I haven’t written a blog post or a year reflection in quite awhile, but I needed it this year. I needed to sit down & reflect on what’s changed in me & where I’m going. I’ve definitely been lacking a real direction for a few years now since both kids have been in school, but I’m feeling more ready for an actual shift to something new & more concrete. It’s been a year of a lot of family time in good & hard ways. A year of watching my kids grow into not little kids anymore in also good & hard ways. A year I started trying new things & taking risks. I’ve felt a lot of things shift this year, in myself & in my family. I feel like we’ve started really hearing each other & knowing what to say for ourselves. Taking ownership & taking steps forward.
There has been a lot of turmoil in my marriage & my extended family in the last few years. But I’ve spent time working through the hard things & watching the people around me start to do that as well. We’re finally seeing light shining through all the cracked, damaged & dark places. In myself, my marriage & my whole extended family. Healing doesn’t come without the pain, without the brokenness, without the uncovering of festering wounds. The last year for me was a lot of focus on family, family events, visiting family, spending time with family. I didn’t travel that much this year, but I did get to visit my family a lot in different places (Tahoe, CA, SC, AZ).
I’ve challenged myself this year. I’ve said yes & tried new things. I built an entire chicken coop on my own & figured out how to keep chickens alive. I learned how much I love aerials, I tried wake boarding, I went to my first yoga retreat. I put myself out there to meet a lot of new people, do some in person markets that didn’t really go well as usual & try a bunch of new projects where some went well & some didn’t. I feel the pull & transition of not having younger kids anymore & trying to learn who they are as their own person. The transition from having my own Etsy shop since they were babies to leaving the house & having my own real business. I’m learning to relearn, reinvent & trust myself more, but I’m also learning my limitations, which is always frustrating but necessary.
Trying so many new things & taking more risks has been a lot of anxiety, especially towards the end of this year. I hadn’t had anxiety until I was an adult or at least I didn’t know what to call it or the real feeling of panic that comes with watching someone you know leave this earth. Coupled right after that with the uncertainty of Covid times & kids growing up & feeling very stuck. My anxiety & my marriage have been suffering for several years now. My stuckness in not knowing how to change things has kept me from moving forward for a while but I do think sometimes we need that time to really feel ready to change. Which is why this year I’ve tried to say yes more. To different things, to scary things, to anything really. My family has moved forward in a lot of ways, which has been scary, hard & life giving too. My kids are moving forward into real little people with their own thoughts, humor & opinions on things. So I’m trying to figure out how to start to move forward into the next version of me too.
But by the end of this last year, it has felt like nothing has worked right because I’m not doing anything right. Throwing things at the wall to see what sticks hasn’t worked for me because it’s pulled my brain in so many directions the last few years (between Etsy, refinishing furniture, building things, trying to be a “handyman”) that I haven’t been able to focus well on any one thing. My Etsy shop is starting to suffer for it & I’ve done a couple projects lately that didn’t work out well because I wasn’t sure what the client wanted or how to make what they wanted. I get bored easily (yes I know I have some kind of ADD/OCD combo brain) so I haven’t wanted to commit to just one “thing” that I do in the last few years. I’ve had my Etsy shop for over 8 years since I started it when I was pregnant with Ensley. And I did focus on that for awhile but I was also a mom with young kids who had a million other things going on. Now that I have more time to give to something I’ve wanted it to be more exciting, more fulfilling, more grand in some way, but it’s just been feeling like I’m actually just failing at everything now.
Instead of building small blocks to slowly build onto over time, I’ve been trying too much & too hard all at once. A lot of times, in trying to be more “free” to do anything actually makes you more stressed out since there’s no parameters to stop you from spilling over everywhere. So in this new year I’m going to try to really learn from & lean into the things that do work for me. Doing too many things does not work. Even though it’s been hard floundering around for a while now, I’m still grateful for that time to explore a lot of things going on in & around me emotionally & figuring out what does or doesn’t work.
So this next year I’m going to focus. I feel like in 2023 I didn’t focus, I just tried everything, which is sometimes fun but definitely frustrating. So in 2024 I want to actually FOCUS on what I want, what I can do & what actually works for me. So I’m going to scale back my Etsy shop to only a few built products so I can make them well, strip down the “handyman” direction I was originally planning to go in since some projects I’ve done haven’t gone well since I don’t have the experience or skill yet. I’m going to focus on wall accents & additions. Basically adding things to walls. Trim, shelves, paint. Those things I can do, those things I like. It’s a bigger goal for me to someday add custom building, but I have to admit to myself I’m just not there yet.
I always want to be the person that can do it all, but of course that means some things are going to suffer & fail because no one can do it all. So for now I’m going to focus on “building” a new business this year that can grow & change overtime but that’s starting small because that’s what works best for me. A lot of 2023 was watching my kids grow up way too fast in front of me. We ended the year as our family of 4 & I’ve just enjoyed being around them, who they are at their core, so much. The work/life balance of growing & doing & being while not missing a second of their stories unfolding feels challenging, but I’m determined to focus on the things we all need as individual people to become the better us for each other. Let’s do this 2024.
SalisburyLiving 