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Friday Musings - The Dad Factor

My Own 'Happiness Project"

Guest post by Blog Manager Robbi Hess

Picture2I've recently been trying to... I'm not sure, I want to say rediscover myself, but honestly I don't know if I've ever had a self to discover or a self that had been discovered before. It's true that when faced with a life-altering issue, you really do re-evaluate. Sure I would have been much happier to have developed a grinding headache and a note from the Universe that read, "Hey! It's time to slow down." Unfortunately, I was given a much larger, not-able-to-be-ignored wake up call. So, here I am. Where that is, I don't know. 

What I do know is that I won't keep working for clients that don't either pay me what I'm worth or value what I bring to the table. I've started setting actual office hours (even though my office is in a corner of the living room) I start at a decent hour and I stop at 5 p.m. It was very hard to turn the computer completely off at 5, and I was convinced that something earth shattering was going to happen and I'd miss it. Know what I realized? Nothing has happened that I have missed out on between the hours of 5 p.m. and 8 a.m.! Who knew! 

Yes, I do have my phone with me at all times and yes I do get email notifications on my phone so I'm not out of touch completely, but in the past three months since I've started the "new me" I have only had to turn the computer back on once. 

As for my happiness project... I have been reading a book by the same name by Gretchen Rubin. The book is about the author's quest to be happy. It seems, and sounds so simple, doesn't it? Truly, it's not. I'm working through the chapters and am enjoying reading the author's struggles. I mean, everyone knows that you should go to bed early and get a good eight to ten hours sleep to truly function at the highest level, but for people with families, careers, and outside interests, it's not always feasible to crawl into bed at 9 p.m. 

I'm on a quest to find out what makes me happy and I'm finding it doesn't even have to be anything big. Sure, I'd never turn down a Vera Bradley bag as they always make me happy, but I've been learning to find happiness in simple things -- taking an actual lunch break during the workday, being able to take Henrietta for a walk, watching the tomatoes in the planters get ripe enough to eat.  

Comments

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Robbi

Caren, I completely understand. I struggle with it almost daily. It's hard to turn something away but I, too, have had to learn to not work for free -- no one would ask a CEO to come to work and run a company for free, right?

caren gittleman

I am so grateful for this that you wrote: "What I do know is that I won't keep working for clients that don't either pay me what I'm worth or value what I bring to the table."

I have been sitting here for the past two hours beating myself.

I was contacted by a woman from Linkd In who has a dog related website. She approached me to write something on her site approx once a week. (she claims she asked 5 or 10 other bloggers too) I asked her what she would be paying...the answer was "ZERO"...not even product. I had originally said yes, then I remembered words that Yvonne keeps beating in our heads to "STOP WORKING FOR FREE" that bloggers have a powerful/valuable voice, that we should be PAID for our services. While this woman's site was created for noble reasons, for once I had to think of MY TIME...how I have to maintain two blogs that I often don't have time for, and how someone contacts me who I don't even think READ my dog's blog and wants me to write for her for FREE????
I wrote her back and told her what I bring to HER equation...and I am wondering just exactly she brings to MINE.
I still feel sort of bad but I must start believing that I am WORTH being paid!
Sorry I rambled but this just happened today

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