What to Do When Your Personal Life Takes Over Your Writing Life
One of the biggest sources of overwhelm that surges in freelance writers is when they feel like they're not spending enough time on their business when there's something going on in their personal life. That their business is falling behind because their personal life is taking up much of their schedule, mental and physical energy, and writing creativity.
This week's livestream is going over what you should do if you feel like your personal life is taking over, how I handle situations where my personal life needs more attention than my business life, and what to normalize in your freelance writing career.
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What to Do When Your Personal Life Takes Over Your Writing Life
So this is the live stream I never wanted to do, but I knew someday I would have to do it. That's the, that's the point of the live stream, right? Vicky says, I need this one. And EJ the bus says, me too. Vicky. Well, I'm glad you guys are here. So, um, this is gonna be a hard one, so we're just gonna try to get through it as best we can.
So, as some of you know, um, it's okay, BJ it's okay with this spell and we'll figure it out. So, as some of you know, um, Bo passed away this week and it's been a really tough week,
but he lived a really long life. Um, He was 16 and seven months. He was a 70 pound dog. And, um, he was this, this girl's best friend. So I'm gonna try to keep it together. Um, and I think this topic is really important that we need to talk about it anyways. Um,
and this would've happened anyways no matter when I did this live stream. Uh, doing it without him in the room is a lot different than doing it with him. Not here at all. So we're gonna do our best. So we're gonna talk about when our personal life takes over our business, because obviously my personal life has taken over my business this week.
And this isn't just, I. Um, this isn't, uh, an abnormal thing. There's lots of times in our business life, um, where our personal life takes over. And this was something, you know, when Bruce passed away. Bruce passed away like almost eight years ago now, and it was still really hard. There was really difficult for me to do work.
Um, and, um, EJ says, my heart goes out to you. My longest pet rescue feral cat was Tabitha, 20 years long. 20 long, good years with her. Yeah, it's, it's weird because when you're thinking about that, you're like, I wish I had more time. Like, that's what I keep thinking to myself is like, I wish I had more time.
But it's like I had, this is another thing that's been difficult is this week I, you know, I follow a bunch of other dogs on Instagram and, um, I found out that four of the dogs I follow on Instagram just recently passed away. I knew two of them had passed away, just, uh, you know, in the short term. Um, I had, I had known that, but two more had just recently passed away, so that was hard too.
Um, and what I kept reminding myself was, is these other dogs, like we got four and a half years, or two and a half years, or, uh, many years beyond these other dogs. Barry lived a very long life and, um, thank you guys for all the kind words. He lived a very long life and we got very lucky about that. And he was a trooper up until the very end.
He was very strong. Um, and we loved caring for him. As difficult as it was sometimes the last year of his life where he had a lot of, uh, eye issues, he had a lot of other stuff and, um, You know, if you guys are students of mine, you know, Holly's a student of mine, Vicky's a student of mine. Um, you guys know that there was plenty of times where on working Wednesday or something, I had to go, I had to go help Barry cuz he had to like something going on, right?
And, um, every time something was going on, Barry wanted his dog bomb. You know? So if something happened, like Barry had a lot of, um, eye issues, so his eye would rupture. Like he had a very, very bad, uh, ulcer in his eye. So at sometimes his eye would rupture, every time it would rupture, he would come and get his dog mom.
Like, immediately. He would just, he would come and get me wherever I was and he's like, come snuggle me in the bed. Like, I, I need support. Um, and so I have a lot of good memories and we're gonna talk about this topic. So let's talk about when your personal life takes over your writing life. This is a normal thing that happens, especially when you're.
Long-term caring for a person or a pet when you're, you know, like we knew Bear was in basically palliative care for the last year of his life. We had many, many discussions over the last year about when it was gonna be his time to go or whether we should let him go. And, um, it's very difficult. Um, so let's kind of get through this stuff.
Um, yeah, I know Getty, you have a similar, uh, you have a, a much more tough situation than I did, so I, I know that you have a lot of stuff, um, going on, um, that's really hard to deal with. So let's talk about number one, let's talk about number one, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna keep it together as best as I can.
I'm just, just know that I'm doing the best I can right now. Uh, I'm not normally like a big crier, but, um, if you have lost the pet, You know, you gotta watch all dogs go to heaven. That's, you gotta do it. It's, it's, you gotta let it go. Or like, you just, I don't know, for me as a, as a millennial, like that just is the movie where it's like, okay, you lost a pet.
You gotta like, yeah. So that where you can watch, um, um, secret Life of Pets, one or two, or you can watch DC League of Super Pets. That's one I was watching and that really helps. Um, it helps you kind of like, you know, process a little bit. All right, so when we're talking about overwhelmed, a lot of times writers get overwhelmed that their personal life is taken over their business life.
And I just wanna kind of first say that there are going to be plenty of times when your personal life takes over your business life. This is just something that happens. Excuse me, this is something that happens when. You have a family or you have pets, or you have, um, older family members, or when you have sick family members or you have a bunch of stuff going on that you have to deal with outside of your business.
And that's okay. That's gonna be a normal thing. Hey, Scoob, Scoob is here. She says, hello. Can you go back to your HaBO hole? We'll, we'll get, we'll get to this snacks in a little bit. Good girl. There you go. All right. Hey, go. Let's wrap you up like a little taco. All right. Why don't you lay down me and we'll get to those in a little bit.
So it's normal that this happens, right? So for example, um, when we lost Bruce, I had a really hard time doing work for about three months. So when we lost Bruce, we lost Bruce about eight years ago, and he got really sick and passed away in like a 48 hour period. I actually think, if I remember right, it was 37 hours.
And all of a sudden he just started vomiting and he got really sick, and we took him to the emergency vet and his blood wasn't clotting and he was on all these machines, and then he's had seizures and, uh, it was just really terrible. And he passed away. We have no idea what happened to him. Um, I remember that the vets thought that he, um, might have eaten something, but we don't know what he would've eaten.
Um, it was just, it was really hard because you just don't know why and you don't know what happened. He just all of a sudden passed away with Bo It was like we, um, we had discussed it so many times because he was so old and he had all these issues. Um, but he was, he wanted to live. He wa he wanted to live.
He, um, he was so, um, jazzed about life and, and it was like every single time we would talk about the needle, you know, like we would be like, Hey, maybe we should consider like, You know, he would just like get better every single time. He is a magic dog. So just trying to make those situations and or making those decisions in those situations is really tough.
Um, trying to do work while you're grieving or trying to do things while you're going through a really tough situation that's, you know, like we're all gonna go through these periods. Whe whether you're losing someone or whether you're caring a lot for someone, or you just have a really stressful illness yourself.
