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Burned out? Have you ever practiced the art of un-working? Are you a blogger? Have you stepped away from your blog and unblogged? Unplugged? Did you hit the road, Jack? Sometimes it is necessary to step back and breathe. Rinse and Repeat. Take a load off. Unwind, even when you have a good thing.
Even too much sunshine burns.
You can’t see the forest for the trees
What your mom didn’t tell you about having a craptastic month : Your wheels fall off the bus.
That is the time when you learn ways to throw a party in your head. It’s necessary, after your bus veers off the road a bit with its wobbly wheels. Sometimes you have to get lost … to figure out your roadmap in life.
I blame winter.
Summer Dreams
Winter Reality
I’m Canadian. What the what what? The reality is, Canucks are just barely emerging from the winter shenanigans. Winter has gone on and on and on from here to eternity. Winter has been like a bad ass energizer bunny that just won’t quit. Someone needs to punch the bunny in the face.
Summer Treehouse Dreams
Winter Treehouse Reality. Brrrrrh.
There’s a snow bank outside every window in the Canadian countryside and it’s the size of Mount Everest.
Spring called. It said it should arrive by 2018. Oh no. Guess what that led to?!!!
A craptastic month.
Summer Love
Winter Freak Out. Punch a Snowman.
Have you had one of those holy shit what am I doing months moments??
I get it. In the work / life balance world, what is successful to one peep is totally different from the success of another. How do you balance your juggling balls? Did I just say balls again?
I balance work with knitting. Don’t judge. Just pretend I’m a granny. You wouldn’t judge a granny. I’m technically 102 years old in knitting years.
Here’s a free Knitting Pattern for you
In the blogging world, what’s successful to one blogger is not the same as what’s successful to another blogger three blogs over. Wait. That was a tongue twister.
We all have our limits. Our success barometers. Our point of no return.
Then it happens. Your mind is overwhelmed. Uhh-ohhh. The face plant into a wall.
What could possibly happen after THAT ?
You quit. Just like that. I feel your pain, sista. I did it. I quit being a blogger. Quit. Done. Gonzo.
Erhhhmergerd. I wanted to run for the hills. I wanted to run with hard liquor strapped to my boot and a chaser of Valium tucked neatly in my pant pocket. I don’t know what a chaser of Valium is, but it sounds tempting.
For the love of Pete, WHY did this happen… you ask ?
What tipped me over the Thelma and Louise cliff? I had the joyous grossness of the flu for 2 weeks. It was worse than bad. It was negative good. Just for shits and giggles, I woke up in the morning and tortured myself just by breathing. I got to the point where breathing out of ONE NOSTRIL seemed like the best thing on the face of the earth.
Oh joy. I could half breathe.
Someone save me.
For the love of all grossness, it was intense for 4 weeks. Four freakin’ weeks. Four. Count ‘em. During that time, I didn’t have grand goals to change the world. My goal was to wake up and breathe out of both nostrils.
To be sick for so long is a backstage pass to nutty-ville. You know that nut town. The town where people wear straight jackets and talk to rubber walls. Truth is, I would have thrown myself into a pit of snakes, rather than blow my nose one.more.effffffing.time.
Road Trip to The Funny Farm
I sound like I should be standing on the corner of 21st and crazy street right about now, don’t I ??!
Bat shit crazy street.
Been there. Done that. Got the poster. Blah.
I considering hiring someone to shoot me. I would have paid with all the tea in China if they aimed for my nose.
The crazy thaang about being sick was that it messed with my HEAD more than my BODY. My HEAD.
For reals. No fair. How dare it?!! Pffffft.
It was craptastic. Definitely a shit storm. I shut down.
My office. It was a quiet place. Ha@!
My thinking … my inspiration … my mojo … GONE. It was like Elvis. It left the building.
It takes a lot to take me down and mess with my head. The only other thing that could possibly do funky things to my head would be eating a tequila worm and waking up in the neighbours front yard the next morning. Buck naked. That could possibly mess with my head. Exception to the rule : If my neighbor was George Clooney. All bets would be off.
This past month, I thought I was coming unhinged. I couldn’t find my smarty pants for a while. I tried to write with a bang, and it came out as a thud. Blah. The dogs breakfast.
I tried to organize myself and create. Creating content is not always a piece of cake. Hmmm. Cake? Never mind cake. Let’s talk about other cheery stuff… like muffins. Yeah, I baked these skinny bitch muffins too. You know it’s bad when those puppies don’t solve your problems. They are seriously deeeeelish.
Mind over muffins
I wanted to get back to my old goofball self. I wanted to practice the art of being reckless with my words and throw some lusciousness across the page. The most I could accomplish was how to coordinate my flannel jammie tops with my bottoms. Yessssss. Success.
I wanted to do small things with great love. I settled on doing great things like getting out of bed without tripping over my face.
Never have I ever had a curve ball like that. Like ever. In the history of ever.
Working on writing a blog post was an epic fail. It was like herding a cat. No such luck.
Cats Have it all Figured Out
Technically, it would have been easier to push a rope uphill.
The demons of self-doubt flitted about. I crawled into my girl cave. I didn’t leave the house. Dressing me up into real clothes was like putting lipstick on a pig. A hopeless ordeal. Eventually, I had to drag myself out of my bedroom by the ankles. That was interesting. I’m not flexible.
The point of this hot mess was that it got me thinking. It was time to stop staring skeptically at my computer screen and wondering what I was going to do when I grow up.
The procrastination of blogging and social media was looming over me like stink. And then it happened. It all changed. Finally. Fine-freaking-ally. My world came back to me.
The real truth is that I started to miss the bejesus outta talking to you. I missed my bloggy life where I could just throw words on the page, and not even think about being blogstipated.
It was official. I decided to un-quit.
I watched something recently that I thought you might like
This video rocked me to the core. It really made me think. It’s inspiring.
Holy batman, check out the Marie Forleo interview with Adam Braun … The Promise of A Pencil. I mean, Marie Forleo is already awesome sauce. Adam Braun –> well… that dude knows how to change the freakin’ world. He started with a pencil and twenty five dollars. For reals. Totally doable. Right? Right. He’s an ordinary guy doing extraordinary things. Just like you and me. We can do it too.
You are not ordinary. You are extraordinary.
This tips the whole experience of living an ordinary life into living an extraordinary life :
Did you watch it? I wanna do that ! Do you ?!! How cool is that to make such a difference to other people?!!
You can do it. You can. You can. You can.
Design the Life You Want to Live <-- Hey, that sounds familiar :)
What was my takeaway from the craptastic month?
* Learn to focus on the deep inner game and change it up. Baby steps. One foot in front of the other. Suddenly, you are there.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, even though we kinda sorta wish it was.
* Don’t worry. It’s okay to be crappy sometimes. Craptastic can teach you a lot. It can teach you what you want. It can teach you what you don’t want <— That’s just as important, dude.
There is value in hanging out in bed. Ha !
Talk To Me …
What happens if you don’t succeed at something that’s über stinking important to you?
How do you get outta ‘yer funk? What do you do when your life is a shit storm?
What happens when you are workstipated, lifestipated or blogstipated?
HOLY CRAP, that’s a lot of constipation. Excuse the pun.
PS. Did you luuuurve this bloggy post? Sign up for more awesomeness and get a free pressie too. Right here.
Jump into the comments. Let’s chitty chatty and talk wacky. I’ve missed talking to you.
I’m back <— I said that with my best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice
What’s going on in that beautiful mind? Lemme hear about it. Talk to me, sugar. In the words of Marie Forleo …