Blurred Lines

A while back I wrote about all the things the “experts” say we should be doing in a day - 62 things that would take approximately 19+ hours if I did them all in a day. I’ve been having some fun with the list since then, starting a new project to try out one self-care action a week.

The project led me to reclaim my home office. It’s been a catch all for anything that didn’t really have a place anywhere else in our home for far too long. In fact, since leaving my job last year and becoming self-employed, I’ve primarily used our living room as my “office” and a recliner in the corner as my “desk.” Any day that I haven’t been at the SheHive or on a client site, you could find me sitting in the recliner typing away on my laptop from sun up to sun down. I couldn’t ever leave work because I had to pass it every time I walked anywhere in my home.

I had no idea how much that had started to affect my quality of life until I stumbled upon another option.

Tuesday was my first full day working in my new home office. I walked in at 9 am and worked straight through until 5 pm when I had to leave for book club at the SheHive. When I got home that night around 9 pm, I sat down in my recliner, flipped on the TV and felt no obligation to do anything other than rest and relax. My living room was for living and my work was neatly tucked away in another room behind a closed door.

I had created a boundary, both physically and metaphorically. Seventeen months after becoming self-employed, I finally figured out how to “leave the office” again. And though I had felt it, it wasn’t until I was able to physically see the separation between the two that I realized how much I had let the lines of work and home cross.

My work is my sacred ground, but it is not the entirety of my life.

Boundaries are a really tricky thing, especially as life changes and the lines between work and home, mom and wife, daughter and caretaker, caretaker and a person in need of self-care become increasingly blurred. It’s easy to cross a line without ever truly realizing it.

Take a good, hard look at your lines this week. Where have they been crossed and what boundaries might you need to put in place? If you’re up for sharing, I’d love to hear about what you discover. Drop me an email or leave a comment below.

​Ursula Adams, MSPOD
SheHive Founder and Leadership Coach