At the beginning of the year, I decided that I would be more deliberate about creating my digital footprint and building my portfolio as a Communications Strategist. I was on track until I lost my dad in the third week of January. From that moment, nothing seemed to matter anymore.
I lost my drive for work. I turned down a lot of projects during this period because I wasn’t in the best frame of mind to execute them. I also put quite a lot of contracts on hold because I was barely functioning. I remember days when I would sit in front of my laptop and tears would fill my eyes till I couldn’t see the screen.
My therapist advised me to go on a ‘well-deserved’ break. She would call regularly to make sure that I was doing just that. For someone who thrived on having structure and waking up with a to-do list, doing almost nothing felt chaotic. I took a while for me to accept that it was okay ‘not to be busy’ throughout the whole.
I’m glad I took my therapist advice because I now feel really recharged and have a clearer perspective about everything that happened in the last three months. As I planned to resume back to work, I stumbled on the notes I had made about building my portfolio and began working on it again. However, I’m doing things a little bit differently:
- I spent time creating the templates for the different type of posts I intend to share across my social media feeds.
- I have blocked out two hours every week to create content for myself.
- I’ve signed up as a contributor/guest writer with quite a number of blogs. The goal is to have some level of accountability.
I’m grateful for this new start and I’m really excited to see what will happen on this journey.