I’ve been in Vacay Mode

And its leading to some ch-ch-ch-CHAnges…

I’ve been holding to my word to take some time away from work, and the opportunity to reset my nervous system has been stellar. I feel great! Crazy what a solid 7-8 hours of sleep A NIGHT (and a nap, almost every day?!) can do for a girl! And I’ve been letting my big beautiful brain rest too, mostly by watching Reacher and Citadel: Honey Bunny, and playing dumb games on my phone. Weeee!

I’ve basically been trying to recapture what made 2020 and 2021 so great for my creative productivity… I know that seems like an odd thing to say but it’s true. Growing up as an isolated, weird kid on the Internet, I was well-trained in the art of never leaving the house and finding ways to entertain myself. But now things are back to “normal” but also somehow they’ve never been so NOT normal, and nobody knows what to do. I certainly don’t! And that’s exhausting. It’s hard to create art while wading through this miasma of burgeoning uncertainty, let alone feel sexy enough to create sexy art. In those earliest lockdown days, we were all seeking connection, and I don’t think that’s untrue for current times as well. But for me, personally, that period also contained an amount of slowness, with space between the hours to breath and to feel. That’s what I’m trying to find again.

And this past week+ has been helpful for that. Clearly, my body needed to rest! And some distance indeed makes the heart grow fonder, or in this case lets the brain gain perspective. Some time to breath before burnout hits. For example, I’m reminded how much I love having “project weeks” where I just go hard on scratching that special interest/fixation that’s been itchy and get it out of my system. It’s almost like taking time off, though perhaps not as drastically as this past week has been. But once you build a machine, and oiled it as necessary, the machine can run with minimal supervision; a necessary beast of burden in an industry where one is expected to be doing everything all the time, to be handling every aspect of managing a business yet still living a full life. Automations truly are key. My concern is that they remove an amount of that personal connection, but I think the space automation creates can allow for more opportunity to connect if one manages their time wisely.

ANYway. What was my goal here? Oh, just talking about what I’ve learned with my time off, right.

I think one of the key takeaways here is that I need to create more space in my life, in order to best access my creativity. The more I try to see my work as “work”, the more I pressure myself to “clock in” every day, to maintain a schedule, to hit those metrics. And… yo I know that’s not what any of us want for ourselves is it? Let alone for the people we care about and support. Nobody wishes the grindstone upon their favoured idol. We wish comfort, we wish happiness, we wish growth. None of that happens if we chain ourselves to and lean upon a (meat) grinder.

So, what does it look like for me to slow down?

I guess the best way to summarize it is “boundaries”, yeah? What is “vacay mode” if not an OOO auto-responder to your work obligations? A boundary. Posting less, probably. Or at least, planning posts better… not sitting down the night before to queue something for a 9am release every. single. night. this week. Yeah, that’s probably a bad habit. I need to get real about organizing my photography in advance, about editing in advance, about queueing Well In Advance. Which also means doing photoshoots Well In Advance. Making sure I have AFK Project Time. Continuing to work out several days a week (love it, I always sleep so good!); taking my dog for walks and also having lazy blanket days with her. Continuing to make upgrades to my home, and maintaining the aesthetics that create that space for my mind to feel inspired by the lights and shapes and colours I’ve brought into my space. Be direct about what I want and what I need. Living life for myself, and not trying to optimize my actions to maximize content; optimizing my content to maximize my actions in life (what a subtle but huge shift that is!).

But I think the core is to just be myself, to lean into the “me” things that I love about being me and knowing when it’s appropriate to let people in versus when it’s appropriate to be a private individual.

Also, I’d like to write more (again). Hi. :D

There’s that whole thing about how 80% of one’s success comes from 20% of their actions. So perhaps by that logic, spending less time on managing my paid fansites/platforms could actually benefit me? Spending more time off those sites, engaging in social media, publishing on different platforms, having the space I need to manage my sites instead of just maintain them, you know? Which is scary to consider, in its way; we’re trained to think we need to be posting multiple times a day every day in the week and also twice as much for holidays (even our birthdays?!), which just isn’t healthy or sustainable to me. Maybe sometimes I’m up for going all out (October…) but as a way of life/work… no. Because expecting 100% of my success to come from 100% of my actions on fansites is simply not how things work! As evidenced by my not actually making enough money to thrive, which is the key. Survival is nice, but again, we always want more for those we care for and admire. We want them to thrive; I want me to thrive. Work less profit more doesn’t seem to math but we’ll see!

I’ve never been a big risk taker; I saw a post on IG today about how a perceived risk is viewed as bigger/scarier than the potential for success. But like, it literally always works out, doesn’t it? Or if it doesn’t, is it ever really as bad as you thought it was going to be? Rarely. I’d say I was raised to be afraid of a lot of things, but life isn’t ever as scary once you’re actually living it. Perhaps this is vain of me to say but I think I can be a good role model for how to live a good and healthy life. For you, for other creators, for other entrepreneurs, for other women, for other weirdos, whomever. The trick being, I have to make sure I’m living my own first.