Permission to Do Less

Hi guys! I’m coming at your from the airport en route to Los Angeles. After the arctic freeze we’ve been experiencing in New York I am oh so excited for 10 days of warmth and sunshine.

My best friend from college, David, lives in LA. He’s the reason I go out there every chance I get. David is turning 30 this month! I knew I couldn’t miss out on the big birthday extravaganza and a chance to spend some quality time together.

I don’t have a ton planned as of right now — I’m 99.9% sure we’ll end up at Disneyland. I’ll probably hit-up Training Mate a few times and all my favorite restaurants. Other than that I’m just excited for some warmth, relaxation, and time with David.

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I feel like things have been very go-go-go since September. In my head I kept telling myself Oh I’ll catch up during winter break. In my head I had these HUGE plans for the break. Clean my closet. Reorganize my pantry. Switch up some of the graphics on old blog posts.

None of that has happened. I should have known better than to set these big goals for break. Not having homework the past few weeks has certainly been nice. But over the holiday weeks I ended up subbing A LOT of classes at CorePower. Which was great — hello, money! And it was fun to teach some afternoon and evening classes. BUT it also meant I was on-the-go and tired during those weeks.

It’s not like I’ve been sitting around my apartment all break twiddling my thumbs. But I also got hit with this guilt bomb that I should be doing more.

The same guilt bomb hit me yesterday as I was getting ready to head out of town today.

Flight essentials: books, notebooks, headphones and lugging my camera so my LA instagram husband can take ALL the photos.

I had this long, sprawling to-do list of all the things I wanted to get done before leaving. Podcast episodes I wanted to edit and queue up. Blog posts I wanted to write and schedule. And of course a desperately needed pedicure…

Some of it got done. But most of it didn’t.

I do this to myself before every vacation. Set ridiculously high expectations of all the work I want to get done. Spend the day before vacation stressed to the max trying to make it happen.

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Over the weekend I attended a restorative yoga teacher training. I’ll do a full recap post soon, but for now I’ll leave you with this:

We talked a lot about how in 2018 we calculate our worthiness based on productivity. How busy can you be? How much can you get done? What can you cram pack into a day? This hit home for me. Big time.

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It’s hard. I feel like I should always be working because there is so much I want to accomplish. I want to grow my little blogging business. Produce a well-crafted podcast. Teach the best yoga sculpt class I can [with a bombass playlist, of course]. Create huge, energizing events for Holistic Happening. And figure out how to make this whole work for yourself thang a reality.

There’s always more I can be doing. And that guilt bomb strikes that maybe if I would’ve worked a little harder, a little bit more I’d be more successful [AKA profitable].

But the truth is, that’s not necessarily the case. Working more does not mean more success. And it certainly doesn’t mean anything about my self-worth. Working more sometimes just means burning yourself out. Considering I’m dealing with my second round of sickness this month, I’d say my body is at it’s limit.

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So, this is me giving myself permission to do less. Permission to enjoy my vacation and not spend it worrying about getting fresh content up on the blog and social media [you bet I’ll be following my vacation rules]. Permission to not always be working during every free second I have during the day.

I don’t need to do ALL the things. And okay, this is SO much easier said than done. But maybe if I put this in writing I’ll actually stick to my word.