How to Lose All Enthusiasm For Everything Fun
I lost my way a little over the last year and a half. The unstable economy, paired with a frighteningly slow patch, does funny things to a business owner.
My previous rule of thumb was to share work-related content online about 25% of the time. This quickly ramped up to almost 100% of the time. Yawn!
Don’t get me wrong, I love my businesses, but not enough for either of them to sustain my personal creative interests. This notion, however, seems to have been buried amongst the worry of where the next invoice payment was coming from.
As a result, all of the passion projects and pursuits that fuel my mental well-being were abruptly concluded. This way, there’ll be more time to work on the business. Your mental health can just go fuck itself for a while. I’m sure it won’t mind.
It (the mind) does mind
Somewhere, between a year and a year and a half of acting like a respectable, consistent business owner, I realised two things.
It wasn’t much fun
It didn’t work
None of my clients or customers find me as a result of anything I post on social media. Nothing I say or do (this hasn’t been tested to the extremes) has any effect on what I earn.
Paired with the fact that my soul had long departed its vessel on the hunt for some excitement, I almost instantly flipped the switcharoo back to the fun times. Come back, lost spirit. We have some catching up to do.
Things I’d lost all motivation for
Photography
Travel and exploring
Art and design
Music
Things I’m enjoying again
Photography
Travel and exploring
Art and design
Music
The old balance is the new balance
More fun shit. Less boring shit. You can’t say fairer than that. Photography, exploring, and adventures keep me sane. They allow for a mindful escape from the business to focus on absolutely anything I fancy.
This practice isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a must-have. I don’t function properly without it, which can then, in turn, affect all sorts of other life aspects.
Work, of course, pays the bills, so I’m not in any way disregarding the importance of keeping the momentum rolling. From a marketing perspective, I’m leaning more into what works (SEO), rather than sharing content on my personal profiles.
Work/life balance. It’s a tricky one, isn’t it?
