(This was originally published in May 2013, in a slightly edited form at Kelly Diels’s blog as a guest post; I’d like to collect most of my writing into one spot on the internet, so I’m reposting this and some other pieces. It’s also worth noting I’m not on medication any more which is a whole ‘nother story, so some of this no longer applies, but I’m posting it in its mostly original form.)

The thing that astounds me the most out of all of my adventures with the dysfunctional head-mate that is anxiety is how long I was mostly functioning. It only finally got to the point where I was non-functional well after I was out of survival mode. When I was dealing with infidelity, the electricity being shut off, or the dissolution of my marriage, I was freaked the fuck out, but I was functional. I could usually get through the day without breaking down and I could sleep most nights and I could eat.

However, give me six months or so of gradually building tension with a two week tipping point, and I snapped. I was not functional in a pretty distinctive way. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I kept working myself into panic attacks (which totally freaked my dog out, which only upset me more, of course).

At one point, I got to where I was so stressed out about everything while simultaneously being almost deliriously exhausted (because hey, anxiety and lack of sleep and food will do that to you) that I crossed some kind of mystical border and reached a point where I was so stressed out about everything, I didn’t care about anything. For about twelve hours or so. Then I resumed the neurosis. <

Reactions you get when you tell people you have an anxiety problem:

“Oh! Have you tried…”

• meditating?
• yoga?
• getting rid of your TV?
• minimalism?
• veganism?
• Buddha?
• Jesus?
• sparkly freakin’ fairy dust?

What you say to these things: “No, thanks for the idea…” or “Yes, and…” with something of a forced smile. When you already feel shitty about everything else, you really don’t want to get into an argument about how, no, I promise, I’m not just being difficult on purpose, these things are really just. not. enough.

Some of these things can help. But when it’s at it’s worst, when the anxiety isn’t just an annoying mosquito buzzing in your ear so much as a monster actively attempting to devour any shred of sanity you have left (and, let’s face it, mostly succeeding), relying on these solutions alone feels like trying to kill a vampire by staking it with a toothpick.

(Fun fact: that’s an actual nightmare I had once! Yay, stress dreams!) 

My personal favorite is “Just stop worrying so much!”

It’s like telling a heroin addict to just stop using. I imagine in both situations the urge to slap the other person & say “If it was that easy, I’d have done it already, asshole” is pretty overwhelming.

I don’t think anyone would be so willfully ignorant of another person’s pain and struggles, so I have to believe the root of it is people just not knowing and honestly trying to be helpful. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to describe it to people. And here’s what I’ve got.

This is what anxiety feels like:

It feels like waking up at four in the morning from a stress dream, in the middle of a panic attack, and not being able to fall back asleep.

It feels like a vice around your stomach that kills your appetite, puts you in a state of perma-nausea, and makes you reject food even when you know you need to eat. (On one of the days that was, honestly, a better than usual day, I remember being so happy that I had managed to eat a breakfast taco without incident, and started on breakfast taco #2, only to be completely unable to finish it. I tried to finish it, because I knew I needed the fuel, and wound up gagging on it. My body straight up said “Nope, we’re not doing that today!”)

It feels like having one of those mythological demons that sits on your chest and steals your breath with you, all the time, not just when you’re sleeping. A constant subtle pressure that you aren’t even necessarily aware of until it’s removed (or until it escalates to the point where your chest is so tight you feel like you can’t breathe).

It feels like listening to the static between radio stations, catching a word here or there, and it’s all whispers of the worst case scenarios for everything ever. And it is always, always, always on in the back of your head.

It means your brain hates open loops.

It will obsess about open loops, any time you encounter one, whether it’s an actual puzzle or a piece of confusing behavior from someone else or just something entirely random, ad nauseum. (Often literally, in this case.) It’ll do this until it comes up with a way to close that loop. Unfortunately for you, that solution is usually, let’s say, less than ideal.

(As you can imagine, this makes certain kinds of social interaction, including dating, less fun and more of an adventure in ways to stress yourself out.) 

So many people demonize medication, & there’s a lot of nuance to be had here. Big pharma, ridiculous profit margins, potential side effects, etc. etc. But after experiencing my before & after, I wish I had done it sooner. (I definitely think there’s a larger conversation to be had here about all of this, but I think it can be done without making people who are already at the end of their rope feel shitty and like being on medication is a personal failure and/or act of stupidity.)

I was scared – no, really, terrified – to go on medication, but I knew that the way I was at that moment was not sustainable in any sense of the word and I had no idea what else to try. I was afraid meds would dull my emotions, making it difficult to be genuinely happy or sad or enthusiastic about anything. (I pride myself on my enthusiasm, which is probably a weird thing to be proud of, but whatevs. The thought of losing my ability to be wildly enthusiastic + super excitable was horrifying to me.) I had convinced myself that it would make me bad at my work (obsessive attention to detail & planning for all scenarios are qualities that make for a great project manager, after all).

