Seven months in: another reality check

January 3^rd of this year was my last day of work. After my final check-in with my manager, she told me to go ahead and log off at noon. So I did, and had my work laptop boxed and at FedEx in less than thirty minutes.

Note: It helped that the closest FedEx Office is about two miles away.

I figured that August 3^rd is a good day to do another reality check. So, how’s it going?

In retrospect, pretty good.

• I completed two paper edits of The Pansy Paradox and one of the bonus novella, The Capstone Conundrum. Yes, I love me some alliteration.
• I’ve sent both books to my proofreader.
• I regularly have coffee dates with a friend from my former workplace who is also a writer. This has been wonderful.
• I attended the Author Platform Growth Summit, which focused on mindset, resiliency, sustainability, and alignment in an author career, rather than tactics, toxic productivity, and the hustle and grind.
• I finally bought my Mac Studio and have dived headfirst into Photoshop.
• I completed a read-through of The Marigold Miracle, and now I’m musing and bread-machining my way to a second draft.
• I planted my cottage garden.
• I’ve been taking lots of long (thinking) walks.

One thing that really stands out: None of the above feels like work. That doesn’t mean it’s without effort, or that I don’t get tired, or overwhelmed by information.

What doesn’t exist anymore in my day-to-day working life is this:

No context switching (h/t Cal Newport). The first thing I do with technology in the day is either write or use Photoshop. No email and no social media. I may have a browser open to a stock image site or Adobe fonts, or whatever. But that’s it.

No hyper-active hive mind and no pseudo productivity (h/t also Cal Newport). I do not miss Microsoft Teams or VPs/senior directors sliding into Teams chat on the regular. I really don’t miss unending email threads where someone copies me on a discussion because it “might” be a documentation issue. (And to be clear, everyone involved would love to make it a documentation issue—well, except documentation.)

So work? Doesn’t feel like work. I do want to stress that I still get tired, still need weekends to give my brain a break. But I don’t get the Sunday scaries. In fact, I really love Monday mornings.

And I couldn’t be more grateful.