As I’m walking along the street or quietly cooking dinner a thought has begun to needle at me: what if this is all I amount to? It’s a new one for me, and all the more surprising for that fact. Before I have puzzled over what I want to amount to, over how to amount to something, but not “is this it for me?”.

At the end of February I wrote a newsletter setting myself a challenge. I was going to post on Instagram every single day. I had not been good at being present online and I still hadn’t shaken the need to be perfect when I was, so I thought I’d do a challenge where I showed up with one of the many many photos in my camera roll every day. And then I didn’t create anything for nearly two months.

I was scrolling mindlessly on Substack (why do they have that feed function when you want to read stuff but it ends up being another place you’re scrolling?), and I noticed everyone joining in a challenge of someone who had recently, and a little behind the curve, joined the platform.

I think I’m more funny in real life. More vibrant, bigger somehow. Not afraid to be the butt of the joke. Prone to tears when I see something beautiful or endearing. On our walks back from town my boyfriend has to stand like he’s waiting for a toddler as I coo over sunsets in puddles and textures on a brick wall.

Changing my business name was never just changing the name. It was changing my approach, my structure, how I went about what I did. It was also a hard reset on what I actually did. It was opening up and lifting and self-imposed boundaries and being freer.

If 2023 was concluding the last chapter of my life, then 2024 is the turning over into the next one. Almost every aspect of my life is completely different now than it was a year ago, and at this point I have no idea what’s going to happen with all these new plot points and locations nor where the story is going to go. But then, as I was writing that sentence, I remembered: I’m the author. I decide what happens in this next chapter.

Many times I have sat down to review the year and quipped about how short the year was, how it seems barely possible it is already over. But not this year. This has been the longest year. And I think it has been long because it is like I have had three different lives in one year…

Over this year I have dissembled almost every part of this business. I stopped the offerings I had spent two years building, I took a part time job, I moved, I shifted what I talk about, I created new business mentoring offers. The only thing that was left was the name.

It started with a conversation about Christmas presents. My mum asking me what I wanted and me noticing how uncomfortable the question made me feel, how a ribbon ran through my body that said I shouldn’t have anything – because I wasn’t where I wanted to be with my work, and therefore I didn’t deserve a gift.

I’ve been treating this recent pivot as starting a business afresh. I know it’s not entirely the same, I have my lovely email list and people like you who click links to read what I say. This isn’t a clean slate in terms of the pieces of the business, but I am trying to have one with my expectations. I am trying to nurture and grow something and not weigh it down with what came before.

I was shortlisted for a writing prize in September, and in October I did not win it. As soon as I found out I was shortlisted I felt strongly that I would not win.

In The 360 Degree Pivot I wrote about how I blamed my burnout on client work. At the beginning of each week I saw all six calendar slots fully booked and it made me claustrophobic. It made me anxious about showing up and performing for these people on those days. It made me feel responsible, like I had to hold and solve all their problems. The client work wasn’t the problem, it was me.

Two months ago I started a new office job for the first time in seven years. This wasn’t something I planned. A job advert popped up and I thought “that sounds fun”. The deadline was the next day and I rushed in an application at midnight because at least I could be in the running while I thought about whether it was something I wanted to do. Between then and the date of my interview I vacillated back on and forth about whether I could go through with it, if it came to it.

It would seem that I’ve pivoted 360 degrees. Since I started to change my business three and a half years ago there have been diversions and mini-pivots that all turned out to be a great planetary orbit back to where I started.

It never occurred to me to be an artist. As in, it never occurred to me, when setting up my business, that art could be a part of it. I was very focused on having a capital-B Business – on the growth, on the statistics, on the upward linear achievement, on the money.

To say last month didn't go to plan is an understatement. It went so not to plan that I actually ended up doing nothing on my business all month. That's not an exaggeration. 

I took a few, tip-toed creeping steps towards thinking about my future business model, and immediately found myself between a rock and a hard place. This wasn’t even structured thinking, there were no tabs open that I was typing into, there was no planning spreadsheet.

I have done the thing I always tell people not to do. Which doesn’t really narrow it down, it is forever easier to see clearly the solutions for others than it is for yourself. But what I am referring to in this instance is thinking too far ahead.

The word of the year I set for myself this year was “more”, because I wanted a year that would pull me out of sluggishness. I wanted more interests, more depth and breadth in my work, more love, more quality time - more money.