It reminds me of when I first got glasses at age seven or eight – I hadn’t realized how bad my eyesight was, and then on the drive home from the optometrist, my mom said, “So, what do you think?” I replied excitedly, “Mom! I can see the leaves on the trees! And read the street signs!”

It’s the difference between standing in a crowded room where everyone is shouting and you’re just trying to string a coherent thought together while fighting the urge to cover your ears and scream, and doing that same thinking in a quiet, sunny room. Except, before, you weren’t fully, actually aware of how godawful loud that first room was. And now you’re in awe of just how easy everything is.

No more chest tightness.

No more stress nightmares.

No more endless static.

Best part? I’m still me and I’m just as good, if not better, at what I do. (Shock: it’s much easier to think straight, focus, and be productive when you’re well-rested and not perpetually stressed + on edge to the point of tears.)

Next time someone trusts you enough to share their struggles with you, for the love of all things good and holy, please don’t start in on the “have you tried…” Instead, hug them, ask if you can take anything off their plate, and show them cute videos of kittens. They probably need that a whole lot more than a laundry list of suggestions, anyways.

(originally written and published in May 2013)

Shock: January kinda got away from me. Probably due to any number of factors (I’m guessing mostly a huge switch-up in routine!), I didn’t get this post done in anywhere near the timeframe I’d originally imagined. So now I’m combining the looking ahead at 2014 post + the January recap post; I want to do monthly recap posts from here on out, I’m going to play with the format a little bit, but they’ll probably be a pretty constant thing in 2014.

Why do this?

Accountability, mostly. I’m totally okay if nobody even reads these, but the process of both writing it and putting it up publicly is hugely useful for me.

2014: Business

My business goals for 2014: write more and speak more. Like I mentioned in my 2013 recap post, when I looked back at my favorite things from last year, that’s what clearly stood out. My big business (esque? I’m not entirely sure how much revenue it will generate) goal for 2014 is to write a damn book. I actually want to write two books this year, or at least one and a half – finish a nonfiction book, and get at least halfway through Worldslip – but the nonfiction book is my priority. Clearly, I’m still getting back into the fiction-writing habit, but I aim to improve, and at least stick to bi-monthly chapters for the majority of the time in 2014.

2014: Health

My health goal for 2014: do as well as I can.  (More on this on Friday.) I know there are things that make me feel better:

• meditating
• yoga
• exercise
• being brutally protective of my sleep time and quality

And I plan to do them as often as possible. I’d like to do one of the more do-y things (meditating, exercise, or yoga) every day. And keep adding to it as I figure out what works for me and what doesn’t. I know acupuncture makes me feel better, and I really want to try CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy), but both of those will have to wait until I’m on more steady money-footing; I’d also like to get a full food sensitivities workup just to see if there’s anything glaring I’m messing, same deal there.

2014: Money

My goal with money is feeling more secure. By the end of the year, I want to feel like I really have a solid grasp on my money in-and-out flow, maybe not “in control” of it (because that makes me think “controlling” which makes me think of jerking things around on a leash or choking them or whatever, not a pleasant association), but I just want to know that I have at least a month’s worth of living expenses in savings, that I know what money is coming in, where it’s coming from, how much it is, and when, and the same for outflow of cash.

2014: Love

(I wrote this before I wrote any other part of this post, in mid-January or so. Apparently I really needed to get it out of my system!)

I’m not entirely sure why I’m giving this a section – you can’t set love goals, after all. (Or, you can, but I imagine they’d be hard to quantify.) But I learned a lot in 2013 that I’m taking into 2014, so here we go anyways.

Namely: I don’t like dating the way a lot of people do it. I don’t want to see how many people I can date at once. I don’t think there’s anything morally wrong with going that way, but the way I am, I don’t want frivolous-surface only interactions with anyone in my life, least of all a romantic interest.

Also: fuck mind games. Various industries & gurus & experts have been manufactured that all seem dedicated to talking about how to be manipulative as all get out in order to “win” at the dating “game.”

Aside from a large and obvious issue here – which is that actively encouraging a person with recurring anxiety issues to play mind-games is like telling a recovering alcoholic to take just a sip; it won’t end well for anyone and the encourager should probably shut the fuck up – my thing is this: I don’t want people to treat me like a chess piece, so I refuse to do that to other people. I am exactly 0% interested in appearing less available or less interested than I am for the sake of triggering some false sense of scarcity. If someone needs a false sense of scarcity to be interested in me, they aren’t worth my time anyways.

Maybe that does make me a hopelessly naive idealist, and maybe that’s why I have a track record of being taken for granted (in friendships as well as relationships). You know what though? I’m past caring. I’m okay with that. (I mean, not with being taken for granted, but that’s a whole ‘nother standing-up-for-myself issue.) I am totally, perfectly okay with being a naive idealist if it means that I don’t partake in activities that are not only actively stressful to me, but suck the fun out of something that should be all about having fun and feel shitty to do (and that’s before we even get into a sociopolitical analysis of where exactly the rules for this particular board game are coming from and who’s writing them, which is something else I’ve spent a good deal of time thinking about).

