Last week, I mentioned I went on vacation with my friend and her family. I also mentioned that while I was there, my brain was very alive with thoughts and feelings and reflections.

I laid in bed each morning, the fan whirring, the birds chirping, and ran through a list of topics to write about, lessons to create on TpT, scenes to add to my novel. And because I felt that jolt of energetic motivation I thought, “I am going to go home and do it ALL NEXT WEEK!”

To which my rational brain countered with, “Girl, no you’re not. Slow down.”

Rome wasn’t built in a day, but apparently I thought it feasible to write and build and market in a week. Best laid plans. That wasn’t going to happen.

I’ve been struggling since April with wanting to sprint through a marathon. I quit my job in June of 2024 to go full time on my self-employment projects, and with that came this sense of urgency that I wasn’t expecting. The urgency has created questions and the questions have created stress. Mainly, “why isn’t this where I thought I would be by now?”

The answer: because building takes time.

It feels good to sit with that. It feels like I’m giving myself permission to let this take however long it is going to take. There is no deadline, and my only responsibility is to keep moving forward.

As we have passed through the unofficial start of summer, the world slows down. Why am I trying to speed up?

I laid in my bed in Pennsylvania and thought about what my pace could look like for the summer and what I wanted to accomplish. And I decided what felt good when I really let myself hold it in my thoughts was to work in small pieces. Just little increments. Maybe I’m not making 1-3 TpT resources 5 days a week. Maybe, instead, I’m reading through chapters and making quiz questions. Then, the next day, I’m creating the materials for the resource, breaking up the process over the course of the week.

And, maybe, when I am done with my unit on Catcher in the Rye, I’ll devote the rest of my summer to writing.

When I was in college I had three jobs. It always felt like my brain was trying to catch up to my schedule. And I remember thinking, “I can’t wait to be a teacher because then I’ll have just one job.” Joke was on me. Every job is comprised of a million other jobs.

But this summer, I want to experiment with what it feels like just to focus on one thing at a time. What would happen if I gave everything I got to one project at a time instead of spreading myself thin across several different avenues?

I guess we’ll see.

Until next week, friends.