Or there's like, I can't tell you how many times I get emails from people who, um, like all different types of writers saying like, I would love to join your course, but I have this really difficult situation. Or someone that's like, Hey, I joined your course, but now I have a difficult situation. Like, there's so many different things that go on.
Um, and I feel like that's not a point for us to beat ourselves up. There's going to be like, this is gonna happen to everybody. We don't get to predict when it happens. It just happens. And I used to beat myself up about it. I used to be like, okay, well, like you should be working all the time. Or like, you should figure out a slice of time to get your work done, and you have to take your own journey on it.
Everybody grieves differently. So like, some people might grieve for a couple days and some people might grieve for a year. I always had this story too. Um, I have the story of my great-grandmother, my great-grandmother, my super, my Italian, like they were from Italy. Um, my great-grandmother, when my great-grandfather died, wore black every single day for a year and then passed away.
So when he died, she grieved for the whole year, wore black all the time, and then passed away a year later. Everybody does it differently. So when we're looking at our personal life, You have to figure out when you have the mental space to do something, sometimes that mental space means that you're taking care of you, right?
Like I said, like I watch movies. That's something I've done since I was a kid. It just, I don't know, it's like a, it's like one of those repetitive things that really helps me feel good. So I'll put on a ton of movies. Um, like, you know, like when Bo passed away, we put on one of his favorite movies we put on Secret Life of Pets.
Um, and you have to have your own stuff to figure out. Like this week I've been canceling all my stuff. Like I've done a couple things for my students that I really wanna do and helps me give, give me a schedule. So like, I will do my live q and a's. But we didn't have working Wednesday and we're not having book club today.
Um, I, I can do some of it, but not all of it. So think about the things that you can do that are like giving you a schedule or that are helping you kind of like, give yourself your own time to do whatever you need to do in your business, or give yourself time. Hi whoop. Give yourself time to do those activities.
That kind of, can you lay down? Oh my goodness, thank you. Um, or give yourself time. That's your time only. Like, I don't care if you like to take a long bath or a long walk. I don't care if you wanna read or if you just wanna sit in silence. I don't care if you wanna watch a favorite TV show or a movie or have a favorite snack or take yourself out for tea, coffee, treats, whatever.
There should be a time where you have personal space in amongst all the chaos. So for me, um, I've been slower to respond to students and emails. I've been, um, not really, um, having a lot of, like, I've been canceling all my meetings and moving things around. I've been loafing a lot because loafing and watching movies is like, I don't know, it helps me process.
So as we're going through grief or loss, we wanna process, but as we're going through a very long season, because sometimes, you know, people have illnesses for years and I know that I have students, I have many students actually who are caring for aging parents or are caring for a very sick family member.
And that is years, it's years of caring for someone. So you have to kind of separate sometimes to fill your own cup. It's really hard to care for someone if you don't fill your own cup and it's really hard to deal with loss or grief or all these other things if you don't do stuff to process it or to to refill, you know, the stuff.
There's nothing I can do, um, to refill the loss of Barry like every day. I miss him and I wish we could have him back. Like, but I still am doing stuff that is helping me remember, like his long life or helping me remember that. You know, like, I love my students. I love helping my students. I love being there to like, give them answers or help them move forward and all that stuff.
Um, so when we're kind of feeling like our personal life is taking over our business life, we have to do several of those things, right? We have to give ourselves time. We have to understand that's normal. We have to understand it's unpredictable. There will be, there will be almost no time, very few times where something happens in your personal life and you would have predicted it or you would've predicted how long it would be, right?
We also have to take, uh, space for filling our own cup. We have to kind of give ourselves a sense of normalcy, right? We have to do something that we really like. I don't care. Like one of the things that I did ha w all right. One of the things that I did, so while I tell you the story, I'll show you a mini.
Well, one of the things that I did was the day after, um, Bo passed away, I didn't wanna be in the house. I didn't wanna be in the house. And so I took Charlie all around Austin. I took her in the car and, um, can you show me your high fives? Good girl. Um, I took her to the pet store. Um, we have like this fancy pet store that we only go to every once in a while, um, like, like once a year or twice a year or whatever.
And I took her to the Fancy Pet store and she got a new toy. She got some new treats. Um, and then I took her to, um, a park, uh, that she hadn't been to before. And I walked her around and of course what she did was she took a huge poop and then I had to go find tr uh bags cuz I was just taking her around.
I didn't have like my normal equipment. Like I have a backpack that I normally walk with. And, uh, my backpack has all the stuff, right? It has all the bags, it has all the water and all the stuff. I didn't have my backpack. We were in the car, so I had to go around the whole park looking for poop bags and they didn't have any.
And then luckily, I, I got to the very last station and they had some poop bags, thank God. So she took a huge poop in this park. And I was like, classic. I was like, you know what? That's what Barry would've wanted. Barry would've wanted us to struggle. He would've been like, deal with it. He's like, I'm Barry.
I get to poop wherever I want and you have to deal with it. So I finally did that. And then after that I got her some fries for mc from McDonald's. So I had a frozen blue drink and uh, we shared fries together and then I took her home. So she was out for a long time, several hours while we drove around and walked around and did all this stuff.
And that helped me. Process a lot of this stuff, like from just, instead of just loafing on the couch and being sad, it helped me remember that I have this thing, I still have this thing to care for. She's almost, she's about 10 and a half now. Um, and I still have so many good memories of Barry, or I still have so many things that I really appreciate about the time I got to spend.
And this was something that our, um, ophthalmologist told us. So Barry saw the ophthalmologist for like a year because of his eye issues. We saw him all the time. I would recommend if you're in Austin, go to Dr. D's at, um, I think it's, uh, uh, I care for animals. Go to Dr. D's. He's the best. So when we saw Dr.
D's, he told us like, Barry will let you know. Like there'll be kind of like a 48 hour period where you're like, okay, like everything's kind of melting down, right? And they took such good care of him. Um, where was I going with that? Um, So for me, that gave me a lot of peace. That gave me a lot of peace to be like, okay, I can kind of know.
I'll know. Right. We'll know. And the beauty about caring for someone who's going to the doctor, right? Like a human is they, they tell you like they monitor the person all the time. Right? Boze is only getting monitored by us. Right? So we are kind of getting, we're getting support from the team, right? Like we, all of his vets, he had a, um, he goes to South Park Animal Hospital.
He loved, uh, Dr. Shayna Corbett. If you wanna go to, uh, if you're in Austin and you want a vet, go to that one South Park Animal Hospital. They took such good care of them. Um, him and, um, Just knowing that they like, they're like, Hey, you'll, like, I always kind of felt that way. Like, you'll know, like when your pet starts going downhill, like when something, it, it's just a total 180 from who they are.
