Easing Into a New Year
All signs pointed to a deep need for spaciousness in 2024...
As we turn the pages of the calendar and begin another year, I am struck with the realization that my small business is five years old. I have started the SIXTH tab on my tracking spreadsheet. We are entering year SIX of Sarah Hyde Wellness. This is a milestone that any small business owner would recognize as a Very Big Deal, but especially anyone who, like me, started a small business right around the same time as a global pandemic established a chokehold over our lives and livelihoods.
If you’ve known me for a while, you know that in the deepest, darkest days and months of the pandemic, I really wasn’t sure if this small business would survive. I thought over and over again, I have made a huge mistake. I need a job with a steady income. I need something I can do remotely. In 2020, my small business made less than $4,000 profit, because I didn’t qualify for one single drop of financial aid from our government. There were days I couldn’t get out of bed - which is rare, because even though I live with chronic depression and anxiety, I mostly can manage it these days. What was the point? Teaching online wasn’t lucrative, and it certainly wasn’t fun (I know some people enjoy it, but I am not one of those people). I felt so worthless and so foolish for starting a business that relies on people leaving their houses and breathing with purpose, just in time for a virus to trap us in our homes.
But it’s 2024, and most people are now willing to leave their homes, and life feels much more normal once again. Not completely like it was before - there’s still a pandemic, there’s still Covid-19, but we do have much better tools now to live sustainably alongside this and other viruses. We aren’t expected to work when we’re sick in the same way we were before. We have vaccines and masks to help us keep each other safe. There’s clearly so much more we could and should be doing as as society to protect and care for those who are most at risk, but things have definitely shifted. Most people who used to like taking yoga classes are now willing and able to get out and take a yoga class here and there, or come along on a weekend retreat. In 2023, I was able to hit my financial goal - really, solidly surpass it - for the first time. The gratitude I feel to still be here and still be doing this work is hard to quantify. Many of the people reading this essay have contributed to my success in some way, big or small. (thank you.)
But even though I experienced the ultimate low of having no work at all in 2020, and almost no income at all in 2021, and I’m grateful to be busy and beginning to creep back in the direction of a “living wage”, something else happened in 2023 - I felt overwhelmed. I got too busy. I felt run down and tired at times, and I didn’t have enough time for myself or my own practices.
You might say this is a good problem to have, when one has so recently been completely broke, and desperate to be busy. I don’t want to sound like I don’t appreciate what I have - I do. But as we came to the end of 2023, I noticed that for once, I didn’t feel like I needed to do a ritual to close out the year to help me figure out what it was I wanted to focus on in the new year, what my intention should be. My intention was SCREAMING at me, and there was no ignoring it. MAKE SOME FREAKING SPACE FOR YOURSELF, my inner voice shouted! Do it NOW before you burn out!
It took a little bit of time to make my way to an exact, succinct word that would sum up my intention. For a long time, I kept saying “spaciousness.” I need spaciousness in my life, so that I don’t feel overscheduled, so that I don’t struggle to fit in time to see my family and friends, so that I’m not booked out weeks and even months in advance with no windows for new or unexpected joy to pop into my day. For over a decade, I’ve chosen a word each year that represents my intention, and worn it on a piece of jewelry for the year. And though spaciousness was the word that I kept coming back to, it didn’t feel right as a single word I could wear or utter for the whole of 2024. One day while discussing my word hunt, Kimberly shared her word - ease - and from that moment, I couldn’t think of a single other word. So, my thanks to her for sharing a word of the year with me.
So I’ve got ease hanging around my neck, literally, a reminder to bring it in to every single day of the week, for the whole year. And of course some days and weeks and seasons are busier than others, but it doesn’t have to be a marathon. It really, really doesn’t. I know it doesn’t, even though we’ve all been completely brainwashed to think that it has to be. It doesn’t. We can do things a different way. It doesn’t mean we don’t work hard or hustle - but we work smarter, and we rest. Every day. There is time for me to soak in my tub every single day if I scroll on my phone slightly less, it turns out.
The second half of this month is a busy one for me. I have my first retreat of the year next weekend, and a quick trip to the east coast at the end of the month. But February is super spacious. I was chatting with my brilliant astrologer Jazmin the other day, and I was delighted to hear that my plans for an underscheduled February are in alignment with my chart and what the stars have in store for me. I work with Jazmin once a month or so, and I swear it’s become like a supplement to my talk therapy sessions. I learn so much about myself at every reading, and our conversations are so meaningful and affirming. I highly recommend her if you’re looking to learn more about yourself.
Working with Jazmin is just one of the many ways that I’m supplementing my intention for ease in this year. I’ve also gotten back to my monthly reiki sessions with my dear friend and colleague Josephine, who knows just how to hold space in a way that makes me feel safe to really let go and tap into what’s deep under the surface. I’ve been so excited to take studio classes again with some of my favorite teachers, at the same studios where I work - how fortunate am I to have access to so many wonderful teachers and classes, in warm and welcoming communities?
Another element to my practice of ease is letting go of the rigid routines I used to hold myself to, like working out for two hours every single day no matter how I felt, and restricting my calories to keep myself incredibly slim. I’m learning that what I thought was discipline was actually disorder, and re-learning how to move and nourish my body in ways that are sustainable and that actually feel fun and make me feel good.
I’m learning to go to bed just a little bit earlier, even as I complete the project of eliminating the need for an alarm clock from my work week. I don’t have to get up early anymore! This night owl will never need to feel exhausted at the start of the work day - as long as she goes to bed on time. I’m learning that night owls need bedtimes, too. More sleep means an easier day. And that’s what we want. Easy days, even when they’re busy.
I’m sure there are tons of other ways that I’m working with ease that I’m forgetting at the moment, but I’ll try and continue sharing about this as time goes along. One of the biggest ways we can all invite ease into our lives this year and every year is to let go of the manic approach to new year’s resolutions. Set goals, set intentions, dream big - but know that life can and will happen, and at the least convenient times, life will interrupt those plans you set such hard deadlines for. Ease up on those plans and goals. Move in the direction of your intent, with space to adapt as life comes along.
How are you doing? Did you choose a word of the year? Or set an intention? I’d love to hear about it, and how it’s going. Let’s check in on each other, eh?
xo,
