Troubles of an Entrepreneur

ohmygodimdrowning.

Yesterday, with Ruby as my co-pilot, we made the drive back to San Francisco. Trips to LA are a love-hate for me...I hate them because they throw my entire life and routine off, and it takes me almost a week to get back into my groove. I love them also, because I have this "threshold of busyness" that I need to hit until I can be productive. Like, if I have 4 things to do on my to do list, I literally will do none of them. I will parooze Buzzfeed and chat on G-chat all day long. But if I have 76,59478,435 things on  my to do list....I WILL DO THEM ALL. It's like a bat signal or something. I see the list calling out me saying "Jenni... we need you!"And I grab my cape and get to work.

    

I'm bascially like a combination of these two. I feel like a chic superhero...I just probably look a little more like that guy.


Something about LA puts me over that threshold. I think it's mostly because I'm working on my cookbook project (more on that later I promise), so everything else largely goes on hold. When I get home from the week, I have a shit-ton of cookbook materials to get recorded, processed, practiced, finalized and photographed...on top of my day job. So, it majorly puts me over the busy threshold, and I DO ALL THE THINGS!

I love days like today. I started working at 8:30am (which is early for San Fran start ups. Most don't get going until 10am). My husband worked from home, and I don't think we said two words to each other all day long. Just clicking of keys with the occasional "Hey can you come look at this when you have a stopping point?"

I wish everyday was like that.

But sadly, owning my own marketing company and working alone....most days are NOT like this.

Most days the engine is cold. And it takes a lot of effort to warm the pistons and get the cylinders going (I really have no idea how a car works. In fact, I just googled "how does an engine work" just to come up with some terms that didn't make me look stupid. Here's the video I found. You're welcome).

But what I'm trying to say is that I am better on a team. I love the feeling of momentum. I LOVE MEETINGS. I love coming in in the morning, chatting with the receptionist, grabbing my coffee, talking about my weekend, and asking other people about their lunch plans.

And I have realized, that in an office, all of these things help you to "fane busyness." They are things that you do, and they help you feel like you are working. They make you feel like you have a place to be and things to do. And this in turn, rolls right into your email inbox, your Power Point decks, your proposals, and your design. They get the ball moving.

I DON'T HAVE THAT ANYMORE AND IT IS SO HARD.

I don't get to pretend that I am so busy, and have buffer meetings to get the momentum up. It's just me and my computer every morning.

I stare at it. It stares back at me.

I make some coffee, and sit at my desk. I pump my hands, and look at some great design work to get me inspired to dive into whatever I've got to layout that day.

Somehow an hour later, I'm on Buzzfeed, wondering how the hell I got there. I'm like this kid:

But here is the funny thing. Most days, I get just as much, IF NOT MORE productive stuff finished when compared to when I worked in an office.

It just doesn't always feel that way.

It's easy for me to sit at my desk and look at the mounting sack of work, and feel like "I did not thing to make this smaller...and it's 5:55pm and somehow I am still in my pajamas."

But when I'm objective about it, lots of the things that used to make me "feel productive" weren't necessarily progress. They were busyness. Those things are different.

Getting coffee wasn't working. Grabbing a juice with a co-worker and talking about an upcoming project feels like working, but it's not actually sitting at the grindstone and hammering shit out.

I think that's the hardest part for me. As a part time writer/marketer/cookbook creator (I literally laugh when I write that) I don't have a buffer. It's me and the work all day long. And if the inspiration doesn't come, the room is silent enough to feel the loneliness.

I've been at this since October, and I have learned a few things along the way. I think it does help me to learn the patterns that make me feel successful. I got an office a few weeks ago, and that helps a million things. But even still, it has not solved all of the problems.

I have had to learn the other things just through experience: I have learned to not question when my inspiration comes, but to work as long as I can when it hits. I have learned that I am usually a genius after 4pm. Most of the morning is slow and comes in pieces. But if I grab a glass of wine around 4pm, I can design the world away and it will be 9:30 before I even realize it's gotten dark. I've learned that I have to try to let the unproductive days go. It's easy to feel guilty that I wasted a day, and that I should be grateful and hardworking at my passions, especially because not everyone gets the chance to try their hand at what they love, no strings attached (my husband really deserves a medal for how much he encourages me to be brave even if I totally fail).

But it's hard not to beat myself up. It's hard not to feel some days that everyone else is rushing off to job with their business cards and their important titles, and their meetins, and here I am, struggling to make the scraps of ideas in InDesign turn into something I'm proud of.

It can be rough.

So I'm grateful for days like today, where I have gotten a completely uninterrupted 9+ hours of work in. I have inspiration, and Ive made progress. Sometimes I really appreciate the perspective that "Objective Jenni" can give to "Drowning Jenni."

When she can pull on her cape and say, "Not all busyness is productive. And you're not going to win everyday. But you're working on something that means more to you than just a job. So even if it feels like you're going no where, get back to the grindstone, put on some music that gets you motivated, and WORK."

Oh, and for the record. I've been listening to this one on repeat all day. Something about this one makes me feel like no matter how behind I am, I have a chance of making a dent.

Kisses,

-J