Choosing a Third Way
On exploration without expectation.
After I published my December newsletter about the Cycles of Change, many of you emailed to ask about my plans for the future. I had intended to focus Mindset Mastery on case studies of my clients, but it turns out that there’s room for my personal stories, too. So starting this month, you’ll get two free newsletters each month: One focused on a psychological principle related to running a business. And one that follows my journey of implementing these tools in my own business.
As always, you subscribing to Mindset Mastery makes it possible for me to continue this project. Subscribers pay $5/ month and get access to monthly journaling prompts. I plan to eventually make certain posts exclusive for subscribers, and I will also be opening up coaching office hours to subscribers this spring. I hope you’ll join me in these new programs!
By the way: I would love your feedback about how I can best serve you with this newsletter! Fill out the survey here.
Let’s begin with set and setting: I started my career as a journalist over a decade ago. I worked a few full-time jobs in the media industry, then I was laid off and decided to start my own business. (The story is much more complicated than that, of course, and you can listen to it here or here.)
I had been a freelancer for about a year and a half when I found out that I was pregnant with twins. Then, right after the first trimester, we lost one of the babies. I was also diagnosed with hyperemesis gravidarum, a pregnancy-related condition that causes all-encompassing nausea and near-constant vomiting — not just for the first trimester, but for the entire nine months. In a fluke accident, I got NORO virus and threw up so aggressively that my water broke when I was 34 weeks pregnant. My son Liam was born early and spent two weeks in the NICU. Just as I was coming out of the postpartum haze, three months after Liam was born, the world shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Needless to say, it was a very, very hard year.
That was in 2019. Since then, you’ve watched me build The Writers’ Co-op podcast and community with Wudan Yan, focused on how to build a freelance business. I moved to Bend, Oregon. I kept my writing business rolling and also completed a coaching certification.
Then in June 2022, I had my second child — a little girl named Lily. That pregnancy was easier than the first in that I didn’t experience earth-shattering loss, but I was still incredibly sick. In the end, I forced to dismantle huge parts of my business because I couldn’t work consistently.
As I re-entered the working world in October 2022, I realized that something had to give. It feels a bit like I’ve just stepped back into the world and I’m blinking because the lights are so bright. After three years of grief, loss, sickness, a pandemic, isolation, raising tiny children and dealing with a diagnosis of PTSD, most of what I know about myself has been shattered into a million pieces.
And as you know — as we all know — our work is not divisible from our lives. The way we work impacts everything about the way we live. The way we live impacts how we work, what we want from our work, and what we care about. As my life descended into chaos in 2019 and early 2020, I struggled to maintain running two businesses while taking care of myself. Frankly, most days, I felt like I wasn’t serving anyone well, least of all myself. But still, I persisted. Isn’t that what we’re taught to do? I bought into the fact that it would eventually get better, that there was value in the hustle. I found my worth in efficiency and productivity. I took calls during nap times, planned partnership strategies after my son went to bed, supported my husband through huge career transitions, and squeezed EMDR therapy sessions into the margins of my days. Sometimes I felt empowered by this challenge; other days, I could barely sleep because my mind was spinning from all of the responsibilities I carried.
But this fall, my body and my mind declared: enough.
For the first time in my life, I listened.
What you saw on the surface was me making the difficult decision to leave The Writers’ Co-op. But that was just the tip of the iceberg. What’s happening, in reality, is that I’m unlearning decades of conditioning about hustle, productivity, people pleasing and what success really looks like.
As I begin to question aspects of my life that have been a given for so long, I’ve struggled with feeling the pressure to move to the other side of a false dichotomy. For example, I’m taking a hiatus from social media at the moment but before I left a few weeks ago, I posted this:
Am I trying to spend more time with my kids, or am I trying to work more and make more money?
Am I trying to speed up, or slow down?
Do I want to simplify, or make things more dynamic?
Do I want to be famous, or do I want to disappear?
There is a life where I go quiet. Where I cultivate a garden and renovate our kitchen and nap. Where I work just enough and I finally write that sci-fi book. Where I spend summer afternoons playing with my kids, and I am strong and tan and my jaw is unclenched. A life where I sleep well, swim and read a lot of books.
