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July 2024 personal update
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If you want to catch up on too-personal updates, I've got a small harem of them now! And it's time for another now ;-)! Thank you for caring about me. That's what it feels like when you stay with me month after month. Well hey, Reader, it's so nice to be talking to you from a healthy place! Finally! Today I'm snail-goo sliding into your inbox a calm, rested person who is pretty dang happy, minus a home argument or two here and there. This is a marked change from pretty much every other update I've shared, and I'm really grateful. This year has been a sunny, wistful walk back into real life! I attained major healing gains with my ongoing health issue (CIRS). I finally made the break-through shift to coaching pretty much full-time. (Shout out to everyone who welcomed me into their business this year... I literally actually love you.) I continue to work with my own coach as well as a small group program with another coach. I also completed Seth Godin's alternativer MBA program, AltMBA, and Tara Mohr's coaching training program, Playing Big. (Listen, studying is how I use my sweet pens!) And I landed a workshop teaching spot at this year's DC Fountain Pen Show. Here's my rundown for July 2024 which I hope will be interesting to you, as I find little peeks into the lives of others endlessly fascinating myself: My brain is gooey again!My feral health story is clawing its way to a happy ending. I am 2 years into the 3-4 year healing process from CIRS and I made it to the special nose spray that regenerates my brain. No joke — parts of your brain atrophy with this illness, which explains the symptoms that present as depression, chronic fatigue, bi-polar, and a host of really unpleasant things that have kept me down a long time. But... it's turning around. My back pain dissolved into vapor and I can exercise again without being exhausted for three days. I don't have anywhere near the number or intensity of meltdowns with my family as I was having. And so many other little things. It's like being human again, after being a very dirty, sad work robot. Sometimes I feel like I've been dusting off dirt from my grave, looking around deciding to re-engage with the world. It's humbling. Exciting. Like breathing. Like catching my breath. Coaching full-timeTo kick off this week, my to-do list is 99% made up of the things I've dreamed of for years:
What's really surprising is my realization about two months ago that I hadn't truly made the leap yet. I had been laying the groundwork for this for a long time, doing the work, feeling the feels. But I had not yet emotionally jumped off the cliff, truly surrendering to my dream and putting my all into it. Within four weeks of that realization, everything changed. And here we are. The adjustment has been pretty intense. Not unlike my adjustment from teaching high school to getting a cubicle job. Pressures I had as a writer have just dissolved, replaced by new pressures. And same for the pleasures. Overall, it's an extraordinarily positive change. 😊 #ArtLifeI'M NOT FALLING FOR IT. I refuse to turn my hobby and love for art and pens to turn into a business or a side-hustle. (At least not yet... my long-term retirement plan is to open a brick-and-mortar pen shop in Richmond, VA. But that's at least 10 years away.) That said.... I responded to a call for workshops at the DC Fountain Pen Show, and now I am teaching one! The event: https://www.dcpenshow.com/courses-1/watercolor-and-ink-sketching If you're local, check it out. I have already started mapping the curriculum, and I am filled with green and gold butterflies at the prospect of teaching this live in August. I've been reading some art books and having a great time with it. It's not a huge commitment, I just get a lot of pleasure from playing with my pens in the evenings after the kids go to sleep, and doodling/sketching during movie night: SurrenderThe Enneagram helped me identify important themes to focus on in my professional development journey. So your theme or word might need to be different. But my word has been "surrender." I made extraordinary progress with this this year, in part because of my CIRS healing, I think. (I was just able to relax in a way I haven't been able to for as long as I can remember). But boy, let me tell you, it felt like it would destroy me! When you find the thing you need to work on, it kind of feels like unraveling. I had very key moments and experiences with my coaches about circling around the thing I need to do, and how doing that thing felt like I'd unhook from reality and float off into nothingness. (Yes, that is what it felt like to decide to stop struggling against life. It's wild to look back on it now, but I remember feeling the fear very clearly). And without doing that work (and taking a deep breath and being willing to immolate myself), I can't say I would have had my recent breakthrough to be able to coach full-time. I can't understate how important it was to have loving relationships around me to handle this change and look this deep into what motivates me and let it go. I'll repeat myself: It's humbling. Exciting. Like breathing. Like catching my breath. Slack SprintsI've been experimenting with offering short, tactical programs at a low price point for folks this year, and it's going AWESOME. The first one was "Un-Lurk LinkedIn," which I've run twice (April 2024 and June 2024) for about 34 people. It's