And that's what happened with Barry. Um, he just did a total 180. He was so spicy. Like, here's the, here's an example when I'm worried about my business stuff. Here's what I'm looking at Barry the night before. Okay, sir, like the day before he got really sick. Um, and really sad. Um, he was in a lot of pain by then.
So the day before, the very night before a handful of hours, he was running around our house, bouncing off the couch like he was doing park or because he was gonna get some french fries. Okay. He literally bounced off the couch so hard. He knocked a table, a big wooden table and also knocked my drink over.
That has a super, like the seal on the cup is really hard. And he knocked it over and the water went everywhere. Water and ice, all over the place. That was literally a few hours before he passed away, like, or before he got sick and was sad. So like there's always this thing where like you are looking at the things that are in your personal life, taking away from your business, but they're really not.
They're adding, like, I'm always gonna remember that memory. I'm always gonna remember that memory that Barry was this spicy, spicy senior who just like, he just couldn't control himself around food. He just like lost his mind. He just went to another planet. He just became obsessed. Uh, thank you. Flower power.
Flower Power says, I'm so very sorry to hear about Boose passing. I know it's difficult to deal with losing a dog and this is a great topic. Yeah. I, that's why I had to do this topic. I, no matter when I do this livestream, I'm, I was going to cry and I was going to be sad. I'm trying to not cry. Uh, but we have to talk about this too because I think it's really important when I get a lot of notes, people don't realize how many times I get notes from students or from writers about how they're having a difficult time in their personal life and it's affecting their business.
And that's going to happen, okay? So as we're, we're going to give ourselves kindness and we're gonna remind ourselves that this is temporary. Just like all the good times are temporary. All the rough times are temporary. So if you look at your life, right? So if I look at my life, the year that I, that, that we spent, um, caring for Barry and we were on like 24 hour care, like he had to be watched all the time, um, that was worth it.
And if I was caring for a family member or caring for someone, I really Right. You really care for right. Um, you're gonna look back on all the positive stuff. You're not gonna worry, like when you're a hundred years old or however long you live to be, you're not gonna look back on your life and be like, I wish I had that one to two to five years of caring for this person back.
You had 90 other years of not doing the difficult, caring part, right? You had all this other time to do whatever you wanted and do all the cool stuff. You're gonna look back on all the positive memories, and you're gonna, you're gonna remind yourself that it was worth it. It was worth it to do all the care as tiring, excuse me.
As tiring as it was, as exhausting as it is, like I can tell you that I have cleaned more. Since Barry has passed away, just because I don't like it was, it is tiring, caring for someone 24 7, even if there's two people. We have two people caring for Barry, and it's still exhausting because he wakes up in the middle of the night.
He has like all this weird stuff that he did because of his memory. Um, and because of his, just had all these things. And that's what I remember. I remember all of the funny little things that he did. I don't, you know, I'm gonna forget how exhausting it was and how tiring it was and how difficult it was.
I'm gonna remember the 15 and a half years where he just, he had a zest for life. He just loved life and he was so healthy. Like people would be like, oh, like your dog looks really good for 12. And we'd be like, he's 15. Like our ophthalmologist, when we took him in, they were like, he looks really good for 15.
And we're like, he's 16 and a half. Like, he's a thousand. So, um, What we should do when we're thinking about all this personal life stuff is just understand, like normalize it. This is gonna happen to everybody. I wanna tell you that I get lots of notes, lots of notes from people who have, like, I had a student who lost a pet recently too, and her pet actually lived much longer than is what is expected for that breed as well.
So you're always going to have grief and loss, or you're always gonna have difficult personal situations. You're gonna have stress, you're gonna have overwhelm. You're going to have this thing come into your life. Just kidding, Charlotte, you look like a tiny mermaid. And I love you so much. Charlotte's grieving too.
I know that's, uh, Charlotte's grieving in her own way. Uh, Charlotte normally barks and makes woo noises every time she gets fed. Like we've tried to train her to not do that, um, just because it's very loud. But she does it every time she gets fed. She hasn't done it once since BOE passed away. So, um, she's, she's sad and she's been taking a lot of alone, alone time too.
Okay, let's talk about two cuz I keep rambling on this one part. So let's talk about two. Okay. Two, huh. Thanks for handling all of my sadness today. I appreciate that. We can kind of be sad in here. Um, and then I have space to come in here and talk about, uh, loss and grief and personal life stuff where we often talk about business stuff, but your personal life is part of your business, right?
Your personal life. You, this was something that I think about all the time. You can't spend a hundred percent of your life a hundred percent on your business, or you can't spend a hundred percent of your time, a hundred percent on your business. It's not possible. And you wouldn't want to, you would burn out.
It would be terrible. Your personal life is like, The richness, right? Like, why are we trying to make freelance writing work, right? To pay for our rent, right? To pay for our life, to pay for these guys, right? To buy all the kibbles and all the snacks and all the good stuff. Like why are we, why are we working so hard?
It's not just for our business, it's also for our personal life. It's to support our family. It's to spend more time with our kids or spend more time with our pets, or spend more time with our aging parents or like, there's so many different things that we are working on in our business life to have a better personal life.
And there's lots of 'em, like I know lots and lots of writers who specifically wanna be a freelance writer to work 20 hours a week so they can spend more time doing other stuff, right? That's something to remember too, is like just because right now your personal life is kind of, um, absorbing most of the time, it doesn't mean you're doing a bad job.
It just means this is the ebb and flow of the river of freelance writing. And remember that this is why we kind of become freelance writers, to have freedom in our schedule. To have freedom, like the flexibility that I had to, to stop working, right? Like this was something, um, we talked about this, like if both, uh, Tommy and I worked in an office, Bo couldn't have lived as long.
He couldn't have been in his den all day. Like he has a crate, like we just call it his den. He couldn't have been in there all day. That's the, he couldn't do that. Um, and if we both worked like part-time, like away from the house, like I work full-time, obviously we both work full-time, but we work in the house.
If we had to leave the house for long periods of time, we would've had to let Barry go a lot sooner because he needed 24 hour watching. He had to go to the bathroom at very random times. Like it was a whole thing. Um, and there was just a lot of stuff that you need flexibility in your schedule and you need to have, um, You need to have perspective, I guess, on what you're capable of doing.
So like for us, we, we would've had to let him go. We would've had to let him go much earlier than we did. But being home with him all the time and watching him all the time and taking care of him, um, all of that stuff was, was made possible by having a freelance writing career. Right. So you have to kind of remember when you're handling these situations, when you're thinking about your, your personal life, taking over your business.
