Data vs Feels

If you were to pop your head into my office right now, you may think a creative bomb went off.

There are 4 canvases of paintings I'm partway through completing for a client to hang in her office, the one I painted their logo on after hours last Wednesday night.

There's 3, maybe 4 hand-written to do lists that have headings like "YOU MUST GET THESE THINGS DONE TODAY" and a dozen items below, many with big black lines through them having completed them.

There's sketches of stands, test prints of posters, at least 3 empty drinking vessels, one of which needs refilling (that's my water, the others are coffee and protein shake), as well as the myriad of pens I use and a heat pack cos my back is playing up.

And the chaos isn't limited to my desk...

My inbox has four emails in it that have been sitting there for longer than I'd like to admit. If you're one of those four people. Hi. I see you. I'm sorry. I'll get there.

I have a marketing strategy I'm presenting Thursday that I need to get my head around. A recently approved logo that needs to go to a client. An invoice I still haven't sent to someone who wants to start their website build next month. And the whole time, this voice in my head has been screaming at me...

You're not doing enough. You're not keeping on top of things. You're falling behind.

I fucking hate behind. It's that specific flavour of exhausted where you've been going since 6am (literally my day yesterday setting up an expo stand for a client) and somehow still feel like you've achieved nothing.

So this morning, mostly to make the voice shut up, I opened up my FreshBooks.

And this month, going purely off the numbers, is looking like almost a $50k month. With another $60k sitting in estimates I've already sent out.

I sat there for a second just blinking at the screen. Cos wt-actual-f?

Cos if you'd asked me an hour earlier how the month went, I would've told you it was chaos. Barely holding it together. Definitely not enough. And I would've believed every word of it, because that's how it felt.

Now the annoying lil thing about feelings when you're a freelancer with your own business is that often, those feels aren't fiction, but they kinda aren't fact either.

Early mornings aren't every morning, I was in bed until 8:45am this morning, but when I have a full week of them, it feels like employment, and ew to that. Late nights aren't nearly as late as they used to be, but driving home at 10pm when you know your husband is waiting for you to come to bed kinda sucks. The days where you work a bit more than you meant to are gonna happen.

And this month I absolutely said "How blessed am I to be overwhelmed by the success I once wished I had"

But feelings are terrible at counting. They don't tally invoices sent, or clients nurtured, or the fact that you had a killer month.

Effort doesn't know how to measure itself. It just knows it's tired.

And just so we're super duper clear here, this works both ways.

Maybe you've checked your numbers this month and it's been your version of a killer month too, and you had no idea because you were too busy living inside the to-do list to look up. That's info right there. That tells you your system is working even when it doesn't feel like it, and maybe the fix isn't "do more," it's "trust the data more than the noise in your head."

Or maybe you check and it's quiet. Fewer invoices out. Fewer conversations in the pipeline. That's information too. Please, don't tell yourself "I'm lazy," or "I'm failing," or even GirlBrain's favourite "I'm not cut out for this." Trust me, I've let my feels get the best of me sometimes. But a feeling just sits there being loud. Data tells you something you can use.

Data doesn't care how tired you are. It just tells you what actually happened. And sometimes it can surprise you.

And imma say this because I know I sometimes need to hear it:

As someone who has chosen the pathway of entrepreneurship, there will always be something to do.

That's not a big ol neon sign with the words "you're behind", that's just what running a business looks like. The post-its aren't proof you're failing. They're proof you're in it.

So if you're closing out this month feeling like you didn't do enough, before you believe that story, go and check. Open your invoicing software. Look at what actually went out the door this month. Not what's still on the list. What's done.

The feeling might be lying to you. The numbers won't.