a 10-day sprint where I break down how to finally use LinkedIn to its fullest (and the mindset challenges that commonly pop up for folks) and the reviews are excellent. I'll run another one likely in October 2024. But I might move that up if I see enough interest — if you're interested, email me! Next up, I want to prepare the "Un-Lurk Your Journal" program. The same thing as the first one, but focused on creating a journal/sketchbook habit for freelance writers — how to make a beautiful habit with your art skill as it is, right now. I'm planning on this for August/September 2024, but I'm still working on the positioning and what we'll cover. I want it to be about art and beauty, BUT for someone to pay money for it, you really need to know it's going to deliver some business benefits, you know? So I'm puzzling that out now. The fam* Gulp * I don't have toddlers anymore! (No, I didn't sell them.) The kids have grown out of being toddlers and are most definitely "kids." Each passing day leads to (slightly) fewer melt-downs, more conversations, and more LEGOS. I am a much better age 5-10 parent than age 0-5 parent, thank the Lord! My husband is a cutie and works at the kid's school as a math and online education teacher: The cat is almost as controlling as I am and is barfing less: And I cannot get enough of looking at my kids. I especially love looking at them asleep, if only for my eardrums, lol. But also at other times like these: Have I learned anything worth passing on when it comes to family life? I don't know. I think it's just all about paid child care and reducing expectations around the house. That's all I've got for you right now. TripsDid you know you can travel for fun, not just work conferences? 🤯 Well, I had this realization this year, so I started booking some fun. In June, we escaped to OBX on a sweet deal on a 4-day beachfront condo. (Don't mind the laptop. It was closed for most of the week, and I just kept one coaching kick-off appointment because I was too excited to postpone it, and it was a blast.) In May, I met Alyssa in D.C. for the inaugural Super Formal Private Thought Leadership Conference. We feasted on food and coffee and conversation, improved our skin health, and generally had a wonderful time together. Then in June Lee was coming through town and agreed to let me chat her ears off at a local coffee shop. It's now my favorite coffee shop! I am also overjoyed and delighted to discover two new BFFs who live in my town (!) and immediately plucked my heartstrings with some of the best conversation I've had in years (books! music! life! no small talk here). Let the era of "IRL Friends" commence! (Shout out to Lauren and Laura-Eve ❤️) If you haven't already, consider a friend workation. Aside from what I voluntarily spent on stationery at Jenni Bick's stationery store, it was a really reasonable trip: hotel cost (about $300 for two nights, plus meals, which I could have packed if I wanted to be more frugal). And the boost of connection, peace, calmness, and rest (14 hours of sleep that first night.... Alyssa didn't believe me when I called it....)... it was priceless. YouTubeSomething in my gut has been screaming, "YouTube!" for a year or so now, so I decided to go for it. I hired a great video editor and we're a three video test to see if this could be a viable part of my marketing and art-making. The second video is a meaningful one I've been thinking of for a year and a lifetime. It's all about the ways we assume we can't be good at business because of our perceived flaws, especially for women around appearance and age.... but I believe ANYONE can be in this space and bring value exactly as you are right now. Here it is: Click here to watch: "Weird, Old, FAT... And good at business??" I've got a concept for my next video but I have a tough time finding the right day to film, speak clearly, etc. It'll get done when the timing is right! Condensing my pen collectionIn an exciting turn of events, my pen collection has really matured. I've sold a lot, acquired a lot, and I'm hitting a really nice middle ground of pens I love without too much excess. Acquisitions:
I'll be hitting up the nibsmith at the DC Pen Show to tune some things and see what fun customizations I'm ready for. My go-to pens have changed, as well. I'm almost always using one of these three pens:
Music choicesI've successfully directed my attention to female/not-dudes artists, like I mentioned in a previous email. Some winners this year have been:
I've been in a very repetitive music place, so I really just obsessively listen to one album, then move on to another one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Making time for common-placingThe past few weeks I've worked a lot on "allowing myself to read." I just LOVE reading, and because it's so pleasurable I really lose time to it, and so I don't let myself do it a lot. But now I am! Part of what I love is taking notes on my reading in a common place book so I can process and remember quotes I like. It lets me read more deeply, since I'm always reading pretty fast. And, you know, playing with pens. (<-- it's a theme) Some books...
All in all, if I can carry this reading habit with me through the end of the year, I'll be pleased as punch. I'd like to have "Teddy Roosevelt's library" be my life's aesthetic. Well, now you know me down to my bones. Hello, bone-friend. And thank you. Tale tailor, Sarah G. P.S. What's on your mind for the second half of 2024? |
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