We’ve reached the halfway point of the year, so I thought it would be interesting to reflect on the first half and my hopes and plans for the second.

The cats

If I were to pick one overarching thing for this year so far, it would be the cats. Since last October, we’ve had month after month of different illnesses, incidents, and random things going wrong. For so many years they were pretty much no effort – just food, yearly injections, flea and worming meds, and that’s it. We’d happily leave them a few days at a time before we started our business, leaving out a ton of food and water and knowing they’d hunt something if they wanted a change.

Now, with various heart, lung, kidney, and other issues under our belts, there’s a lot more work involved. Every few hours someone needs some kind of medication. At least once a week we’re at the vets, usually more (it’s Tuesday, we’ve been twice this week, and we’re back again in the afternoon and probably for another follow up in a few days). We’ve spent around £7,000 at the vet this year, which doesn’t include all the extras we’ve bought, like fancy nutritional foods and stuff. The other aspect of it is that it’s just. so. exhausting. It’s the energy and time and organisation required every day, even before anything else is factored in. On top of everything else that’s been going on this year, it’s made everything so much harder. Not least because of the combination of emotional and physical energy required. I love them more than anything, and I would willingly give them my own organs if I could, but they’re incredibly hard work, and will be in the future too.

The business

This is an interesting one to talk about, because we’ve effectively doubled our turnover since January, which a lot of people would see as a success. However, I’m frustrated because I had a lot of plans for this year, in terms of new products and services, that are taking a lot longer to come to fruition than expected. This is largely because of some crazy incidents we had to deal with – and still are dealing with – and yes, that’s incidents plural.

My view on this can be broadly summed up by the following: I’m not here to compete, I’m here to create. I love creating things and learning stuff, and those are always the things that make me happiest. Is part of it that anxiety won’t let me sit still and do nothing? Of course. Is part of it that all my happy chemicals are triggered by creating new things? Of course. If people actually want to buy things I’ve created then that’s a massive compliment and bonus, but to be honest, I would still create things anyway.

So while I’m off living this happy wonderland of doing exactly what I like with no manager or boss to tell me otherwise, anything that pulls my time away from the things I love has a really big detrimental effect on my day to day. My work life is set up so that I do what I enjoy doing, whether it’s photography or writing or being on Facebook, or whatever else. Most of the things I don’t really like, like figures and pinning on Pinterest, are the responsibility of our accountant or assistant. So having to waste weeks of my time on stressful incidents, both big and small, has really frustrated me this year. I innocently didn’t anticipate people starting fake sales chats, posting random lies about us, and all kinds of other things. Strangely enough I thought our biggest challenges would be things like paperwork, understanding international (and ever changing) tax laws, and getting customers. Our customers (over 700 now!) and affiliates are lovely, everyone else can stay out of our lovely protective bubble please!!

The social stuff

I think I mentioned it before, but time is the big thing for me. I hate wasting even five minutes now, so if I’m waiting around or not doing something I see as super fun, I honestly prefer to just be working. When working is reading, writing, photography, design, and hanging out on social media, it rarely feels like work anyway, so it’s definitely more fun than just sitting around doing literally nothing (aka random chatting). But this is also probably one of the reasons I get tired and grumpy, because I don’t take even a couple of minutes for my brain to catch up. As soon as I wake up in the morning I’m checking emails, tickets, social media, and then sticking on a business video or audiobook. I’m not particularly a morning person, but the second I wake up I’m awake, and the second I’m awake I want to be doing something. This is actually a really positive thing, because it means I’m getting enough sleep to function, and I’m getting up at the right point in my sleep cycle (years ago, when I had to get up at 5:30 for work, my brain and body never adjusted to it no matter what I did and it just made every single day awful, like wading through treacle).

Social stuff is beginning to creep back in more in some ways. We’ve had more “proper” days out, including Bletchley Park, the National Space Centre, and a trip to London to visit Churchill’s secret underground bunker. Going to the cinema as a couple is pretty much impossible now, as is going swimming, but since the gym and swimming pool are next to each other and under the same membership, we’re planning to alternate over the summer when the weather is better.

The health

Mentally I’ve never been better; of course some days are harder than others, but that’s more because of real life challenges that aren’t me. I think I’m at one of the best times of my life in terms of my mental health. I respect others’ choices when it comes to medication and therapy, but they’ve never been useful for me (in fact they’ve mostly made things a lot worse), so for me it’s about taking action to change the things I don’t like and I’m not happy with in my life.

I have much less tolerance for spending any time with people I don’t like, because all that kind of thing I had to repress at work and in family life and I don’t need to do that any more, so I’m actually honest and conscious with myself about who I like spending time with. I would probably rate my mental health 9/10 at the moment, it doesn’t feel like something I need to consciously focus on, and I don’t think of myself as having any mental health concerns as it stands. I think a big part of this is because previously I was obsessing a lot about understanding myself, which created a cycle of unhealthy obsessing and reflecting. Now all that time and obsession goes into thinking about and doing things for the business, which is a lot healthier and more productive. I like practical self-help books (I’m reading Habits of a Happy Brain at the moment and that’s really interesting), but that’s about as far as it goes.

Physically, my health could be a lot better. I’m definitely feeling myself getting older, I’m not fit in the slightest, and physical activity is never my first choice. So over the summer I’m working on finding the right balance for it, where it fits into my life in a sustainable, habitual kind of way instead of random spikes and then nothing.

The money

Money has been a really strange one this year. We’ve earned far more than last year, but it doesn’t feel like it because we haven’t really changed our day-to-day spending. When I was employed I was good at sticking to my pay cheque, but not good at saving. And there was no reason for that, other than I just didn’t have as healthy an attitude towards money as I could have, and I bought things to cheer myself up. Over the past seven months, we’ve been saving to try and save our house (long story), and on top of that we’ve had all the vet bills and two high-end laptops, which are business expenses but expensive all the same.

Luckily I’ve never been the kind of girly girl who’s obsessed with makeup, shoes, bags, etc., so most of my spending outside food and essential toiletries is actually business-expense-worthy now, other than the odd computer game, stuff for my planner, Spotify, and my leisure centre membership. I’m running quite lean in terms of non-food things, and I cut out a lot of stuff I used to buy, plus holidays, when we started our business on a strict budget. Which has been great for creating a new money mindset; I definitely have a better attitude towards saving money. This year I’ve also started to notice I see money differently too. Before it was all about, “I have X to spend, so this is what I can buy, and Y will have to wait until I’ve saved up.” Now my attitude is more like, “More money already exists in the world than I could ever possibly need, so if I want more, it’s my responsibility to go and get more.” There’s much more of a direct link between taking action and earning money from that action, as opposed to someone else having control over what I get. Of course it has to be the right action, because you can work your butt off and not necessarily get anywhere, but once that’s nailed the rest falls into place.

Life in general

Cats aside, life in general this year has been pretty good so far. There have been plenty of ups and downs, but if I’m measuring this year against the best and worst years I’ve had in the past, it’s definitely leaning towards the good side. I’m excited to get things done and see what the rest of the year brings, and that feels like a good place to be.