In Pursuit Of My Career Xanadu
A Day In The Life Of A Budding Entrepreneur
Dear Dournal,
Is it okay if I call you that? Diary is so…Laura Palmer. A little too much teenage emotional dump. "Journal" is a bit too “adventurer with jodhpurs in a tent with ancient parchment texts strewn about.” You are really both and neither so I am hoping this will work for now.
Speaking of adventurers…Dournal, do you know how forking hard it is to pursue a second career in parallel with your day job? Really forking hard, is the answer. I have two full-time professions right now! It’s insane! I have no idea how I fit it all in. 🥴
Take today, for example. This morning I got up at 5:30 a.m. Even though I am one of those “morning people,” it was a hard wake up. I stayed up waaay too late last night putting together some graphics in Canva to promote Where The Hell Is My Bacon? 🥓 I have to be careful about that. Sleep is important. 💤
I got dressed right away, gave Samson some love, then took my sweet old boy for a walk around the neighborhood before his breakfast. 🦮
🚶🏻♀️These walks are as much for me as for him. I need them to get energized. We wandered for about a half-hour, me enjoying the smells of spring while Sammy socialized via other dogs’ pee. Thank Minerva I remembered to bring the poop bags this time 💩. So sorry for last week Ed and Linda…I hope the rain took care of it.
Sammy was plenty hungry when we returned so I got him fed, then pulled out a bag of coffee beans from the cupboard and started my French Press ritual. ☕️
I have admittedly become a bit of a coffee snob. I’ll take my local grind in a French Press any day of the week and I’ll never complain about the time it takes to prepare. I remember my grandparents with their massive cans of instant Taster’s Choice and Maxwell House. Icky.
⌚️ Anyway, soon it was almost 7 o’clock and I hadn’t even started working on anything. I don’t pray but I did pray that the caffeine in my Ethiopian blend would kick in quickly. 🙏
As soon as I sat down at my writing desk, I had to stop myself from going right to LinkedIn. I need to focus on the book. Progress has been slow on Aunt Frannie and the She-Shed Itch lately, and I’ve gotten a little behind. It’s my first novel and I am still very excited, but damn. My head has gone totally wonky trying to keep the plot together. 🤯
It got so bad that I had to step back a bit. Last week I stopped all editing and spent some quality time organizing Aunt Frannie (aka, best-seller in the making…throwing it out to the Universe!). I fleshed out my chapter plan, which until then was haphazard at best. In doing so, I uncovered a storyline gap to the tune of FOUR ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS (yes, Dournal, you heard me right). But that’s okay. I will deal. At least my head is not so wonky anymore. 🤪
✔️ Mental note to plan my next book more thoroughly. The brain does not do “sketchy” very well.
⏱ I set a timer for 30 minutes and started typing. It felt good making some progress on the book. Then it was onto other things. I still gotta build that brand, right? Sigh. It’s fun, yet exhausting. But no time to go toddler-temper-tantrum about things. I put on my big-girl pants and went onto the next task.
📹 🖊🥓 I spent the next forty minutes (give or take) on social media content. I had a great idea for a #hoodie2shoes video about organization and it turned out pretty well (I wore the babushka this time; it’s starting to grow on me). It only took three attempts, which might be a personal best for me. I have so many blooper reels I really should put together a compilation like Fiona Thompson did that one time. That was hilarious.
Once the video was done, I finished captioning with only minimal editing (thank you MixCaptions for not calling me “Betty Anne Campbell” or “about in the Kimble” this time).
I swear, sometimes that app is almost as bad as my iPhone autocorrect. How can it get “babushka” correct every single time, but continually screw up “Beth Anne?” A mystery I will never solve, I suppose. 🔎🕵🏻♀️
The social media upkeep is madness, Dournal. But as my mother used to say (while yanking my long hair to get out the snaggles): You must suffer to be beautiful. I guess that applies on some level to promotion, branding, and sales as well. Thanks, Mom. 💇🏻♀️
I was on a roll getting some future content lined up when all of a sudden…SHIT! It was time to start my consultant job 👩🏻💻. WTF? I feel like I barely got started with my other stuff. Maybe I should get up earlier.
As if the pursuit of My Career Xanadu isn’t hectic enough…holy Hannah! The consulting career can be a multitasking nightmare. 🚫 Multitasking is a myth, did you know that, Dournal? It is. Anyone who says otherwise is either insane or an alien from another galaxy and someone should call Scully and Mulder. 👽
I try to compartmentalize my professions but still, I often ask myself: Is my day job separate from—or, is it undeniably linked to—My Career Xanadu? The answer is, it is both.
💻 My day job is just that. It’s what I do during normal business hours, what I have done for two decades. Project Manager, IT Team Lead, Getter of Shit Done.
My Career Xanadu is my personal version of an 80s roller-rink/nightclub that mixes 40s swing music with rock & roll. 🎺🌈🎸
Yet as different as they are, they are also very similar. You know my mantra, Dournal: You get all of me or you get none of me. So sometimes My Career Xanadu creeps into my consulting job. And my twenty years in corporate America has most definitely shown its face—the good girl, the bad girl, and the ugly bitch—in my off-hours work.
As they say, I yam what I yam.
😳 But am I also a nutjob for pursuing books 📚 and podcasts 🎤 and branding and all this other stuff when I already have a crazy-busy day job? Perhaps. The day job is pretty hectic. Last week I plumb forgot what meeting I was in.