So that’s my love resolution-definitely-not-a-goal for 2014: don’t play by other peoples’ rules, and don’t even try any more.

Now that I’ve got that rant out of my system…the January recap:

January: Biz

What worked: I loved doing the Rock Your Systems class, and I’m going to turn it into a self-study. I reaffirmed how much I love teaching and group work. I made the final decision to cut out 1:1 work entirely instead of trying to make it work. That felt freaking fantastic.

What didn’t: I don’t think I have anything to put here, really. I had a few slip ups with getting the RYS peeps their materials on time and instead sent them out a day late or so, but that was more adjusting to the new schedule. I did have a few schedule fuck-ups – I wanted to participate in a blog carnival and I missed the deadline (and not even by just a little, I mean plain ol’ fuckin’ forgot about it until the day before the post needed to be done), and my email inbox spent most of January looking like a wildly overgrown jungle, but it’s improving.

Next month: Debut the self-study version of Rock Your Systems, and publish at least one blog post a week. Start strategizing & outlining book – have a solid book-creation strategy + outline in place by end of February.

January: Health

What worked: For the majority of January, I either did the seven minute workout or 5-10 minutes of yoga every.single.day. I did get off track once or twice but the difference both mentally and physically for me when I have a regular physical-energy outlet is so big and so immediately noticeable that it makes it much easier to stick with it.

What didn’t: I did not quite hit my goals for doing regular meditation or energy clearing but I did more of it and more regularly than I had been doing, so ima call that a win.

Next month: I’d really like to get a Jawbone UP or Fitbit Flex to start getting some hard data on how many calories I’m burning, how much sleep I’m getting, etc. and start tracking patterns with those data points (I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that my cycle plays havoc with my sleep patterns most months, and I’d like to confirm that with some hard data); but given the money sitch (see below), that probably won’t happen in February. Which means that I’ll just keep working on the same positive habits I have been working on.

January: Money

What worked: Nothing went too badly here, thankfully. It could have gone better, but at no point did I worry about paying for food or anything, so yeah.

What didn’t: I really need to go over my Paypal account, delete all recurring charges for things that I’m not 110% regularly using, consolidate web hosting (namely: I think I’m going to finally bite the bullet and find some way to delete hosting for two of my older sites that I’ve been keeping up, and have my web guru set up a redirect for me), and stick to using the bus instead of car2go whenever possible. I might need to set up some kind of a budgeting system…I tried to use YNAB, I really did, but it was very not-intuitive to me and having to manually enter every.single.thing is probably not something I will be able to keep up with.

Next month: Start cobbling together some savings, be extra-careful because current roommate is moving out at the end of the month, and while I have things making up for that, they won’t be in place until after all of the rent is due, so I need to do everything I can to make sure that will go smoothly. I expect debuting/promoting the self-study version of Rock Your Systems will help as it’ll be my highest priced solo-offering to date (though I’m not sure what to price it at yet, it will definitely be higher than the usual $15-20 of most of the mini-products in the shop).

January: Other

I started this section and now that it’s come time to write it…I’m drawing a blank! January overall was really pretty quiet – I intentionally was a hermit for most of the month, because I wanted to give myself time to adjust to new routines and habits and so many changes, without burning myself out. And it worked pretty well; I had a few days where I felt immensely shitty and exhausted, but for the most part, the month was pretty steady.

And that’s it for this month. See ya next month with more updates on goals/habits and progress!

Ages and ages ago, I saw a paper planner that really piqued my curiosity – I believe it was on Gala Darling‘s site. And then, I promptly forgot about it for a few years until I started wondering the other day if they were still in business, as I looked at planning tools for 2014…and hallelujah, they were! (Although it took some sleuthing to figure out exactly what their name was; I’m just glad I eventually remembered it.) 

The main problem that the Weekdate products solve is a fairly simple one: whereas there’s a “repeat weekly on Wednesdays” option in Google Calendar, if your preference is for analog products, there’s absolutely no way to get around weekly or monthly repetitions without writing the same.damn.thing over and over again. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

Enter: Weekdate. I emailed and asked if they’d be down for a review & giveaway, and they said yes, and a few days later I got a squee-inducing package in the mail from them…and here’s said review & giveaway!

(You can check out this page on their site if you want a very thorough review of how their main product works – I’m reviewing a few different things, but it’s good background if you’re curious.)

The Weekdate academic planner: 

The academic planner is a new addition to Weekdate’s offerings – it goes from September 2013 to September 2014. I’m hoping that these become a regular offering because I think I like these better than I would like an original Weekdate planner. I don’t have that many monthly tasks to keep track of, and if you’ve ever watched one of my task management review videos you know that I am a fanatic for week-at-a-glance views.