There's a lot of times where we just get really lucky that we have our freelance writing life to make our lives flexible. Right. Um, and how I kind of think about it is we also wanna make sure, um, EJ says, I concur on tiring. My brother and I were living live in caregivers with both parents and at one point for seven months, and my mom several years.
Yeah, it can be very exhausting. But that's the thing is like, When I think about it, I, I wouldn't give up one day of that exhausting caretaker thing. Like I, I would, I want every day back. Like, I want more days. Even if we were caring for him more, like I wouldn't give it back. That's the thing is you, that's such a short period of time, right?
Like Barry was great. Beau was great for five, 15 and a half years. He was super healthy. One year out of like 16 and a half, I think, you know, like it's worth it. Um, Getty says, thank you for sharing Bo's story on the last legs of his earthly journey. Bo is in heaven now at peace. And Bo's story reminds me of our cockapoo Eddie, who lived 18.
Yeah, you just know, right? You just know sometimes. So in any case, let's talk about handling this. So, make time in your schedule to do stuff for you. You have to do stuff for you. So what I used to do, And, um, I haven't actually told even my students this, but I used to work in 30 minute, one hour and one and a half hour chunks.
That's how I got stuff done over the last year because Barry would get up and you'd have to know where he's going because sometimes he can take a tumble down the stairs even though he's fiercely independent and, and tell, like he tries to bite you when you try to help him. Gosh, what a spicy senior. Um, so like if you try to help him with the stairs, he would like try to bite you.
He'd be like, I can do it myself. But you have to watch him so that he doesn't fall down and hurt himself. Right. And um, so I would work in 30 minute, one hour, one and a half hour chunks, depending on what he was doing. Right. So like, if he would lay down and stay still for an hour and a half, cool. But most of the time it's like, you know, like he would ask me, there would be a time every single day right before he ate dinner, he would want me to pet him for two hours.
Like, this is not a joke. So I would sit, I usually work on the couch with him, um, which is difficult now because I work and he is not there. But I would work on the couch with him and I would pet him for two hours. I would type and do stuff with my right hand, and I would pet him for two hours. And then sometimes I'd use my left hand and he would get all upset and I pet him.
And then we did it every day, pretty much every day for a long time. I would pet him for two hours because he's like, oh, I'm awake now, but I want attention, but I'm not ready to go downstairs to eat. So there's all these like little things. So I would work in these chunks. This is how I kind of recommend going through it.
Do the chunks wherever you can get a chunk in, do some work wherever you could get a chunk in, take care of yourself and try to get those in daily if you can. So like, I would do things in chunks, which is why like, um, I would still get work done, but we still were caring for Barry all the time. But you have to split 'em up.
Like, you know, there would be times where Barry would take a nap for like many hours. Like he would sleep for like three hours sometimes, and you're like, yes. So you could watch like a whole movie before he got up. Um, but when you're doing your work, you have to chip away. I always kind of thought to myself like, I'm chipping away at stuff.
And plus I also have the bonus of like, I'm not the only one caring for him. We have two adults. So like if I'm in the middle of something or on a deadline, you know, Tommy can take care of him. He just got very clingy to me. He became very much a, a dog mom. Like, he was like, I have to be with my dog mom 24 7.
So he just became very clingy with me. Um, but luckily there was two of us. So do your work in chunks, but make sure you have stuff for you. So like, I still would take Charlie sometimes on walks, like instead of both of them, um, just because Barry was having a rough day. Uh, I would still, um, like watch movies or I would do stuff for myself or I would end up, um, you know, I would end up working on little pieces of things along the way or.
I would end up spending time with him, more time with him. So I would do work for a few hours, spend some time with Barry, do work for a few hours, spend some time with Barry, do work, um, as best you can, chop it up. I know that it's not ideal. Uh, some writers work really well with time blocking. I'm not one of those writers that works well with time blocking, but if time blocking works well for you, this is, you know, when you're in this kind of tough part of your life, uh, this works really well.
Um, but try to chop it up, do a little bit of that, learn a little bit about this, try to take some action here, like do little chunks. Um, it's also, I, I think for me, this past week, I think has been a really important, like, I had to let myself not do as much this week. Like, I, I had to cancel appointments.
Even things that I love, like coaching calls. Like I had to co cancel a bunch of coaching calls. And those are like one of my favorite things to do, our coaching calls. And I just, I couldn't do it. Uh, I couldn't do it. So you have to remember that you have to like preserve yourself sometimes. Like there's this quote that says like, um, you know, like if, you know, taking care of yourself makes other people disappointed, disappoint them, and I have to take care of myself this week, or else I can't show up in a, in a great way for my students or for here on the live stream or for this tiny gremlin who just moved, hi, tiny gremlin.
You're so soft today and fuzzy. Can you go back to your hava hole please? Thank you. Otherwise, she's gonna step on my feet. So you have to take that time. So when you are, like, if you're dealing with loss or you're dealing with other difficult stuff, you have to make sure that you're giving yourself time to do that.
So like I haven't done barely any work this week, obviously. And um, I think that you have to, you can't beat yourself up like you have to understand, I always think of like, it's like an ocean or like a river, like it's always flowing. And sometimes you're gonna hit a rock and sometimes your boat's gonna get overturned in the ocean, or you're gonna have a hurricane in the middle of the ocean.
Like, that's just gonna happen. We most of the time can't control it. We can't control like, what's gonna happen or I can't control, like when, when Barry's gonna pass or when your family member is going to be, um, you know, ready to, to let go or, or, you know, I, you can't control a lot of these things. And most of the time they come outta nowhere.
So the adjustment period takes a while too. Like it takes several months. Like for us, I think it took about three months or so, maybe four months to get used to like the new berry schedule with all his drops and all his goops and all his, all his stuff. Um, and that's something you have to be kind to yourself about.
If you start beating yourself up, you start, um, at least for me, maybe you're like me, where you get demotivated. If I start beating myself up, I immediately lose mo motivation for doing almost everything. So if I beat myself up about not doing work or not doing this or not doing that, um, then what ends up happening is, uh, I just don't do any of it and then I don't make progress at all.
So you kind of have to understand that everything is a process. Um, it's just like the ocean. The ocean. Like, you can also think of it this way. Right now it's thundering and lightning somewhere, like everywhere on the planet right now, like is not sunny. It's someplace is either having a huge flood or a huge storm or, um, A, a brush fire or some kind of catastrophic event.
Most of the time it's happening somewhere in the world. We don't hear about it all the time unless it's a really cat like, you know, the tsunamis or the big fires in Australia or like, uh, really long freezes or stuff like that. Like we don't hear about, or the droughts, right? We hear about it after it's already become a super emergency.
