Silly Season

Last night I spent fifteen minutes walking in a circle around my house looking for my phone - kitchen to dining room to living room to bathroom to office - wash, rinse, repeat. I made the circle at least a half-dozen times before I finally found the phone next to the printer in my office. I have no clue why it was there - I don’t even remember going into my office when I got home, but apparently I must have.

I’ve repeated this exercise at least once a day for the past week - with my keys, with my computer cord, with Fletcher - my middle fur baby (in my defense, he is in his teenage “sulky” years and hides a lot).

I swear I’m not losing my mind. I’m simply exhausted. I have overcommitted myself in every possible way these past five weeks. So much so that I have started referring to April and May as a singular time - Silly Season.

Case in point, yesterday I woke up at 5 am to complete notes and a report for a client whose Board retreat I had facilitated on Saturday.  By 9:30 am I was at Cobo Hall where I met with attendees from the Urban Land Institute’s spring meeting every half hour, for seven hours straight, to help them create personal branding statements for the organization’s new directory. By 5 pm I was in Ferndale to teach the weekly small business planning class I facilitate for the Build Institute. By 9:30 pm I was home and was trying to spend an hour catching up on emails, but was spending the time looking for my errant phone instead. Today I’ve been up since 6 am trying to catch up on those emails, write this newsletter, run to the SheHive for our midday Masterminds before driving to Plymouth to speak at a conference before running back to the SheHive for our evening Masterminds session…

It’s all great, and fascinating, and FUN work - I’m loving every single moment of it. But, still… it’s all work. I have errantly made the choice to stack EVERYTHING on top of EVERYTHING except for down time, family time and time to be still and think.

Too much of a good thing is still too much.

Saying yes to every interesting piece of work that comes along is turning out to be a less-than-awesome strategy for life. I need a better litmus test for what gets an emphatic “Yes!” and what gets a pass. I’ll let you know what that litmus test is when I actually have time to sit down and think about it…

Are you a Silly Season survivor? What is the test you use to determine where you spend your time? I’d love to hear your tips and tricks. Shoot me an email or, better yet, drop a comment below. I’m sure others would love to hear what you have to say too!

​With much love and gratitude,

Ursula Adams, MSPOD
SheHive Founder, Leadership Coach, Silly Season Survivor