Yesterday was not a good day.

I struggled.

After a productive half an hour in the morning, I had to abandon the pledge to do the ten minute stint on drafting the email to my email list and working on my Ideal Client Avatar.

I had to abandon it as my youngest son who is 11 years old, wanted his breakfast and wanted a packed lunch for school. I didn’t feel bad for abandoning these pledges. It felt natural to be there for my son. There have been days I felt bad but yesterday wasn’t one of them. Because sometimes you have got to do what you have got to do.

Family and their demands pull you away from your business or they pull you away from building it at the pace you want to build it. Sometimes this can be your lifeline. This pulling away.

Family give you perspective.

Sometimes you can use your family as a distraction or as a weapon to beat yourself up with.

“I am so selfish to not be there for my husband or my sons.” I have often heard myself saying.

Yesterday morning though, I felt I was at the right place at the right time in making breakfast for him and reminding him to put the samasos I had fried for him in the lunch box. This is because he was taking an empty lunch box.

I didn’t berate myself or get irritated by his demand.

I am realising more and more that this journey is not an easy one. It is not plain sailing or smooth in anyway.

I bid my son goodbye and I even got a kiss on the cheek from him.

That felt good!

I then had to get ready for my dentist appointment before my day started as a Social Worker.

I actually got to the Dental Surgery five minutes early. For me that is AMAZING as I am famous for being late.

I find lately I am getting much better at this getting on time for appointments.

My check up was completed in 20 minutes and the dentist reported I had no major issues and a visit to the hygienist in the next three months was all I needed.

I then travelled to my office which is 20 minute bus journey from my home.

That is when the tiredness hit me.

I felt my eyes closing and I could not understand why.

I had actually gone to bed early and had woken up at 7am.

I had got 7 hours sleep.

I was dumbfounded.

” Why cannot I keep my eyes open?” I kept asking myself.

I arrived at the office feeling tired and depleted and battled in the morning in attempting to update an assessment.

Noon arrived and I decided to push myself more to complete an assessment on a young person facing custody. I decided to maintain some momentum on this assessment by focussing on it rather than diverting my attention to another task.

For 45 minutes. I took a break from the assessment and decided to write my story of why I started my Business on a blank white sheet unlined paper. I filled four sheets of A4 with my scribbles and put them away into my bag to refer to later.

Perhaps that will be the story to share with the world, that version of my story from that angle that is or perhaps it will not.

I just felt really at peace writing it and being witness to myself.

Somehow taking a break from my Social Work tasks and writing my story gave me the energy to continue with the assessment of the young person facing custody.

I approached the task with new vigour still feeling a little sleepy but not as much as in the morning. I spoke to a few Colleagues about covering my duty role as I had to go into town to see a young person and then went to reception to meet my 2pm Client.

He arrived 15 minutes late and I complimented him for keeping to his 15 minute window. My 2pm Client on Tuesday and a Thursday is a very complex young man who has Developmental Language Disorder and so chronologically although he is 16 years old emotionally he is 11 years old.

He has also been out of school for over three years and apart from the Speech and Language Therapy he gets from my colleague and an appointment with myself he has no formal engagement with adults.

I was mindful of modelling appropriate communication, posture, eye contact and non verbal cues as he hasn’t learnt this and hence talks in street language.

I also engaged with him in my usual manner of getting him to reflect on his offending behaviour.

The scrutiny I gave to his responses he did not like and shared with me the fact that he could make professionals cry.

I shared with him the fact that I liked him and through the session he raised the issue that he finds it hard to trust professionals and peers.

I validated his struggle and stated that it would indeed take time for him to trust me as he has never worked with me before but one of my jobs is to challenge him and if I was making him uncomfortable then I was doing my job.

I spent an hour with this teenager who I genuinely like but who is very troubled and found my energy levels had further depleted.

Being present, truly present is a hard task and that is what Social Workers have to do.

I then finished off some emails and then travelled into Town to see my 430pm Client. He is a young man who has been kicked out of his home and has a tendency to carry knives and take drugs and suspected of selling drugs and being in a gang.