But I think for me, it always helps to remember like someone, someone's always having the worst day of their life. Like right now, today, someone's having the worst day of their entire life and there there is, there's always tough stuff going on, but there's like an ocean. Like we have to end up coming back from it.
We have to kind of get resilient with it. We kind of have to chip away at things, but we also have to give ourselves non, non beatable time, right? To be kind to ourselves, to give ourselves time to heal and let go to, to some extent. What do you think? What do you think, Dean? Yeah, I know, uh, Albert says, interesting topic.
I don't recall coming across an examination. Wait, I don't recall coming across an examination quite like this of personal life in relation to work life or freelancers. Well, I think it's an important topic. I I often try to cover topics that most people don't talk about. Like, yes, we could talk about marketing, we could talk about making money, we could talk about, um, increasing income.
We could talk about clients, but this is something that happens to everybody. Like every single writer I've ever known goes through a period like this. Like everybody goes through a hard part of their life where they're either dealing with loss or divorce or illness or health things for their family or personal issues like they're having, um, their child is having something or their pet, this little goo right here.
You know, they're having some kind of issue. There's always something. There's always something. And I feel like people don't talk about this enough. Like they just wanna talk about business, business, business. And we're not just, we're not human doings. We're human beings. Right. I remember someone telling me that we're not human doings.
We're human beings. And part of being human beings is having a personal life and having, like, I wouldn't work so hard if I didn't know like that I'm supporting our family, right? Like, I work really hard because I'm supporting my family. That's my personal life, right? My business wouldn't grow and be, you know, blooming in a sense if I wasn't working really hard for this go and our family, right?
We are now a family of three, but we used to be a family of four, right? So for me that's motivating. And a lot of times people are like, oh no, my personal life, you know, all this stuff in my personal life is taking away from my business life. And it's like, no, your personal life is why you create your business life.
Right? To have more time or freedom or to, um, spend more, more like I spend every day with this go, I spend every day with this tiny little goober pin. Can I get a, yeah, another one. Good job. You know? And I'm lucky that I get to be here every day with my pets, where normally people will have to leave and go to the office and leave their pets eight to 10 hours a day, right?
So there's a lot of things that we forget, like your personal life, right? A lot of times we get into freelancing for flexibility or to be able to spend time with our family or spend time with our kids or homeschool. And I feel like we need to talk about that more, like flexibility or freedom that comes with freelancing.
You know, it also comes with dealing with difficult times. The flexibility, um, and the ability to change our schedule around comes with having the freelance life. Um, and like I said, like when you're in these situations, you have to give yourself kindness. You have to give yourself, like for me, I, I, um, I need some kind of stability.
So like, doing the live q and ASS for my students gave me some sort of stability of something that I really, really, really wanted to do. And then everything else, I was just like, I'm saving my energy for the live q and ass. I can reschedule these other things. Um, and then this topic to me, like was something I had to say, like something this topic to me was like, no matter when I did it, it was gonna be really difficult.
Um, so just doing it now when within, you know, the time, like the week that Barry passed away, um, I feel like it's more fresh in my mind to kind of, you know, bring up a lot of things that I might have forgotten. Yes. Woo. Would you like to say something to the people? Would you like to say something to the people?
Woo. Can you catch it today? Good job. You're a superstar. Uh, Albert says, I normally worked on a day today basis when I was freelancing. I spent 30 minutes calling and trying to set up interviews, another hour researching. Uh, after I spent whatever amount of minutes doing some component of the work, I could attend to personal and recreational aspects of life.
And the main thing I found was to get work done. Yeah. So that's the cool thing about freelancing is we're able to move our schedule around. So you have to remember that, oh, sorry, beam. That was a bit, that was my fault. That was my fault. Sorry. Um, we have to remember that there are different, like some people like to think of them as seasons.
Some people I like to think of it as like an ocean where. So this is like somebody is, is getting a catastrophic ocean event today or some kind of thing is, is going terribly today and that's happening all over the world. So everybody is gonna deal with this personal life, taking over your business life.
Um, well you've had so many snacks, you've had so many snacks. You wanna come up and say hello? Do you wanna come up and say hello? Oh no, she put the brakes on. She put the brakes on everybody. She put the brakes on. No, you don't want to, you just want more snacks. Charlie, you've had like too many snacks. I know you don't think that.
She's like, well, I gotta make up for it. She's like, if Barry's not here, I get double the snacks. That's not how it works, Charlie. All right. Um, let's talk about three. I'm trying to stay on topic as much as possible. Charles. Charles, go back to your haba hole. You're like a dolphin sometimes you're like, I have to like, bring you back to your, I have to like give you the whistle where I tell you to go back to your like little dolphin spot Charlie.
What's up? Do you just wanna be a spicy ham? Oh, you do wanna be a spicy ham? What about the other one? What about the other one? Can you gimme the other one? No, you gotta use the other one. The other one. Good job. Good girl. You have your big brown eyes, your big Betty Davis eyes. All right, let's talk about three.
This is our last thing. Let's talk about three. So we need to, like I said, normalize this. We need to normalize the personal life stuff, taking over our business work in chunks. Like I said, I used to work for the last year. I'd basically been working in 30 minute, one hour and hour and a half chunks, and I didn't even really know that until now.
So I was telling Tommy the other day that I realized, like I checked the clock in those intervals. I checked the clock at 30 minutes, one hour, an hour and a half, and I was doing that because of Barry. So I didn't even know I was doing that until recently when I started realizing what my habits were after Barry passed away.
So you have to normalize that this happens. You have to normalize that everybody, like right now is somebody's worst day. Everybody's going through this, and I, I kind of keep that in mind in terms of like this, uh, situation where your personal life takes over your business. That happens to everyone. There is going to be a time for every person, whether it's a week or a day or a year or multiple years, it's going to happen because, you know, if you have friends or family or pets or loved ones, I don't care who those loved ones are.
There, there are so many complications that come in life. There's so many complications that come in life. And every year, every year on my birthday, I write an email about how the herd is always thinning. I keep this in the back of my mind every single year. Every year that you get, every year that you get another birthday, your herd is thinning.
So like from the day you're born, all the people, right? All from the day you're born, all the people born in the year that you were born is thinning from the very day you're born. And I think it's, it gives me like a feeling that it's like special to get another birthday, but every time the herd is thinning, we also need to remember that, that we have all these precious little moments.
So there's times where when I really wanted to get some work done and I did something fun with Barry instead, or like the many, many times like daily thing where I pet him for two hours, I pet him for two hours cuz he is just like, he's just, he just loves it. He just can't, he could never get enough pets.