The notes section on the inside of the cover, the fact that it tells you what week of the year it is in the notes section for the specific week, the flap that works as a bookmark for the week – I love the attention to detail. There’s also monthly calendars at the back:

Kay (the owner/founder of Weekdate) did let me know that since this is a test product, the cover isn’t quite as thick as they would have liked it to be. I don’t honestly think that it would be a problem for normal wear and tear. I’m a bit rough on it though, with throwing it in my commute bag along with a billion other things, and I’ll probably buy a notebook cover or something like this to help protect it. Because it is already proving so useful that I definitely don’t want to tear it to shreds before September is up.

Perfect for you if: You don’t have that many monthly tasks or events to keep track of, but more weekly tasks/events. You like a landscape layout versus a portrait sort of layout for looking at things.

The Weekdate white:

There’s two different versions of this one: the desk reference size (8.5″x14″) and the peel and stick size (18″x24″, pictured) that goes on a wall or fridge or whatever you want it to go on, really. It works like those wall decals – I was honestly a little skeptical at first because I’ve had some really low quality wall decals that fell off at the drop of a hat, but this works well. I think the peel and stick is going to be great for my home writing nook (which is still a work in progress! posts on that coming soon); the desk reference size is fantastic for putting on a fridge with magnets or just keeping around. The dry-erased-ness is a great way to make it not quite so permanent when you write something down as a weekly or monthly event/task.

Perfect for you if: You want something to put on a wall, your weekly/monthly tasks change and you don’t want to have to keep marking them out or write them in pencil. I think the wall size is going to be especially useful for editorial calendar tracking – that will probably be its main use for me. Every blogger should have one of these! (Especially those that have repeating monthly/weekly features on their blog.)

The original Weekdate: 

The original Weekdate planner:

This is the one that made ’em famous, and that I saw ages ago that stuck in my head. Instead of laying out  landscape-wise, like the academic planner does, it lays out in a more portrait orientation that matches the layout of the Weekdate white boards. You can see more photos + a video of it in action here.

Note: Black is the only color left! So if you want to pick this one up…snag it soon.

The prizes:

Everything you need to Weekdate yourself into organizational bliss:

• A Weekdate academic planner
• A Weekdate white “peel n stick” planner (the size pictured above)
• An “I need from” pad

Want your own Weekdate? Enter the giveaway:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Note: we can only ship to the US for this giveaway – so sorry, international folks!

I’m not sure if anyone actually reads these recap posts, but, they’re going to be a monthly thing from here on out (more on that later), and I know it’d be a useful exercise for me at least to get all of this down. I’ve broken it down into the overview, and then categories for “business”, “health”, “money”, and “other”. The next post in the year-series is going to cover my 2014 goals in each of these categories, plus a brief overview of how I plan on reaching them, and then the last post in the series is going to be a massive round-up of tools, apps, techniques, and resources that I’ve found useful in taking stock of 2013/planning for 2014/doing this work overall.

(In case you’re new around here: I take the wholeee month of January to set things up for the new year, I am definitely not one of those people that can have everything planned between Christmas and New Year’s.)

Without further ado, here we go!

Overview:

2013 got off to a really strong start, and overall, was still my best year in business yet, even despite the bad things that happened. Things started to go a little off the rails about halfway through the year, in July, when I had an adverse reaction to an SSRI I’d been put on for anxiety, which actually made me borderline suicidally depressed. I couldn’t sleep, I didn’t want to eat, and I spent most of that month crying for hours every day. August consisted of getting myself off the medication that was causing that (on my own – a whole ‘nother story to be told in another, very long blog post), which meant withdrawal symptoms like migraines and hours of dry heaving and more insomnia, and I had barely got back on an even keel from that when the shit hit the fan as outlined here.

I don’t mean to sound Negative Nancy here – it could have been a lot worse. But it was still a surprisingly hard year, and I think the surprise is part of what made it so hard. The last five years have easily been the best of my life, but there have also been a lot of really big things in that time span (moving down here from Missouri and leaving everyone I’d ever known, both of my grandfathers dying, the tornado, separation and then divorce – not to mention the experiences in the relationship that lead to those decisions, which were fairly traumatizing, and that’s just hitting the huge events; there were other things, too).

After all of that, I kind of expected 2013 to be a breeze, but instead, I had a whole new host of things crop up. I almost wonder if part of the problems I ran into this last year was because I’m not very good at processing emotions, and after going through all of that, maybe I had some issues that my mind didn’t think I had fully worked through, and those problems were my way of saying to myself “woah now hold up we got shit to deal with, yo.”

I would be willing to stake everything I know that, if nothing else, the anxiety rearing its head was a function of that – I spent so, so long (years! literally years!) in blinders-on survival mode, not knowing where anything was going or how the bills would get paid or in general, what the everloving fuck was going on. And as Grace says, our shit doesn’t hit the fan then, because we know that it can’t; it’s later, once the immediate crisis is dealt with, that we collapse.

Who knows. Anyways. The year was definitely not a total wash and I have a lot of fond memories of it, but it was very, very hard, especially the last three months.

Business

Like I mentioned, this was a pretty good year for me biz-wise – the best yet, actually!