Again I was shocked to discover I arrived at the youth club for 428pm early. I saw my client for 10 minutes, urging him to go to Social Services the following morning in order to get help with his accommodation, simultaneously begging him to co-operate with them rather than running off.

Being so tired, I told him this week’s session was going to be brief and bid him goodbye asking him to keep safe.

I hopped on a bus back to the office and somehow made it to the office to return the travel card.

I decided not to stay.

My body was just begging for a bed to sleep on.

Somehow I got to a pizza place and ordered a pizza to take away for the evening meal.

While waiting for the pizza, I was so relieved to find out the ladies cricket training I have signed up to, was rained off and training therefore postponed to today, Friday 14th June.

I just wanted to get home and lie down.

Eventually carrying two boxes of Pizza, I arrived home and attempted to snooze for half an hour.

For the first time in a very long time, my mind did not toss business ideas or business terms while I tried to get to sleep. My body and my mind seemed to be in an agreement for once that I needed a break from my business.

I must have slept for 10 minutes when my youngest son woke me up at 655pm asking if I wanted to eat pizza with him and announcing proudly that his eldest brother (my eldest son who is 22) is taking him to watch Aladdin at the cinema.

I stumbled downstairs and ate pizza with my youngest son and was also casually given the invitation by my eldest to the cinema. I politely declined the offer knowing full well that a cinema ticket would go wasted, with me falling asleep.

I bid my sons goodbye and relented without any resistance to the middle son’s frustration with my eldest son. My middle son is 18 years old and is constantly falling out with him.

Two years ago, I would adopt the role of being mediator, judge and jury in their arguments.

It was exhausting.

Now my focus is my Business not their arguments and I have noticed that they argue less.

I gave my middle son permission to visit my mum who lives a minutes walk away from my home. And then I sat down to watch BBC’s Killing Eve Series two.

This Black Comedy, although gory, has been the only escape I allow myself these past few months.

I must have watched three episodes back to back when I realised it had turned 915pm.

The washing up needed to be done. The meat that my husband had brought home needed to be put away.

These tasks confronted me.

I didn’t feel overwhelmed by them though.

I realised I needed some time to touch base and check in with my husband who had entered the house and just gone upstairs while I was fixated on watching TV.

I called him being concious that at 10pm I was meeting with my enrolled client to go through some questions to unravel more of a profile of my Ideal client Avatar.

I had scheduled the meeting that late because my enrolled Client lives in California and her time zone is Pacific.

I warmed up some daal (lentils) and cauliflower and potato cury that my mum had given me in the microwave. I warmed some pitta bread and sat down with him at the dining table and we shared a conversation about his day and my day.

My middle son also joined us briefly about his day and his struggles getting a job. He told us that he had heeded our advice and would not accept the restaurant job offered to him.

I then asked them to go upstairs while I spoke to my enrolled client for an hour They quickly agreed to this without resistance and no argument and went upstairs.

The next hour I spoke to my enrolled client who was so helpful in telling me that until she found me, she felt so disjointed and was desperately seeking a Coach who provided not only therapy but also coaching and spiritual guidance and mentorship.

I do not have words to describe what I felt when she said she feels so blessed to have found me.

Joy kinda describes it and conveys it but not quite.

Yesterday in that hour I conducted my research into my Ideal Client Avatar, I reconfirmed and re-affirmed my purpose why I started this business and why I spend time and energy in showing up for my Clients and prospective clients.

I realise I provide the bridge between therapy, coaching, mentorship, spiritual guidance and healing.

My enrolled client said she finds me so relatable.

If you find this relatable, then please follow me here and share this blog with other people you know that have a Business or are starting one or thinking of staring one.

This has been a long post. I promise not to keep you too long tomorrow.

Be patient with my meanderings!

If anything in this blog has really resonated with you and you would like to discuss the subject further with Taniya privately then use this link.

https://calendly.com/contact-3453/15min