So it’s been super hot for a while now, and to say I’m not a fan of hot weather would be the biggest understatement ever (my favourite weather is sunny but cold).

However, the one advantage of the heat is that it means I’ve slowed down a lot and relaxed a lot more. I’ve spent a lot of my time outside around meal times, just relaxing in the garden with a plate of food and enjoying being outside. I’m already pretty tanned, not that anyone notices since I’m not white anyway!

Over the past few days I’ve been focusing more on starting to style the life I want. The first phase of Lyrical Host is finished, and while we have plenty more ideas for products and services, they’re not “core” ones so there’s nowhere near as much pressure to get them out. The marketing I’m doing now, other than blog posts, videos, and the monthly newsletter, is fairly hands-off so sales are definitely more organic now which is great.

We had a couple of friends visit with their kids from Silverstone and had a lovely day wandering around Nottingham castle and the grounds, we spent a day board gaming with local friends, did some video gaming on our own, and we also managed to fit in a swim. I hate pretty much all forms of exercise, but swimming is the one thing I’ll look forward to and not have to drag myself out of the house for. The only disadvantage is how much hassle it is with changing rooms and packing big bags of stuff, and getting dressed wet, and all that kind of stuff. But with the weather so nice I just put on a top and skirt over my swimsuit, and wear a pair of flip flops, which definitely cuts down on all the socks/jeans/clothes falling out of lockers and into puddles problems.

The funny thing is that we have a community swimming pool and gym just down the road that we’ve always previously dismissed in favour of the more expensive, further away ones. But given that we want to have every penny spare to go into the business, we checked out the local place last week and were pleasantly surprised. It’s a charity, so the money we spend there goes back into the community, and while it’s definitely not fancy, it’s clean and has everything you need (other than private changing cubicles!) so I’m happy with that. And it’s a definite bonus that it’s within a very short walk.

So now we’ve tried it out, the plan is to buy a membership today and then take up regular swimming. It’s a teaching pool so the hours you can go swimming are pretty restricted, but that’s actually an advantage because it’s more like a class we have to be on time for as opposed to “We’ll go in an hour or so” and then never actually manage to get out of the house. I’m also planning to do the women’s only swim once a week, which is apparently when the pool is dead.

I’ve also been eating a lot better and lighter generally, and although the heat is making me tired generally, overall I feel pretty good! I think that’s mostly because now we’re heading to the end of the first year (we launched LH nearly 11 months ago!) and all the “main” work is done and/or established, so I feel much more relaxed and able to have more of a work/life balance.

I’m starting to craft the self-employed life I always wanted to have, with plenty of time to socialise, exercise, and just do things I want to do when I feel like doing them. I’ve never really had much of a chance to do things that make me happy before, because I was too fixated on doing things to make other people be happy and trying to find my own happiness by proxy. In hindsight, this was just an awful and really counterproductive thing that just resulted in a lot of compromises and a lot of misery and frustration. In contrast, now I find happiness in the smallest things, like a wildflower or being out in the sunshine on a weekday afternoon. The everyday sense of freedom is still unreal, and I can’t see it ever getting old.