Income was split about 60/30/10 between services, products (including my book on Kindle), and classes/workshops/group work. I also had some useful-but-not-a-large-percentage income from affiliate payments and recurring payments from ads on my Youtube channel. My bestselling product was by far the planner bundle, with the client follow up action kit & the launch checklists nearly tied for second. As usual, service interest/profit slowed wayyy down around October, and stayed slow through November and December, though the 2014 planner sales helped make up for that.

My favorite things? Doing the classes and the workshops, having Rock the System hit #1 & #2 in its categories during launch (and having it get so many positive reviews both during and after launch!), and getting a guest post up at Design*Sponge. Speaking at RISE, and at the women’s business conference in Galveston.

Health

As mentioned in the overview above (and in this post), health was pretty much a clusterfuck this year. In addition to all the mental health messiness, I also had a cancer scare in May, which was extremely not fun. The anxiety striking hard in April, and then the bad reaction to the medication in July, played havoc with my appetite, which meant I lost weight that I did not want/need/mean to lose. I’ve been making a point to exercise more as part of my overall wellness plan, because I would prefer not to go back on medication after having such a horrific experience, and exercise is one of the few things proven to do better than medication at mood regulation.

That exercise, combined with my overall fairly-active-lifestyle and fast metabolism, has made it really easy to burn way more calories than I realize, and then not eat enough calories to make up for that, which comes with a whole ‘nother host of fun issues. (I didn’t realize that this was what was going on until recently when I did some math at the prompting of Jeanie, and thought, oh shit, that’s why I’m hungry all the time.) I have also struggled with insomnia and quality of sleep fairly consistently all year.

I’m still trying to figure this out, pretty much. [insert borderline hysterical laugh at how woefully inadequate that statement is] 

My favorite things? Uh. Surviving. Still being alive at the end of 2013. Gonna call that a win.

Money

Oh, money. Money, money, money. I don’t even know what to write here but I know it’s worth writing about. I have such a conflicted relationship with money, honestly – I have these awful cycles where things will go really well for a while and then either I will screw something up or there will be an incident entirely outside of my control that is disastrous to my money. I don’t know if it’s some sort of energetic hoo-hah or what but I’m pretty sick of it – I ended 2013 having wasted a lot of money on overdraft fees, with no savings (despite my best efforts throughout the year). I want to stop the two-steps-forward-one-step-back dance, once and for all.

My favorite things? I did work through some of my money blocks in 2013. I think I have honestly made progress, but I still have a ways to go, for sure.

Other

•  2014 was pretty much the first year I tried dating as an adult. It was interesting. I have a lot of hilari-awful stories as a result – one such story detailed here (and it’s not even the worst).
• I also realized that my penchant for being an asshole magnet is probably at least partially because I find sarcastic guys wildly attractive. (Let’s not talk about…whatever that says about me.) Since I am sarcastic but also a sweet person, I tend to assume that other sarcastic people are the same way. Nope. Turns out some people are just sarcastic to cover up the gaping black hole that resides where their soul should be. Whaddyaknow.
• My BFF got me hooked on Supernatural. I also rewatched Fringe, and I feel like I should have more pop culture references to make here, but I’m drawing a blank. Sorry.
• I started writing fiction again, and plan to pick it back up this year.
• I got seven more tattoos. I think I am officially “tatted up”, y’all. (New site photos will showcase at least some of them!)
• Rain continued to be my anchor – I honestly do not think I would have made it through the last two years without her. She came into my life at exactly the right moment.
• I got to visit my family three times – brother’s high school graduation, my birthday in September, and Christmas; I got to spend a lot of quality time with my Missouri BFF which is wonderful because all of these things are good for my happiness levels. I love them so much and it’s so hard (worth it, I think, but hard) to be far away form them even if I love it here in Austin. My sister also visited me for a week for her birthday in March, and that was great too, because I don’t get a lot of 1:1 time with her.

And that, ladies & gents, was my very-long-and-probably-depressing recap of 2013! Tune back in soon for the looking-ahead-at-2014 post. Which will be less depressing, I promise. Probably still long though. I’m a wordy sonofagun, can’t help it. And feel free to ask any questions if you want more details in any particular category, or if knowing more behind-the-scenes info would be useful to you.

After almost five years of working for myself, I recently went on the hunt (successfully, thankfully!) for a full time job. Lots of people were incredibly supportive. It was great. On the other hand, I also had a multiple people express disappointment, implying that I had “given up” on my business, that I was throwing away everything I had worked so hard for. (Because saying that to anyone at any point is a good idea, right?)

The truth was simply that I needed different things than (full time) entrepreneurship can offer me right now. But expressing that was usually met with more argument. Which was frustrating, silencing, and entirely unhelpful for all parties involved.

The main motives behind looking at jobs were two things: stability and community. There were (and are) other motives (less pressure on making creative projects pay off quickly, wanting to learn about business from a different perspective). Either way; stability and community weren’t wants. They were my needs, and they were being pooh-poohed. I was repeatedly assured that no, I really could get those things from entrepreneurship, I just wasn’t trying hard enough. (And hearing that when you’re already down in the dumps is just a fucking party, let me tell you!)

