Good Morning!
I hope you all had a fantastic weekend! Firstly I'd like to make a huge apology for the sporadic nature of blog posts over the last week. It has been an incredibly stressful week here and I'm afraid that the blog becomes unfortunately the last priority when I have clients orders to finish and get to them on schedule as well as personal stuff to deal with.
And that brings me onto today's post ...
At the beginning of last week, on the last day of our holiday we received bad news from our letting agent to say that our landlord, after agreeing to let us have a long term contract on the house we had fallen in love with when looking for places to move to in Devon, had now decided to consider accepting an offer from a potential buyer on the property.
Now I know this isn't the worse news ever .. no one had died or was ill ... but it turned what would have been an exceptionally busy week anyway, catching up with work after a holiday and starting work on three new stationery orders which I had booked in and needed to complete by the end of the week, into a horrendous week in which I was trying to concentrate on work when all I could think about was where we were going to live next month! I was up until god knows what time in the morning most nights finishing off stationery orders because I had had to go and look at other houses in the evening, or needed to ring our letting agent during the day.
It got to the stage where on Thursday, during a driving lesson I had already got booked in and couldn't cancel, I broke down in tears on my poor driving instructor after failing miserably to parallel park!
Fortunately we had the really good news on Saturday that the offer our landlord was thinking about accepting had fallen through and the letting agent was definitely going to be drawing up a long term contract for us this week. To say I was relieved was an understatement!
This all got me thinking though about how I deal with pressure and stress and how, as someone running their own business, how not to let personal issues get in the way of work.
I think weeks like last week will always happen and in those sorts of situations the only thing to do is to do everything and stay up late till its done. However on a normal week to week basis I do think that the work / personal balance just isn't right sometimes and I need to set aside set times during the day to deal with any personal issues that might get in the way of work.
I'd love to hear about how any other small business owners out there deal with this and perhaps we can all help each other out in staying a little more relaxed!
Nikki x
Hi Nikki,
ReplyDeleteI can certainly agree it can be difficult to balance your work life and personal life without digging yourself a hole. Im only 26 and worry that I'm not socialising enough and giving more time to my fiancé but one thing I have is a very understanding fiancé who helps when he can and just let's me get on with it.. I've always been a hard 'grafter' and thrive on work. I'm happy to hear your staying where you are! I rent and it's always a worry of mine.
Great post xx
Thanks for the lovely comment Nat! My other is incredibly understanding as well which helps enormously and he's been an absolute star this last week :)
DeleteHi, your comments on work life balance ring a bell with me, especially the late nights trying to get work done. I have two children at school, so generally we manage okay most of the time,with a lot of organisation, but there are busy weeks when things can fall apart a bit. I think you just have to do your best, put in the extra hours when you need to and don't beat yourself up over it. I appreciate how stressful the house situation must have been and I'm glad it's sorted out for you.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ruth ... great advice .. precisley what my other half says :)
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