Coming back from holiday to nothing

When you’re permanently employed holidays go something like this. If you’re busy, you count down the days and dream of the lazy mornings ahead of you. The day before you leave you write handover notes for your diligent colleagues and feel a spark of excitment as you turn on your out of office. Often it can take days, maybe even a week, to wind down from the stress but you get there eventually. If you’re disciplined you don’t even open your email app. On the Sunday night, before it’s time to come back to work, you might get the blues, wishing you could prolong your break a little longer while you wonder how many hundreds of emails will be waiting for you.

Holidays when you’re self employed are nothing like this!

The first difference is that there is no one to man the ship while you’re away. I do think it’s good practice to set an out of office and not to respond to emails but the idea of not checking them at all seems unreachable. I made a rule with myself this time that I would check emails, reply if it was urgent and only take meetings/calls if it was about new business. I managed to mostly stick to this.

Closing down my projects one-by-one in April I have to admit I felt a sense of smug pride that I’d managed to time everything to end more or less at the same time so that I could gift myself 2–3 weeks off. I worked part time during the first two weeks of April while I closed down projects and then took two solid weeks off. These weeks felt good, like a proper holiday and a nice rest. Having that gentle ease into my break meant I wasn’t winding down while I was on holiday and it felt easy to relax and enjoy my time away. That was a nice feeling.

What was tougher was the return to work. Or non-return as it’s currently feeling like.

My next contract has been delayed. At first I was told it was only a week long delay. That felt manageable. It was the four day week after bank holiday so I planned out the week. Two days of working on the garden room, a day of work calls and writing, a meeting and the dentist on Friday. Having a plan helps me feel grounded when things feel out of my control.

Then on the Thursday of that week, I found out my contract had been delayed by another two weeks. I felt adrift and anxious. My carefully timed contracts and expert time management of Q1 felt like a thing of the past. My money anxiety kicked in again, not as strongly as I’ve felt it before as I know I’ve got a runway until July but it was still there.

I also feel quite purposeless. While this two weeks should be an opportunity for me to make time for the other things I want to do, writing, knitting, working on our flat/garden etc, I’m struggling to see this. I think because I see these things as side gigs it feels weird for them to suddenly be the main things happening in my life. I also do better when I have a plan and a routine which feels hard to get into when you’re living in limbo.

So I’m now halfway through that two week period. Setting some goals for last week helped a little. I set a writing goal, a distance goal for my exercise bike and vowed to finish the scarf I’ve been knitting for a year. I also tried to get ahead with things I knew were coming down the line like preparing for a pitch I have coming up but haven’t received the brief for yet.

Going into my second week I still feel ruderless. I’m really struggling to see this time as extra holiday I can enjoy. I also feel anxious that the contract will change or be delayed again.

If anyone has had tips or tricks when it comes to dealing with the uncertainty of self employment I’d love to hear from you.