Let’s talk about stability, since that’s the key one.

I’ve struggled with anxiety off and on for several years now, but this year has been a true mental health rollercoaster. I had, if not an actual nervous breakdown, pretty damn close to one, I went on anxiety medication, and then I had an awful reaction to said medication that left me borderline suicidally depressed for a solid month before I figured out what was going on and stopped medication. (On my own, because the doctor I saw thought I was a junkie and refused to help. Migraines and withdrawal symptoms on top of an emotional rollercoaster are tons of fun!)

I had barely stopped reeling from that when I spoke at a conference, moved, and then visited my family for a week, all within the same month. I got back and spiraled into depression.

Anxiety, I know how to handle. It’s not what I would call fun, but with practice I’ve become quite adept at channeling it into some disfigured cousin of manic productivity.

Depression however, despite my family history, has never been something I’ve really struggled with aside from medication wreaking havoc on my brain chemistry (previous to this year, my other main run in with depression was caused by hormonal birth control). I don’t know how to deal with it. I vacillated between trying to be not-home as much as possible (because when I was alone I felt terrible and if I was with friends at least I had something to distract me) and spending days at a time trying to stop feeling so terrible by numbing out to Netflix (surprisingly ineffective!). I didn’t have a reason to leave the house unless I specifically created one, so I mostly didn’t.

Not to put too fine a point on it, it sucked. I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until, towards the end, I realized that I straight up did not remember most of October. Aside from those social incidents where I dragged myself out of the house and made myself be around people, most of the month is a big gray hole in my memory. What’s even more disconcerting is that I had actually realized that a week or two before…and I was still in the throes of depression, so I didn’t care.

I thought “I don’t remember this month. That’s weird.” in the same sort of bland mental tone you would use to make a note to self to pick up more eggs at the supermarket.

I had already been looking at jobs to some extent, because even before I realized how bad it was I knew something was not quite right, and that was a huge wake up call. Given my family history and my predisposition to anxiety, I had to consider the very real notion that this might not be the last time depression rears its head for me, even outside of medication influencing things. I had to make some kind of plan for if that happened again, a plan that involved interacting with people on a very regular basis, a plan that involved having a reason to get out of bed that didn’t rely on internal motivation, a plan that created some sort of structure for my life that was not self-imposed (and thus, a structure that can’t fall apart when I do).

I could entirely revamp my business model to solve those problems (and I’m still not sure how I’d solve the daily face-to-face interaction one), while hustling my ass off to make it profitable, while pulling myself out of depression and trying to take care of myself mentally, while also ignoring most of the different creative directions I want to go in. (Because of course, you can’t freely experiment when you have to pay the rent.)

Or I could get a job, and work with a team that I love, and learn about business from an entirely new perspective (because lawd knows I don’t know it all!), and get that stability and routine and structure that I craved.

The choice was obvious to me, but still disappointing and “giving up” to others.

We don’t talk about it. In our society in general, we don’t talk about what it’s like to struggle on a daily basis with depression or anxiety, or the maze that is navigating medication (receiving it and dealing with the side effects of it and deciding on your own without bias whether it’s the right choice for you), or any of the host of other things that come with knowing your brain chemistry can and very well might turn on you at any given moment.

Entrepreneurs, specifically, don’t tend to talk about how lonely and stressful it can be to run your business, even when you’re on a relatively even keel. We sure as shit don’t often discuss how difficult it can be when you’re having a hard time getting out of bed or can’t sleep at night for all the awful scenarios running through your head and the noise of your heart beating far too fast.

It’s symptomatic of larger issues with mental health in our culture, to be sure. But it seems as though entrepreneurs, with our emphasis on “go it alone” and “self reliance” and “bootstrapping”, are especially likely to fall into unhealthy traps. And it leaves those of us who do struggle with anxiety and depression stuck between a rock and a hard place. Where do we go to talk about it? Where do we express our need for security, for safety, for stability, without being told to STFU and get out of the game? Where is our safe space as entrepreneurs struggling with mental health issues?

It doesn’t help that we’re all so stuck on the idea of selling everyone else on entrepreneurship. We want others to know it’s a viable choice, a good alternative to being at a job you can’t stand, that we aren’t being irresponsible and selfish by being entrepreneurs. That obsession with selling everyone can mean that anyone who doesn’t have a unicorn-farts-and-rainbows experience gets shushed or shunned.

I don’t know what the answer is and I don’t have a neat way to tie up this post. I wish I did. But we do need to talk about it. With this new generation of entrepreneurs, we have an opportunity to create a newer, healthier paradigm, and we should take it with both hands instead of letting stigma and outmoded ways of thinking dictate our thoughts and behaviors.

IT’S FINALLY UP. I’ve only been trying to get this going since, uh, March.

