Finding Purpose

I’m feeling a little lost…

2018, for the most part, was a pretty darn good year. Not all of it was rosy but dammit if it wasn’t a good year to me. No, this isn’t one of those posts. I’m not recapping the year that was. Rather, I’m going to talk about the person who is. In this case me. 

I closed out the year with a flurry of travel through the south, with my good buddy and karaoke maven, Rachel Cherry en-route to WordCamp Nashville, where I was on the organizing team.

December was an emotional ride for me. While my trip was great, I had a lot on my mind. There was conference-related stuff to mind, there was also #wpdrama stuff to mind with the release of WordPress 5.0, and then another business venture (which I can’t talk about just yet, but it’s very exciting) and that’s all on top of my life stuff. As great as December was, with seeing and experiencing new places, it chewed me up and spit me out. I was kaput!

I managed to take ten days off for Christmas, which was great. However, when I came back, I came back to a mountain of work and emails to attend to. So when the New Year began, I had absolutely zero fucks to give about any of the work and responsibilities that required my attention. I wanted to curl up into a ball and hide.

This isn’t how you’re supposed to feel coming into the New Year is it???? I felt like a lazy egg.

I thought about other folks who decided to give running their own business a break. I thought about why they did it and whether or not I should, too. The hustle and the grind are real, and it’s not glamorous. Why do I do this to myself, I wondered aloud.

The fact is that I was exhausted. The fact is that I AM exhausted. This shit is hard. In spite of reading smart books on running your business and managing your time, this stuff is still challenging.

Why do I do this?

Why do I put myself through the grind? At the end of the day, I don’t have any lofty business goals. I want to do work I find exciting and help businesses.

But there has to be something more to it all, right? I mean, right?

I don’t have a nest egg. I’m not rich. I’m content and relatively happy. I still haven’t learned how to appreciate what I have, and I always look over the fence at others and compare and yearn for things I don’t have.

The more I think about where I’m at mentally, the more I feel like I’m void of a real purpose. My business doesn’t have a purpose. I’m not talking about one of those fuzzy feel-good statements we often find on a company’s about page.

A friend of mine told me recently that a company’s vision is their North Star, their guiding principle. The company’s mission is all about how they’re going to do what they do. Finally, she said, the company’s purpose is the why—the thing that makes them get out of bed every day.

What is my “why?” I thought about it. It also helps that I’m talking about this very thing on my Podcast. If you haven’t listened, check it out! This week, we’re pointing out our purpose for our business.

Why do I do this? What is my purpose? What is my business’s purpose?

I took to Google to see what I should do.

After some deep digging, I did find some well-known companies that have compelling purposes. I know that I have one, too—I know that my business has one. I have more digging yet to do apparently.

No, I don’t have an answer for you (or me)!

I feel like this is something I should already know, but I’m flailing. I don’t know. And after taking some deep breaths and talking to my Shaman, Stacey (just kidding but how sick would that be??), I came to the conclusion that it’s okay to not have a purpose right now.

I can take my time with it. And that’s alright.