So I'm petting him for two hours using one hand, doing my work, sometimes using my other hand, but mostly petting him. And those are the things I remember, right? Those are the things that, that I look back on and I'm glad I did it. Um,
I think that we're, when we focus too much on growing our business and not enough on why we grow our business, which is mostly for our personal life or supporting ourselves and our families, I think that can be too much. There's going to be overwhelming points. There's going to be times where you have to be kind to yourself.
There's going to be times where you can't spend any time on your business. Like, I probably spent 1% of my time this week on business and that's just going to happen. Um, we most of the time can't predict when these situations are gonna happen. And our personal life taking over our business life doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad thing either.
It can change your perspective, right? So when something happens, it changes your perspective on like, maybe, you know, like one of the things that I used to write, um, after Bruce passed away was there's more to life than work. Like, I used to write that all the time. There's more to life than work. And that was just because I was like, I really wanted to grow my business and I really wanted to hit six figures and I really wanted to do all these things.
But then I have to remind myself like, what's the purpose of doing all these things? Like achievement for achievement's sake isn't gonna cut it. Your achievement to support your family or to have more time, or to spend more time doing stuff, or to be able to care for others when they need to be cared for or to deal with your own stuff, right?
Your own, um, health stuff or whatever else is going on. There's so many things, right? Like your floor busts out or like you have, like we had an ice storm, right? We've had multiple ice storms or multiple things here in Texas where I just can't work. There's just stuff that happens and you have to kind of remind yourself that that's such a small sliver of your life.
You have so much other time to work on your business. That a week or a few months where you're kind of hobbling along trying to get it done, or even a year or multiple years where you're getting in what you can. That's just what it has to be right now. That's it. Like we don't need to judge ourselves. We don't need to be harsh with ourselves.
We just need to remind ourselves like I'm doing the best I can with what I have right now. That's it. I'm doing the best I can. That's why I'm, I started this live stream by saying like, I'm doing the best I can right now. Like, I'm not, I'm not like overly chipper. Yes, I cried a bunch. Um, I'm doing the best I can, but you have to remind yourself of that you're doing the best you can and the circumstances you're in with what you have.
That's just how it is right now. There's no need to judge it or, or be negative about it. Uh, or beat yourself up. Yes. Would you like to say something? Would you like to say something to the people? Wow, you look like a little cutie. You look like you were fake for a second. Like you weren't even moving.
Would you like to show everybody? Can we do a round? If you're gonna get all these snacks, maybe we should do okay. There's that. Can you go around? Around? Come on. Can you do around? That's down. That's not around. Can you go around? Come on around. That's not around either. Come on, Charlie. Around around. Good girl.
What a superstar. What a good girl, Charlie. It's so weird that you just take up all the space now. Like it's so weird that Bo's not trying to sit on you or like trying to steal your treats or trying to take over your pet bed. She's like, she's like, I don't know what to do with myself. She's like, I just want more snacks right now.
Is that true? Do you just want more snacks? Oh my gosh. What are you gonna do with all these flaps? Whatcha you gonna do with all these flaps? All right. Um, okay. Let me think about last things I wanna say. Um, if you feel like this has been helpful, I know that this is kind of a morose and difficult topic, but if you feel like it's been helpful, give it a thumbs up.
If you wanna learn more about building a freelance writing business that you adore, subscribe. So when we're going through our freelance writing career, it's going to be tough. Whether that's business tough or personal tough. I think as much as we can normalize it and as much as we can talk about it with other writers, like there's no writer, there are zero writers that I have met that haven't had something personal come up that absorbs a big block of time.
Like it like years, it could be years. This, this was a year with Barry. Um, it was a very long time with Bruce where I was grieving, and I'll be grieving for Barry for a long time, just not as severely as I am now. Just because, you know, as you grieve, you can process a little bit more. But there's lots of people who I know that they had kids who were sick or they had to deal with parent problems, like their aging parents needed to go to certain care facilities or that, um, you know, they had people who had long-term illnesses or they were taking care of who, like all these different people.
Like everybody has something. And I think that's why this topic is important because we have to be kind to ourselves. We have to chip away instead of thinking about it as you have to take, you know, a giant spoonful every day. You're just taking a little bit every day. And this is something that I think helps with overwhelm, it helps with stress, it helps with all of the mind games that we can play with ourselves.
It's just like an elephant. Take a bite, a little bite every day. You can't eat an elephant all in one day, right? You just take a bite. That's what we're doing. And if anything, right, most of our freelance writing business isn't whole hog all in. It's taking bites every day. Even if you're a hundred percent all in on your business right now.
You're still taking little bites. Okay, I'm gonna do a little bit of marketing, I'm gonna do my deadlines today, I'm gonna do this. Like you're taking little bites all the time, you just don't see it as much. Right? So the thing that's going, the general rule is always to take bite sized pieces. So if you need to learn like how to make a list of potential clients, do that, then make a list, then send a few lois.
Or if you need to learn more about what's the right type of client or what's the difference between magazines and um, writing for businesses or like, there's all these little pieces that we need to learn and you wanna take them in bite-size chunks. I think that's the best way to kind of get through all the difficult stuff and for us to have better perspective.
Like a lot of times when our personal life takes over our business, we're thinking about it in a perspective of that we're falling behind or that we're doing something wrong or that everybody else is getting ahead of us. And that's just not the case. It's not the case. Right. That's the thing thing. If you think that everyone else is getting ahead of you, you have to remember that today is somebody's worst, one of the worst days of their lives, right?
So everybody goes at their own pace. Everybody builds their railroad and their, and their engine, their steam engine, one piece at a time. Everybody's on a thing. This is why I think comparison, especially when you're dealing with personal life in business, can be so difficult because you're like, I'm struggling right now.
All I can do is nail in one piece of the railroad. Like, that's all I can do. And someone else already built their train, right? But you don't know that maybe that person had been dealing with something really difficult for the last three years and now they're able to build the train, right? We, that comparison thing is one of the worst traps that happens when we're thinking about our business and our personal life.
Use. Do your own stuff. Put your, put your own track in place, build your own train on your own timeline. Whenever I tried to copy somebody else, it blew up in my face hard. Like it was a huge disaster. Okay, so, so just as like a frame of reference, like if you're comparing somebody else's journey to yours or where they're at or how they're building their train or how fast they're doing stuff, you have no idea what they were doing before that.
Like, I've met people who have been in corporate jobs for like 20 years and they finally wanna be a freelance writer and they take my course or we do coaching, or they, they watch the live streams and they're like, oh, and then they make progress really fast because they've been in this J dead end job that they hate for 20 years and they wanna get out.