Listen to Shenee and I jam on an awkward story of a major OKCupid faux pas, with the booze part starting at 10:23, I upend the bottle of rum into my drink at 11:46 (let’s be fair there wasn’t that much left though), business comes at 13:18, with us mostly talking about failure and pivoting.

My favorite part:

Me: I’m not saying get into a bar fight…

Shenee: That would have been cool though.

Me: Yeah. That would have been cool.

Shenee, looking at the camera: We don’t condone violence, though.

Me: …I have get in a bar fight on my bucket list.

(The maintenance dude came to fix my toilet right as I was wrapping up the video. Whoops!) 

Improvely is my favorite analytics tool I’ve tried so far, and I cover how/why it’s super useful in the video above. Here’s a quick breakdown:

Price: $29/month for the freelancer plan (which should suit most needs)

Features + usefulness: 

• integrates with WooCommerce and WordPress
• easy to view statistics
• ability to track conversions (including email list signups)
• which lets you track results of paid advertising…
• and results of guest posts
• so that you can easily see where your efforts are paying off & focus on those higher leverage areas!

Also.

It’s my birthday on Saturday!

And to celebrate I’m doing five days of Rock the System being free, starting today. In case you don’t know, Rock the System is my bestselling and it’s geared especially towards creative business owners who usually shy away from systems-based information. It will help you bring in more clients, take better care of the ones you have, and generally get more shit done. Whether you’re a freelance writer, a graphic designer, a life coach, or any other creative entrepreneur with an online business, you’ll find the resources you need inside Rock the System so that you can get your work done and have fun.

If you’ve already picked it up, want to help me spread the word? Think of it as your birthday present to me. 😉

Notes:

Contactually has several incredibly useful features & it’s actually my favorite CRM tool to recommend to service-based business owners. Here’s why:

• Built in email templates let you check in with colleagues on a regular basis or with previous customers/clients without having to reinvent the wheel every time
• There’s also nifty features for sharing content (which you can save with a bookmarklet) or doing introductions (which I’ve done a few times & it works well)
• You can set different follow up times for different buckets; for example, two weeks for leads, 30 days for customers, 60 days for previous clients
• Pulls information from email, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn so that you can see where and when you last interacted, and what was said
• Gives you follow up suggestions based on your bucket rules
• Several different integrations including Do, Salesforce, and Mailchimp
• Robust search tools let you search by  bucket, tag, location or more options
• …and then you can send messages to several people at once, while still customizing them for each individual person
• I just found out about the new Programs feature which looks amazing and like it has a lot of potential – I didn’t feature it in the video but I’m definitely going to be looking at it more!

Price: Starts at $20/month/user, goes up to $100/month/user (I’m on the medium plan which is $40/month/user), all with free trials; there’s also a basic free plan

Apps: Web, iPhone, Android

Come join the free webinar!

I’m cohosting a free webinar with the Contactually peeps next week: Make More Cash With Effective Client Follow-Up. It’s totally free and it’s going to show you how you can set up client follow up systems inside Contactually, so that you can keep making your previous customers happy & make more moolah without having to go out and find new clients + customers constantly. Next Tuesday & even if you can’t make it live, you’ll get a recording! Sign up here.

(some eternal productivity wisdom via Ron Swanson of Parks & Rec)

One of my repeated lessons this year (I know I’m a stubborn student but I think I’ve finally learned it, let’s all cross our fingers) is that I have a touch of a tendency to overload myself.

Here’s what was on my docket for September: 

• a two day trip for a business conference I’m speaking at
• moving two days after getting back from that
• visiting my family for a week for my birthday not even two full weeks after moving
• doing a free Kindle promotion for my birthday for Rock the System
• the planning workshop (both doing it, and promoting/marketing it)
• getting everything set up for the Kickstarter to turn my planners into physical products, so that it could run in October

All of this in the wake of/at the tail end of (though I’m almost out of the woods – *knock on wood*) a two-month-long medical drama. (But not the good kind, like House. I am still processing and will probably write about it soon, though maybe not here – I haven’t figured out the best venue for that, yet.)

Are your eyes bugged out yet? Yeah. Mine are too, in retrospect.

Last week, on a call with my mentor, I laid all of that out and said that I wasn’t sure how to get all of it done while staying focused in any way.

She listened – which was probably a stressful experience in and of itself because lawd knows the worse I’m feeling the faster I talk – and then said (roughly paraphrased):

Michelle, what I ask myself is: “Have I got so much going on that I have to half-ass anything?” And if the answer is yes, then I take something off my plate.

Cue the angel song.

It’s such a simple question, but it makes things so clear – and it strikes really close to home for me.

One of the reasons – the main reason, really – that I am so big on systems and planning is that because taking care of those things frees up your mind so that you can create truly great things in your business, blow your customer’s & client’s minds in the best way possible, and fulfill your potential as a creator & biz owner.

I have incredibly high standards for myself (clearly) and I don’t necessarily hold other people up to those high standards (or I would probably not have any friends at all), but those high standards are a result of my deep-seated drive to do great work.

