I’ve never liked being a Busy Person. I once allowed myself to become a Busy Person my junior year of college. I spent that year so overstretched, I didn’t even have time to spend a couple of hours on Valentine’s Day with my boyfriend because I had two English papers due that Monday (and was managing editor of a school publication and worked two jobs). I was 20 years old and I must have subconsciously vowed never to be a Busy Person again because I never did.
But I guess that subconscious vow wore off because I have once again — and I hope for the last time in my 55-year-old life — become a Busy Person. I intensely dislike being Busy. There’s little peace in it and little rest, and I like to have lots of peace and rest in my life. That’s why I didn’t have children or buy property or build a real career or live near family or commit to a cause or do much volunteering — because I like living at a slow pace with plenty of time for friends, writing, reading novels, and lying around.
So how the hell did I get Busy again?
Welp! In 2014 I left my six-year job at Rotary Interational; in 2015 I started a coaching business; in 2018 I gave up on coaching and founded The Detail Conductor (which I shall refer to as “DetCon”) which was a virtual assistant business; and this spring I changed that business to freelance writing. Yeah, I’m finally going to earn a living doing my favorite thing. This past spring I began a certification and training program to help me completely overhaul and refocus DetCon.
My current level of Busyness is:
- Networking Zoom/phone calls with individuals either because they’re potential clients or possible strategic partners (someone with the same client base as me with whom I can trade referrals).
- Networking Zoom calls with groups of people to find potential clients or possible strategic partners.
- Training Zooms for the certification program.
- Studying new skills for my new business.
- Subcontracting work as a writer so I can learn new skills.
- Client work using some new skills writing LinkedIn profiles (excited about this, but it takes time).
- Writing proposals and agreements for potential new clients.
- Still working 20 hours/week at Gnosis Natural Health.
- Still working 10 hours/week work as a virtual assistant.
- Doing the certification course work (and there’s A LOT of it)
- Researching businesses so I can find entrepreneurs and small businesses to network with for more strategic partners.
- Promoting myself and my new business, doing things such as keeping my LinkIn profile updated and regularly posting to my DetCon blog.
Yeah. It’s a goddamn lot and it has me working into the night (8:00 p.m!) and on Saturdays AND on Sundays. I know that sounds like nothing to a lot of you Americans, but this American hates working past 5:30p. I hate working weekends. I hate the pace of this new life.
But it’s temporary. Until the new business earns what I need, I’m doing professional work/activities from my past and from my future. And this is all why I’m not posting much anywhere, except on Medium.com because they pay money. Money is more important to me than ever because the certification program is teaching me everything about starting a business (I wish I’d known all of this years ago!), but it costs money. So at the moment, the writing portion of my business is costing me more than it’s bringing in.
So I’m hustling, I’m hustling.
The new focus of The Detail Conductor is writing for alternative healers/spiritual entrepreneurs. These kinds of healers have brought me much better healing than traditional Western medicine and I’m passionate about helping them tell their story and draw more people to get the healing they need. But until I’ve settled into that niche, I’ll write for anyone who wants blog posts, articles, newsletters, email sequences, lead magnets, a LinkedIn profile or bio, research, website copy, white papers, written recommendations or other copywriting. If it pays money, I’ll make time for it. My turnaround time is excellent because client work takes priority over all.
Now I have to go do what I should have been doing for the past hour instead of writing this post.
30 October 2021