freelance — Blog — Éclat Media Group

It's almost a right of passage into the new year-- taking out paper, writing down a list of resolutions, only to forget about that new gym membership 23 days later. We've all done it, and while a new year is nothing but a continuation of infinite time, it does lend itself well to a fresh start. But...

I'm going to be honest with you. I do not make New Year's resolutions (gasp), and here's why. Yes, every year is a fresh start, a time to try something new, improve yourself, eat better, run faster, lift more, write more, draw more, love more, love harder... but so is every month. So is every week. So is every day.

Imagine how disappointed you feel year after year, making resolutions only to forget them over the next few weeks. I know how it feels, I used to do it too, both for my business and personally. It never failed. I would stop writing regularly by February. By March, I hadn't seen the gym in weeks. By April, I'd be eating Taco Bell three times a week. And I felt defeated.

If you treat each day as a chance to start fresh, missing the gym yesterday doesn't feel like such a big deal. You can go today. Feeling too overworked to write for the past week doesn't feel like you failed. You can wake up tomorrow after a good night's sleep and write. There's no continuous cycle of, "Well, I haven't run all month-- what's the point of running today?"

You don't need resolutions to do what makes you happy, to do what makes you healthy, to do what you've always wanted to do. Our lives get busy, resolutions are broken, and it happens. It is ok. We wake up tomorrow, and we try again.

Tomorrow, I'm going to write more. Tomorrow, I'm going to drink more water. Tomorrow I'm going to read a book I've always wanted to read. And if I don't, there's always the next day.

What are your personal and business goals, and how can I help?

Caitlin

If you haven’t worked from home, it sounds like a dream job—“Work in my pajamas from the couch all day? Sign me up!” For those of us who have worked from home, we know it’s not that simple. It can be hard to concentrate, it can be lonely, and you don’t always have the support of a team behind you.

It can be stressful to have your work life and your personal life so closely intertwined, but if you look at it from a different perspective, the downsides of working from home really aren’t so bad. Here’s why:

1. You have to get out of bed. This is true, but it’s hard to get out of bed when you have to go to the office too. It’s much easier to do it when you know you get to come back for a mid-day nap.

2. You miss out on your favorite morning talk show. You look forward to the ridiculous antics of the morning talk show hosts on your way to work, but how hard is it to get out of the car mid joke? When you work from home, you don’t have to turn it off, and you might even have better luck winning the trip to Jamaica!

3. You have to convert your second bedroom (aka your walk-in closet) to office space. Most states let you write off your office space as a business expense, so you have more money to spend on that new pair of shoes.

4. You can’t concentrate when there are dishes and laundry to do. But your dishes and laundry get done, don’t they?

5. You don’t get to interact with people all day. How much did you really miss Bill from accounting anyway? Plus coffee shops have better coffee than the office brew.

While working from home can be tough, just remember that you get an extra hour of sleep cutting out that commute!

Caitlin