But you're like starting freelance writing. You're one year in, right? And maybe you didn't have a corporate job you hated for 20 years. You only had like a couple of jobs and you're on a different path, right? There's so many different. Motivations, and there's so many different things that go on, build your own, train on your own timeline.
Okay? Build your business and build your framework. What we want is a strong framework. We're not looking for speed. Um, speed is not the factor. The factor is strength, strength of foundation, strength of systems, strength of processes, repeatable things that we can scale so that over time it takes less and less time to do it.
Right. Um, Tracy says, I'm so sorry for your loss, Mandy and Tommy, this topic is super important. Thanks for covering it. You're welcome, Tracy. And thank you for the kind words. Um, it's a tough day, but we're getting through it. Um, you know, like I said, like I knew I would have to do this. I, no matter when I did this live stream, if I didn't do it today, um, if I did it later, I, it would've been the same.
I still would've been real sad. Um, cuz you know, like for me, like this is a thing we do as a family, right? We have everybody in the room or, well, we have most of us in the room. We're all hanging out. Um, they know what it is. Like both of them, you know, when I would tell Bo and Charlie, I would say, Hey, it's time for the live stream.
And they go right upstairs and they come in here cause they know they're gonna get snacks. Good job. So it was like our thing, you know, that we do all together and it's, you know, it's hard to do it without Barry. I've done live streams without Barry being in here, but I know he's still here, here. So, um, anyways, last couple things I'm gonna say.
Um, when you are working on your freelance writing career, remember why you're doing it in the first place. Are you doing it to have more personal time? Are you doing it for flexibility to support yourself to make more money than you could in incorporate to, um, spend more times with your kids or do homeschooling or spend more time with these little gremlins.
Right. Spend more time. Like she's looking at my hand right now. That's why her ears are going up and down. Cause she thinks I'm gonna toss something to her. All right, Charlie. Ready? Oh, that was a bad throw. Sorry, Charlotte. That was my fault. You did great. You're the superstar. Yes, you did great. Good job bean.
Good job. You have to give yourself grace, right? Or kindness or however you wanna think about it. I always use like different terms depending on what it is, but you have to give yourself a bunch of kindness and give yourself time to process. This is something I think is the, this is the last nugget. If you don't process, it's really hard to move forward.
Okay? If you don't, if I don't cancel appointments and process this week, it will be very hard for me to move forward and be productive and be helpful for my students. We have to process it. Um, it is really hard. Um, also we haven't, I'm, I'm sure I'm gonna be sad again because we haven't been able to pick up BO'S ashes yet.
That'll be I think next week or something. But we still have to process. Like I still have to process that he's not there while I'm doing work. And that's really difficult and I have to process all these weird little habits I developed while caring for him. And you have to process this. So if the pro, if it goes on for a long period of time.
Right? One of the things is caring for someone. So caring for Barry was a year long process, like con, like he was constantly watched 24 7, someone was watching him. We knew where he was, we knew what he was doing. He had his goggles when he went outside, he has his goggles to protect his eyeballs. Like he was watched all the time.
But I have to kind of process the changes, right? You have to process that. He's getting like he's really getting old and that he's really struggling with these things. So as you go through caring for someone or you have something in your personal life that's taking over. Remember that the caring parts are the things you'll probably remember.
Remember that You also have to get in little chunks of work or personal time where you can, like, I don't care if you take a long shower, right? And that's something that you wanna do to have time away from everything. Um, or you know, you have some, a friend come and help for a second so you could get some personal time.
We have to have some kind of separation there. Um, and remember that you can't spend a hundred percent of your time, a hundred percent on your business. It's just, it's not even possible and you wouldn't wanna do it. You would burn out, right? That's what I did and I burned out is terrible. So you have to have these kind of a bunch of reasons, and you have to remember that everything is done in chunks.
Don't compare process what you're going through. Processing the grief and processing that stuff helps you get to a point where you can appreciate all the good times that you had. Um, you're, you're always gonna be sad. Like, I'm, I think about Bruce. Bruce died eight years ago, and I think about him all the time.
Like, there's plenty of times where I'm like, oh, Bruce would've loved this, or, you know, and I'm, I'm doing the same with Barry. Barry loved food. He loved food. Like, every time we ate, he would harass us even to like, like I said, his very last thing that he did was basically parkour off the couch. He bounced off the couch and hit a table, a thick table, and knocked my drink over and there was ice everywhere.
Like he was still strong enough to do that and he loved food and he would always bug us and, and tap us with his nose and do all kinds of stuff when we had food. And yeah, it was frustrating at the time, but it's like one of those weird bear things that I always remember.
Um, So we have to kind of remember the memories and process the hard stuff. We have to process the hard stuff so we can move forward. Um, whether you do that in therapy, like whether you, you know, spread ashes, whether you just, like for me talking about Barry, um, and it was like, we called him Bo Bear, b e a r.
So Barry just became b e a r y. It just became this Barry thing. Me talking about Barry or remembering things about him helps me process and remember that we got, not only did we get more years than most people when he passed away at 16 years and seven months, we got 15 and a half really great years with him before he struggled.
Uh, and I wouldn't give any of those days back, even the tough days, even when he pooped all over the deck and we had to go out there and pick it up. And even, even when he did all these other things, you know, even when we think he had a stroke, uh, there was a time a couple months ago where he was really sick.
He either had a stroke or he had old dog vestibular syndrome. I think he had a stroke and two days later he was perfectly fine. He acted like nothing happened. Like he still had a, a taxi. So he still walked like he was drunk. But that went away shortly thereafter. And he acted like nothing ever happened.
Um, he was an amazing, strong, um, playful, spicy dog. Like even, here's another story about Barry that helps me process the two. I think it was two or three days before he passed away, he was hunting. We make bread, so we make a lot of bread here. We have a starter named Hagrid, like a sourdough starter named Hagrid.
Um, even then, even then, he was hunting our loaves on the counter, like he can still, till the very end, could get up on the counter and get stuff. So he still hunted our loaves, our brand new, fresh outta the oven loaves. And he still was trying to hunt them down and um, he just, he was an amazing creature.
Like he wanted what he wanted and he wasn't afraid to go after it. Right. Okay. Flower Paris says, um, this is such a good point from both perspectives, not comparing yourself to other success and not being too self-conscious during struggles. Oh, I should be popping these up. Sorry. Um, and not being too self-conscious during struggles.
Speaking from the struggle bus slash is or, uh, isolate experience. Yeah. That's the thing is we're all riding the struggle bus at some point. That's why comparing doesn't work. Like, there's plenty of times where you can compare yourself without knowing anything about someone's story, right? Like I said, like there's lots of times I've met writers who have been in dead end jobs, who have been caring for people or places or things, or they've been going through a difficult time and they haven't been able to spend as much time on their business.
