Reflecting on 2020
It’s taken me until the 17th January to really be able to put into words how I feel about 2020. It has been a real contradiction between my personal life and my little business. I have so so much to be grateful for and at the same time, just thinking about going back to the year 2020 makes me shudder. I’m not sure I could stomach doing it all over again yet in my business life I developed an addiction to the buzz, to the unknown, to all the highs (although the lows were stomach knotting, pukey kind of feelings too).
2020 gave me the biggest year in business to date. It also gave me shingles.
2020 gave me the opportunity to be featured on a double spread page in Latte, Business Chicks Magazine. I was also a guest on Jenny’s Podcast Simple Smarter Numbers. I was on TripleM and 4AW radio stations. I was asked to be a panel member for a Telstra Team training zoom call. Then I was asked to be featured in a blog post all on my very own for Telstra Smarter Business website. I was a guest on Sunday Morning Today Show. I worked with small businesses, corporates, and international companies. In one week we sent over 1,000 care packages just to corporates clients. It was an extraordinary point in time just keeping up with the supply and demand.
2020 also made me a nervous wreck. I had so many balls in the air; I wasn’t prepared for this level of work. But also, we didn’t know if we could operate. The stress of the unknown felt crushing on some days. The hours I would lie awake trying to figure out what I needed to do the following day. I would have complete blanks because I just didn't know what to do first from my ever burgeoning list. I was sent 3,000 of the wrong shipping boxes. I nearly ran out of boxes twice and trying to get stock via the post sometimes taking the scenic route around Australia. And then there were my poor children who spent more time at home then they did at school. I felt awful that here we were in the same house, yet I saw them less then ever before. I sometimes felt robbed of this time we could have been spending together. Torn between the 'make hey whilst the sun shines' and my children who are children for such a short period of time.
One thing I know for sure is that I could not have survived the Melbourne lockdowns workloads without the support and efforts of my entire family. Some weeks my parents would help me 7 days a week back to back. My sister came every weekend and Thursdays and my husband joked that he would do his 'main job' and then clock off and do his second job working for FBB. Many evenings I was so fried that Jon picked up all the slack in our home life whilst I sat mutely trying to deal with the overwhelm and exhaustion.
2020 taught me that I we don’t have to go out everyday to be entertained. We have so much beauty in our lives and on our doorstep. We have so much to be grateful for and appreciate. I realise that I have so much more in me, I can achieve so much more – I had no idea. 2020 has pushed me to an almost new person and with that brings new ideas, new hopes and new dreams. I am grateful for 2020 but I’m also grateful for a new year and taking a moment to breath.
I hope you held up during 2020 and are now looking forward to a covid and less disrupted life somewhere in 2021
Sarah x
