Fashion Business Owner Musings: You Can’t Do It All

Holy crap this month has been nuts. We’re half way through January and I don’t know about you but, I need more time!

Since the first day of the month, I have…

• been sick in bed for 10 days.
• had to prepare for the fact that the Community is opening on the 23rd!
• had to prep for Texworld USA, where I’m giving three talks on the show floor.
• had to work on the details of our new partnership with Squarespace.
• had to prepare for my trip to Washington D.C. to participate in the Women’s March.
• had to find time to be interviewed about StartUp FASHION for a podcast and a blog.
• and had to (because I love to) connect with and help the members in our Community.

I need a nap.

Seriously, trying to get all this done, and done well, has been quite the challenge. I’ve been stressing over everything and probably making it much harder to kick this sickness I’ve been dealing with. I know I wrote about feeling overwhelmed at the start of a new year, but this is just ridiculous.

Have the last three weeks felt like this for you too?

How are you dealing with it?

I’ve started to accept that sometimes things are just going to have to go undone or incomplete. You have no idea how hard that is for me to say. While I’m not quite a perfectionist, I’m a push-myself-to-the-brink-of-insanity-until-it’s-done-ist. And that, my dear friends, is simply no longer working.

And even though I have a small team of incredible people helping me, I signed up for more than I can get done in a month where 10 days of it was spent doped up on DayQuil in my bed staring at the wall and accomplishing absolutely zero.

And I can either continue to stress the hell out about that or I can accept that I cannot do it all, and just move on.

Can you relate? I imagine there are days, weeks, months, when you wonder what the in the world you were thinking committing to so many things in such a tiny span of time. And I’ll also bet that you have let yourself freak out about it too.

Listen, I understand. And I’m not suggesting that you should just throw your hands up and say, “Oh well!” but I am suggesting that you cut yourself a break. Take a long look at the things that you’ve committed to and start to make a list of the things that simply do not need to get done. It may be entire things or it may be aspects of things that will save you mountains of time.

Either way, you deserve better than running yourself sick believing that you can do it all. Give yourself a break and accept that you’re human, and some things will just have to wait. OK?

OK. I’m going to go take my own advice now.

Lots of love and encouragement,