Accidental Vacation

As if 2020 hadn’t caused enough craziness and unpredictable drama, life handed me an accidental “vacation” this past week when we found ourselves without internet for EIGHT entire days—a work deferral as I call it. I know I’ve been living on the she of burnout for a big part of this year, but this was the worst possible time it could have happened. I was knee-deep in client print orders, onboarding a handful of clients, finally on a social media schedule I was happy with, and was in the middle of a rebrand project with a virtual team that required almost immediate responsiveness the entire week. To say shit hit the fan would be an understatement!

Thankfully I was able to drive to the parking lot of the nearest coffee shop and borrow their wifi to complete as many tasks as I possibly could from my phone from the ‘comfort’ of my office that was the very cold backseat of my car. BUT as many of you may not know is that I run my businesses from a desktop computer without wifi (it has to be plugged in directly)—and only enough data for basic tasks like checking email and the weather—which meant I was at the mercy of the universe on this one and was only able to get the rest of the MUST-DO things done once the internet had been restored.

Don’t feel too bad just yet, it meant that I barely touched my computer during the day (only checked my phone during business hours for the urgent emails), got to spend more one on one time with little miss, and the little time I did spend at my desk after kiddo went to bed was soooooo productive! I got three more sessions retouched than planned so I will likely be able to fulfill them before Christmas, got a ton of blog posts and social media captions drafted for the next couple of weeks, was able to get some education slipped in there (a true artist is always learning!), and thankfully pickups and sessions were unaffected!

So while I may have a busy AF two weeks ahead of me, I’ve got a mini break to look forward to in the middle to spend Christmas with my little family, and I’ll be starting 2021 off with almost nothing on my business to do list (there’s always admin work to be done), and I am actually super excited! (pandemic aside) Almost makes me want to do this every month. Almost. I just hate the lack of control…

I’D LOVE TO KNOW: For those of you who run businesses, do you schedule unplugged ‘vacations’ to get work done without distractions? Or are you the type who can do that for a couple hours every day?

Cheers!

stephanie de montigny SdeM handrawn initials ottawa blogger