be, or how far they will spread.

It turns out that I have thrown quite a few rocks into what had once been a fairly still pond. The first big rock was starting my own business, stepping out of the traditional career track and starting on the path to creating a lifestyle that more closely reflected what I want to do with my life. Those ripples unsettled what could be considered a fairly “normal” existence: husband, house, two dogs, one car, steady careers, life planned out.

Fast forward a year, and it’s now one dog and me. I’m still riding my ripples, and still throwing rocks in the pond.

In the past year, I have learned more about myself than I would have thought possible. I have come to the realization that content just doesn’t cut it for me; I don’t want to be able to see every day of the rest of my life laid out in front of me, orderly and safe. Don’t get me wrong – sometimes I look back to that life and think how easy it was, how secure and dependable. I allow myself those moments, and then I come back to the present, the now. All it takes is the thought of all the possibilities this life holds, and I’m back in the game. I have thrown the weight of my being behind my passion for environmental change, and come to realize that I want to continue in that vein for the foreseeable future. What comes after that? Who knows.

As I continue on this path I’m carving, I will be finding myself and my balance, trying to make a difference in this world while still enjoying my days in it. And, I’ll most likely keep throwing rocks in the pond.

Who needs still water, anyway?

Have you thrown any metaphorical rocks into the pond of your life? To what effect? I would love to hear your experiences in the comments!