But they were chipping away. They made little pr, you know, little chips as they went through the years. And then they made a huge bo boost of progress. They got a huge boost of progress when everything kind of like, when their storm kind of cleared up a little bit, right? So we don't wanna compare ourselves and we also wanna give ourselves like the kindness of not being too judgey, right?
Uh, while we're going through something tough, Getty says, thanks for being a loving dog mom to Barry and Charlotte. That's why I, I wore my pit bull love shirt today. I, uh, you know, it's for Barry. I bought this, I bought this whole thing because it, it looks like Barry's ears, like Barry used to have these tortilla chip ears.
Um, when he was younger, when he, when he got older, they got to be kind of like, they were a little offset, but they were these beautiful tortilla chip ears. Yes. Charlie, would you like to say something? You know, so in any case, all right, I'm gonna, we're gonna end on that note, but don't beat yourself up.
Give yourself kindness. Remember that this is a tough time and it's not always gonna be like this. You're not always gonna have a hun like a hundred other things to do for your personal life. You will be able to do stuff for yourself and you should, you have to fill your cup. Uh, there's no way that we could have cared for Barry for so long with all of the stuff, all the drops and the 24 7 monitoring and the doggles and the um, and the walks and like all the stuff.
We couldn't have cared for him if we didn't fill our own cups, if we didn't do our own stuff. So you have to make sure you're doing that. And don't compare. Everybody grieves differently. Everybody deals with. Um, personal events differently. You have to do your own stuff, build your own train, focus on your own track.
Holly says, this chat is inspiring me, especially, uh, in not being so hard on myself. Yeah. That's why I said like, there's you, you can't, being hard on yourself during a hard situation is, is like just, it's just basically gasoline on the fire. If I was beating myself up this week about how, how much I haven't gotten done, like I would be totally demotivated from doing anything.
Like I would just, I would loaf for, for in perpetuity, basically. But if I'm just like, you know what, this week is hard. This, I knew this was gonna be hard. This was the live stream I never wanted to do, but I knew I'd have to do it someday. I knew this was coming. I knew I'd have to do it. Um,
But if I'm hard on myself and I don't give myself kindness, I can't even grieve Barry or honor his memory or remember all the good times, I'm just focusing on me, right? I'm focusing on how hard this is for me rather than saying like, look at all the cool stuff Barry did and look at all the amazing things that he, that he did in his long life.
And I think we wanna focus on that stuff. And when we have the space and when we have the energy and time take care of ourselves, chip away at your business. Um, yeah, we should always see freelancing as comrades over competition. I think I never knew other freelancers personally, so I didn't have any sense of rivalry with anyone.
I always find community really helps for me. Um, like I told my students first, like my students knew before anybody else, I haven't posted on social media. I'm not ready. Um, and I told my students first, but I feel like that sense of community, just being able to share with like a closer group, uh, or at least being able to communicate with others who are closer, I think helps too.
You're welcome. Thanks Vicki, for your kind words. Thanks for sharing something so personal. Um, I think for me, I always have to be open and honest on here. I don't feel like me coming in here and just like, for me, what always frustrated my journey, what I felt frustrated with with my journey was everyone was like, just send more pitches.
Just send more Lois. Just do this thing and do it forever. Like, don't change anything. Just do this thing forever. Don't like that drove me nuts. There's so many things that change in our life over the 10 years that I've been a freelance writer. I've now lost, I've lost family members, I've lost pets. I've gone through all kinds of weird situations.
We've moved. Um, there's all this stuff that has happened and I think that. Me telling us, talking about this is a normal thing we should be talking about. It's something that all of us go through. So just a, like I said, you can't focus on your bus a hundred percent on your business a hundred percent of the time.
And when we miss all of these little pieces that actually make up the life of a freelancer, we're missing the part that actually builds the business. Like if, if, if I, like, I am motivated by supporting this tiny gremlin where she gets snacks, and I was motivated by supporting Barry and supporting our family, you know, and that's part of it.
That's part of it. So I think that if we don't share these kinds of personal things and if we don't come on here and, and I don't show up when I'm having a tough time and telling you I'm having a tough time, it just makes it seem like everything is perfect and I never have a tough time and everything is great.
And when in fact I have lots of tough times. Right. I think that honesty in our community is really important. Like, I don't wanna come on here and just be like
a robot, like, like a person that has no issues ever. Um, I wanna tell you about my failures and I wanna tell you about the hard times. And, um, and you know, on here, everybody knows the, the updates, right? The updates are why, you know, we have the live stream. It's not even for the information about freelance writing.
We're only here for the pup updates, right? So, you know, just having them here and sharing with you guys, I think is important. So hug your pets. Give your pets. If you guys have pets, I don't care. A loved one, pick any kind of loved one, I don't care. Give them an extra squeeze for Barry today. Okay?
All right, Charlotte got her extra squeeze.
I'm trying not to cry. Give him an extra squeeze for Barry. Um, thanks for letting me talk about all this personal stuff that's really tough. I hope that this was helpful. We're here every Friday at noon central time. I'm normally very chipper and not sad, but, um, I'm glad that we got to talk about this.
Give yourself kindness. Chip away at your business, work on this stuff over time. Give yourself space to grieve or all this stuff. Um, flower Power says thank you for creating this space for us to talk on this, uh, and for sharing during such a hard time. We had a very similar experience with our dog, and I definitely remember this chat, um, for a long time.
Yeah, it's really tough. It's really tough. Um, but you know what? We, we have to share these things. They're important. So I'll see you guys next week. Um, we're here every Friday. I hope everybody. Um, and business says, I'm so glad you're talking about this. I had to pull back this entire month because of my uncle who's back in the hospital as of yesterday.
Yeah, that's the thing. We always have something, right? Whether it's our own health or the health of someone else, or we're grieving loss, or we're dealing with a difficult, difficult situation, or, you know, I tear up when they tell you to give your pets or your loved ones an extra squeeze just for Barry.
Barry gave so much love. Um, and, you know, be, I'm sorry to hear about your uncle. I know we've talked about that before, but it's tough. I hope that, um, yeah, everybody gets extra treats. EJ says that everybody's getting extra juices if feral. I like Sherlock is feral. Of course, Sherlock. Sherlock would be feral.
Sherlock is the perfect name for a Ferrell cat. Ugh. I love that. All right, so give everybody an extra squeeze. I'll see you guys next Friday. Have a wonderful weekend. Um, and, uh, yeah, thank you so much for all the kind words. Thank you for letting me tear up. Um, I really appreciate it else. Do you guys next week? Bye.
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