Managing projects, helping lead a team, proposals, onboarding, resourcing, timesheets, emails 📩 (OH, THE HUMANITY!), meetings (don’t even get me started), phone calls 📞, instant messages (stop the insanity!), zoom calls, lunch...
HAHAHA! 🥪 Lunch! OMG, my belly hurts from laughing. Give me a moment. As if. 🤣
Where was I? Oh, yes…clients, innovation, semi-crises, full-on crises, website, collaboration, conference calls, communication, and all the other crazy shit that comes up until BOOM! 💣
🍃 Excuse me. I need to step outside and take a few deep breaths of fresh air. It’s exhausting just THINKING about it! How do I get all of that done between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m.?
Being busy is probably a blessing in disguise because if I ever stopped for a moment to process all of the things I have to work on AFTER my day job is done, I would probably curl up in the corner under my desk rocking back and forth with my 👍 in my mouth. I would certainly consume SIGNIFICANTLY more chocolate. 🍫
🕰 Sometimes I don’t even know what time it is. Lucky for me Sammy will remind me when I need to step away from the day-job workstation. That boy has an afternoon feeding clock I could set my watch by.
I’m glad for the reprieve though. After he is fed, I get to sit on the front porch for a good twenty minutes while he looks for the perfect spot to drop a dookie. What is it about dogs that they are so anal-retentive about finalizing a spot on which to shit? 🐕
Did you see what I did there, Dournal? Get it? Anal-retentive…and poo comes from your—never mind. I know you don’t find as much joy in potty humor as I do. 💩🚽
Sammy’s potty break time sometimes affords me a short while to meditate, but more often I’m catching up on LinkedIn and Facebook comments. Today, however, I was in conversation with Josie and Emma, my brand-new next-door neighbors. 👭🏻
Josie is 7, Emma 5, and they do like to talk. I guess we’ve become friends because the girls have started leaving art in my mailbox 🖼, addressed to “Miss Bethan and Shon.” No one ever spells Sean’s name right, so they are forgiven for that. And at least they don’t call me “bath in the Campbell” like my captioning software.
After my break, I did some task catch-up. I managed to put a small dent in the LinkedIn 101 course I’m taking from Heidi Medina (you remember her, don’t you Dournal? Sister from another mister, lives in Portugal?🇵🇹). Other days I might be brainstorming, prioritizing, or mixing a podcast—which reminds me, I need to put together an outline for next week’s episode! Grrrrr! I need more time! 😩
Mr. Campbell was home by then so I joined him on the couch for an episode of our current binge-watch series Supernatural. It’s a good fit for us since we used to be paranormal investigators 👻 (which reminds me, we probably need to get working on our book series The Peculiar Files, but where am I going to find an extra hour in my day? Deep breaths, Beth Anne…keep calm and think of bacon).
📺 Supernatural is a good show, Dournal, but truthfully, how much do I really watch? I can’t spare an entire hour, what with all of My Career Xanadu activities piling up. I’m almost ashamed to admit it (because I know it is important to “step away” now and then), but I’m usually on my laptop multitasking while watching TV. 💻😳
We have already established what a damn lie multitasking is, so you shouldn’t be surprised when I tell you that my husband often (and very patiently) relays critical plot lines that I missed.
That's because I was either responding to social media comments and posts; looking at my Where The Hell Is My Bacon? Facebook page to make sure the fried pork memes haven’t dried up; or checking the LinkedIn Marketing Addicts Facebook group to see if my sister hens Heidi, Elle, or Kaprice have posted any chicken jokes (as Nugget #1 of the coop, I have an obl-egg-ation to keep a-breast of all the puns—BAWK!).
Hey Dournal…why did the chicken cross the road?
To prove to the possum…IT COULD BE DONE!
Country folk yolk joke. Couldn’t resist.
After half-assing my TV time, I returned to my writing desk for another couple hours of work. This time I made some good progress on one of my missing novel chapters 📖 . Then it was onto more social media content (Trello has been a lifesaver, Dournal! I’m so glad Elle recommended it).
😔 Alas, I did not have time to work on my latest LinkedIn article. On a side note, I am trying to figure out a way to reuse some of that content. Mental note to go look up some of my old pieces, refresh them, and pull out some good post material.
Strike that. Mental notes don’t work with me. I am putting a reminder card on my Trello board so I don’t forget. 📝
🎙 Shit, did I mix last week’s Change the Channel podcast? Another reminder card.
🛌 Ah, time for bed at last. It feels like I barely made a dent in My Career Xanadu, Dournal, but there is always the weekend! I do have an extra hour on Saturday morning before my better half wakes up. Maybe I can use that to clean up my Dropbox folders.
You know what they say: cluttered desk, cluttered mind. With books, podcasts, content, courses, and branding to keep organized, it pays to spend a little time doing housekeeping once in a while. 🧹🧽
Whew, Dournal! I am about to nod off! 🥱
I’m sorry, what was that you asked? Is it worth it?
Oh. Hell yes. Every second, every minute, every hour. ⏳
In my most wonky-brained, cluttered-mind, disorganized, unprioritized, hourglass-running-out moments, I have zero regrets. It still feels like I’m swimming with the current. I am on the right path and it feels so, so good. 🌈❤️🤗🦄🧁🎁🌺🥓🍷
But thanks for letting me vent about it anyway, Dournal. You’re a peach. 🍑
