Yeah, so…. it’s been a while. Again.
Have you ever had one of those moments where you convince yourself that you don’t have enough time for everything and something has to give? Yep, so that happened with blogging for me – again!
In 2018 I did a grand total of 5, FIVE blog posts.
So let’s just fast forward into 2019 and pretend that for blogging purposes 2018 didn’t exist.
I’ve recently been getting into listening to podcasts when I do gardening or go for a walk by myself. One of the podcasts I listened too last week really resonated with me. The podcast was titled “Investing in your identities” by Gretchen Rubin (The Happiness Project author).
This is something I’ve been thinking about for a while now but didn’t really know how to put it into words, until I listened to this podcast and everything just clicked. It was one of those “a-ha” moments where I was like “that’s it, that’s what the problem is and now I know what I need to do”.
Essentially Gretchen talks about how we all have a number of different ‘identities’ at any one time and we need to invest in more than one of them, in different categories of our life so we can keep balanced.
When Gretchen refers to ‘investing’ in your identities, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to spend money. Your time is just as big (if not bigger) of an investment since once time is gone you can\’t get it back.
I went into the office and started writing down some of my ‘identities’ including ones that had fallen by the way-side so I could really take a quick glance at where my priorities were and what and where I needed to shift gears a bit.
My list looked something like this (in no particular order with similar things grouped together):
- Partner, Daughter, Sister, Friend
- Powerlifter
- Personal Trainer, Bootcamp Instructor, Powerlifting Coach
- Accountant
- Blogger *
- Novice Gardener (Only recently had the * removed)
- Scrapbooker *
- Scentsy Consultant *
- Social Media Person (Marketer, I guess for lack of better word) *
- Recipe Creator *
- Traveller
The items with * beside them have fallen to the way side in-lieu of some of the things without * beside them. If you take into account the fact that the accounting work I have been doing recently is all powerlifting related, there isn’t a lot else going on at the moment.
Whilst there isn’t an issue with focusing on certain parts of your identity at certain times in your life as often these things come with ebbs and flows, the troubles arise when too many of your identities fall into the same bucket so to speak.
Over the past year or so for me a lot of things have revolved around many different aspects of powerlifting, not jut competing. I now coach athletes, am the NZPF Treasurer, co-started a new association (WCPA) and am now the Secretary for that association along with dealing with e-mails and some of the social media and e-mail side of things.
I’ve known for a while now that some of the powerlifting related stuff was just getting to be a bit much for lack of better words. It’s not that there is that much work to do (now that the association is up and running!) or that it\’s that strenuous, it\’s more than when there is an issue or drama in one or more of those areas all the other identities that tie into it kind of get dragged down a little bit.
So whilst doing lots of powerlifting related things isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself, when other things that I enjoy get tossed aside and then things get stressful in the powerlifting related arena there isn’t lot of things that bring me happiness to fall back on.
I’m using powerlifting as an example but it can ring true for anything in YOUR life. When a lot of your identities fall into the same category, when life hands you ups and downs in those categories it can make you wonder what the point is and where the happiness lies.
I’ve been wanting to get back into blogging for a while now but I had told myself the story that the part of blogging that I really enjoyed was the recipe creation and since I’m constantly watching what I”m eating I can’t create things anymore – yes a story. I can still create things, I just have to have some self-control and can’t eat them all.
I’ve been purchasing scrapbooking related items when I see them on sale but have not sat down and completed a scrapbook in a VERY long time – I plan to do one when we get back from our Europe Trip (yeah, so we’re going to Europe!)
The social media side of things largely relates to social media for our businesses (Wanganui Bootcamp, Wanganui Barbell, Scentsy, WCPA) and includes things like newsletters as well and while I have been doing a bit of this it hasn’t been structured. Whilst it comes under the umbrella of ‘work’ I do enjoy it when I sit down with a few uninterrupted hours and schedule out a whole lot of social media posts and newsletters etc.
In the Partner, Daughter, Sister, Friend category I had let a few things slip which I have realised and am making more of an effort on in some parts.
I’ve also been self-employed for all of 2019 which theoretically should give me more time to do some of these things but I’ve prioritised or spent too much time on some of the wrong things. I wanted to write this post to get back into the groove of writing again, because sometimes just getting started is the hardest part. I also wanted to write this post so I can look back on it and try to remember to have a more balanced investment of both my time and money in the future.
So, what are your identities and categories of identities and where are you investing too much or not enough time or money???