There’s a reason that this manifesto hangs over my work desk – the last two words on it are “be indelible”, which is something that rings so true for me it’s probably going to be my left foot tattoo to match this one.

In case you’re wondering, the dictionary definition of “indelible” is:

1. making marks that cannot be erased, removed, or the like
2. that cannot be eliminated, forgotten, changed, or the like

That, ladies and gentlemen, is why I’m here. And it’s why you’re here too.

To be indelible. To leave a mark. To be so good they can’t ignore you. To change peoples’ lives for the better. We’re here for a reason, and when doing work worthy of that reason, there’s no room for half-assing.

Which is to say: 

• I decided to chill the fuck out and cut myself some slack
• The Kickstarter is now going to run in November
• I’m still gonna do the free birthday promo for Rock the System but I’m not going to stress over it

All of that lets me show up fully for my clients and to put as much love + attention + time as I want into the planning workshop. And you know, gives me some room to breathe, which is important considering the massive clusterfuck my poor body has had to deal with in the last 2-3 months. If I’m too busy not sleeping enough to function because I’ve overloaded myself and am working so hard I’m letting my self-care systems slip, then nobody gets to experience my great work, they just get to experience the wildly frustrating experience of talking to Incoherent Insomniac Michelle. (She’s like Dream House Barbie but with even longer pauses between sentences and with more under-eye circles. Also, crankier.)

So now I’m going to turn the question on you: 

Are you trying to do so much you’re going to have to half-ass something?

And if so…what are you gonna do about it? Like, today. Right now. Make a decision. Follow through. I believe in you & I know you can do it.

PS: Like I said – one of the reasons I teach planning and systematizing is because taking care of those things frees up a huge amount of your time + space + energy to focus on your great work. If you’re currently on the hamster wheel of doing things but not moving (which is not conducive to getting important things done), and you want to get off, then check out the one day planning & systems workshop. Runs on the 20th. Five seats only. Hit me up if you have any questions. 

Getting referrals is every business owner’s wet dream. More clients and customers, without you having to actively beat the pavement looking for them? Yes, please. The problem that a lot of people run into is that they have no idea what to actually do to get referrals, so they just kind of put something like “get more referrals” in their marketing plan and then – shock – nothing happens.

Set up your client & customer follow up systems!

Why the exclamation point? Because this is super effing important and so many people are totally lacking it. If you have talked to me, worked with me, heard me talk on a call or webinar, or interacted with me in almost any way, you’ve probably heard me go on and on about this, but for good stinkin’ reason. People who have already worked with you or bought your products and enjoyed the experience are much more likely to become repeat customers, given a chance, than a random person off the street is likely to become a customer. If you don’t have these systems set up, you’re pretty much actively hemorrhaging money. 

Here’s the basic steps for setting up these systems & sticking with them: 

1. Choose a way to keep your client/customer information organized, and get all of the current information from your past customers/clients in there. My tool of choice for this is Contactually, but there are other options out there (Ming.ly, Batchbook, and Salesforce are three other popular options).
2. Make sure you’ve created a way to update the tool you’re using regularly, so that you don’t have to go through and do a massive backlog once every six months.
3. Decide how often you want to keep in touch with your clients and customers, and create a template for each touch-point (that can be easily customized for them – you don’t want to send canned, douchey emails).
4. Bonus points: create special discounts or service packages available only to previous clients/customers.
5. And then just get in the habit of using your system!

(If you want a more in depth resource on this, check out the Client Follow Up Action Kit.)

Consider implementing a client referral system

This isn’t something I’ve done myself for my business, as I feel like it can be tricky to navigate in a way that doesn’t come off as “Your money was great! Get your friends to give me money, and I’ll give you money!” (say it in a cheesy used-car-salesman voice, it’s better that way).

But that’s why I snagged some resources for you: 

• How to get customer referrals, via Inc.
• Straight talk about word of mouth marketing, via Forbes
• Why customer referrals can drive stunning profits, via Harvard Business Review (it cites the same German study as the Forbes article, but gets more specific about different aspects of the study)

Provide kickass service (both before, during, and after money changes hands)

This is super basic, and I’m sure you’re already doing your best to do this – but it bears saying anyways: if you’re trying to get more referrals, the best way to do that is to create an experience that people can’t help but tell others about. 

Here’s a few places you can start systematizing that will help make things even more amazing for you + your client, and let you focus on creating a rave-worthy experience that they’ll want to tell everyone about:

• Create customer service policies (a refund policy is a good place to start) and email templates for frequently asked questions, and make sure everyone on your team is aware of them
• Create systems for your services so that they go as smooth as possible for both you and the client
• Make sure that everything on the back-end – payment, intake questionnaires, any technical bits of your services – is set up to function automatically, if possible, and if not, that everyone on your team knows how to fix it if something goes wrong.

This post is part of the monthly Word Carnival series of posts. This month, our carnies tackle the topic of  business referrals, why you want them, how to get them and everything else you’ll need to know to propel your business forward! Check out more of the Word Carnival series here.