Slowing down & speeding up

Let’s talk work

Here are some things I’m musing over this week.

• It took me 5 hours instead of 8 to complete my work from home compared to at the office.

• My job is providing me with zero creative outlets.

• I have little desire to do what is recommended by the Harvard Business Review, which is building a personal brand.

• I desperately want to slow down my life and the world wants to speed it up.

There is no way for me to have it all, folks. The biggest lesson in my season is accepting that I’ll never be happy with what work looks like because this society doesn’t sustain that ideal.

I’d love to work from home for 5 hours every day and have time to set up my home properly before my family comes back in it. I’d love to have time to cook and clean again without the exhaustion. I’d love to do work where I am flexing my creative muscle and helping people.

There isn’t enough money being made to sustain that and it’s ok but I need to catch up and accept where I am at. It’s a hard pill to swallow. I am entitled and tired.

Photo by Laura Chouette on Unsplash

Let’s talk about why I’m exhausted from the concept that everyone needs to build a personal brand.

I opened my mailbox yesterday to find last months issue of the Harvard Business Review and the cover story is “Build Your Personal Brand: how to communicate your value to the world.”

Sounds right on par with my “Build A Value Based Business” course so I dive right on in. I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t another list on how to sell myself with resumes and personal narratives.

I tossed it aside in frustration.

Since I was in seventh grade (when they gathered us children into the auditorium for a presentation on college) I have felt pressure to brand myself. We started with college resumes then job experiences and in the creative world social media taught us the importance of niching down.

As mothers we learned that there were a million ways (but really one correct way, right?) to parent our children. Feed them this not that. Train them or don’t to sleep here or there. School them that way or this way but definitely not that way! Remove these ingredients and toxins and cook but don’t forget to buy these and if you work or don’t work you’re probably making a mistake.

Define your purpose! What career will you choose? What kind of mom are you?

Audit your personal equity! Do you want kids? Why aren’t you financially where everyone else is?

Socialize your brand! Do more, make more, share more!

The general consensus I have heard from the world has been to push more and be more and don’t think of yourself highly along the way or people won’t like your opinions.

I can only imagine how this is going to affect my child if it has affected me.

It’s likely why I feel the desire to stay home as a mom as much as I do to work full time. The pressure to be great, branded, niche aware, and humbly successful leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

Knowing I can’t have it all isn’t a bad thing. Being aware of the junk being fed to me is a blessing. I can learn to turn this anger and resentment into gratitude.

In case you missed it, I started a second newsletter called

The Bible School Notebook

which explores how my studies have been going. I enjoy writing about my faith here always and refuse to niche down on Motherhood Minute but it was created for myself to document my journey easier.