And there is another life where I go big. I write the career books and speak at events and pull in huge sums of money that allow us to take incredible vacations. I coach people and I get to watch them change their lives and I am seen as impressive, but I probably don’t have as much time to sleep and play and lay in the sun.
I know which version my heart wants, but my ego puts up a fight. Because I intellectually want BOTH.
This battle is in full swing, and I’m taking some time off social media to pay attention to it. I’ll be back when I’m back ✌🏻
What I’ve come to, over several weeks of thinking, is that there is a third way. Whenever I feel backed against a wall, it’s my job to look for an option that few people talk about, an option that I may have to create all by myself.
When I explain this to clients, I use a metaphor: Say you’re going to a club and you want to get in quickly. There’s the VIP line, which requires you to have special credentials or connections. There’s the line for everyone else, which means waiting a really long time for a chance to get in. And then there’s the side door, the one used by the kitchen and bar staff. That’s the door I’m trying to find.
As I grapple with what’s next for me — and believe me, I have way too many business ideas, much to my therapist’s dismay — I’m faced with this reality:
I don’t want to be a stay-at-home mom, but I don’t want to be a full-time working mom. I want to work AND I want time with my children.
I don’t want to pull myself out of the public conversation entirely, but I don’t want to fade from view. I want to be grounded AND I want ambition.
When dichotomies like this pop up — which they do often for me, likely because of my evangelical christian upbringing — I’m reminded over and over again that it’s never that simple. There’s always a third (and fourth, and fifth) way of doing things. We can exist in the both/ and space.
What does this look like? The third way is being a grey-area mom who spends time working AND nurturing her family. It means not “belonging” on either team, and forging my own path. The third way is building a business that makes me a solid income but also allows me to be present in my daily life. This means building more slowly, with intentionality, and relearning the way I engage with my business. The third way is being brave enough to write to you in spaces like this, but also stepping away to prioritize myself when that’s necessary. It’s being honest in hopes that you feel permission to be honest, too.
But, of course, existing in this messy third space requires new skills to manage uncertainty, anxiety and beyond. These aren’t the skills we learn in school, or in traditional business courses. Typically, they’re skills that you only need to employ when you’re faced with aspects of your life that you can’t control — caretaking, chronic illness, disability, trauma, grief, and so much more.
Right now, I’m working on building that new skillset in my life so I can bring you what will likely be a whole new business — one that includes coaching, programs, a podcast, a book and speaking — in a way that keeps me healthy.
That looks like taking a course with women’s leadership coach Nisha Moodley to focus on building a better relationship with the soul of my business because frankly, I’ve been trying to muscle my business into order for far too long; our relationship is fraught. I’m digging into the generational roots of my panic with my therapist. I’m working with coach, writer and speaker Damon Brown to understand what it might look like to implement my big plans with an approach that still allows me to be present with my family every single day, especially when my kids are little. I’m seeing a physical therapist, an acupuncturist and a psychiatrist. I sit in the sauna almost every day. I do yoga nidra meditations before bed. I’ve re-organized my priorities, putting myself first.
I’m building muscles like flexibility, boundary setting, managing discomfort, listening to my body, and resilience.
My work right now is unlearning the performance of capitalism.
My work right now is learning how to embrace support rather than doing everything on my own.
My work right now is exploration without expectation.
Next month, I’ll talk about how this unlearning impacts my business model. I’ll dig into my tendency to overwork and the reasons behind it. And I’ll take you along on the ride toward building something brand new that serves both you and me as we figure out how to build aligned businesses that are anti-capitalist, human-first, non-masculine, trauma-informed, and supportive of the changing seasons of our lives. What a concept.
If it’s possible, I’m in. I’m sure you are too.
Sending love,
Jenni
Looking for support while you build a unique business?
Good news: I’m launching a coaching group just for you! It’ll run for 5 weeks from April 4-May 2, 2023, and will be focused on how to run a business while dealing with the heaviness of life. This group is for you if you’re a soloprenuer currently dealing with intense constraints. (Think: caregiving, or living with mental and physical chronic illness, disability, or neurodivergence, and beyond.)
I’m still noodling on the curriculum, but email me if this sounds interesting and I’ll put you on the waitlist! You’ll be the first to get all the info when I launch the group next month.