These days, I’m learning so much about energy and stamina and how they relate to creativity, production, and output. As I cycle through what is required or what I am committed to as a CEO, a creator who leads and coaches other creators, a mom, a daughter, a sister, and a friend, the messages my mind, spirit, and body communicate back to me are writing a new set of rules.
If you’ve become acquainted with me in the last few years since I launched Embolden Media Group, you may have missed that I’ve been in the wonderful world of book publishing since 2003. As the dynamics of often being the only Black woman on my team and in other publishing circles collided with the culture of the company I worked for at the time, I averaged 60-80 hours of work each week for a little more than twelve years. Even as I transitioned out of that position into a new one with a less intrusive expectation of work-life balance, I still found myself working 16-20 hours a day, trying to learn a new culture, nurture a growing side-hustle, and attend graduate school.
I’m not new to this; I’m true to this.
Though we can’t escape the impact of the systemic and environmental influences of the people and places we exist within, no one made me approach work this way. I own that some of this is a result of who I am. I’m ambitious. I’m crazy. I’m optimistic. I’m crazy optimistic. I’m creative and easily excited over new ideas. Couple these with deep thinking and strategic planning, I don’t see limitations as, well… limitations. In the beginning third of my career, I even had my share of emotional breakdowns as I did my best to meet unrealistic, uninformed expectations—my own and other people’s—with my limited-energy self who I had yet to realize even existed.
Fast-forward to the present and I am a CEO of a literary agency and publishing consulting firm that is still very much a flailing startup, even though it will be five years old March 2022. It’s success and longevity are still very much tied to my day-to-day hustle. I don’t work; we don’t eat. After being alive longer, I’ve experienced heartbreak and unimaginable grief, political and social unrest directly connected to my own identity, a pandemic, and… You know the deal. You’re living life and in this world with me.
What I’ve been noticing is that the hard-stop breakdowns I had when I was younger are virtually nonexistent at this phase but the recurrence of feelings of exhaustion and low-grade anxiety seem to cycle in and out in a pattern I had never been still and quiet enough to recognize.*
Here’s what I’ve been tracking for the last several years:
In the fourth quarter of every year, I feel like I want to retreat or hibernate.
At the end of the fourth week of the month into the first of the next month, I feel the same—unproductive, tired, and depleted.
What I’ve also tracked is that if—in the fourth to first quarter of the year (late November to mid-February) and the last couple days of the current month to first few days of the next month—I give myself a few necessary things, I’m able to recenter and begin to feel inspired, energetic, and ready to get back at it. I set new goals, come up with new ideas and things to implement, and I’m off to the races. If I want to “win” the race, I’m learning that in these down times, I need…
Rest—like, literally more hours of sleep
My ambitious self fights this with everything. I even take my own self on miles-long guilt trips, which end with badly because, after beating myself up, I still ain’t got nothin’ done! LOL!
Time alone…
…to assess, plan, think again, dream. I often journal or blog through this process, kind of like what I’m doing right now and what I did with a related Instagram Reel I released earlier today.
Outside inspiration
I need to be surrounded by stories and people that inspire me. I’m noticing that to feed myself, these must be people and stories for whose success I am not partly responsible for. I’m excited by the people, the artists, and creators I work with and serve but I’m pouring out of my well to serve them in whatever they need at the moment. In reverse, I’m filled by the stories and people whose success is not dependent on my output.
Moments of creating just for the sake of creating
I don’t showcase much the other creative parts of myself. For example, I sing. I love music, actually. I’ve sang professionally for years. If you’ve known me prior to my founding Embolden Media Group, you most likely know this. I also love to cook and bake (you’ve seen a little of this if you follow me on IG). I love aesthetics and putting visually pleasing things together, which manifest themselves in my love of art and design, homemaking and plant parenting (you have seen this too), hair, makeup, clothes, shoes, bags…
To be refilled and restored by turning to activities that take me away from writing, editing, and book publishing is the difference between creative life and death. I must give myself the freedom to create just for the sake of creating. No deadlines. No consumptive purpose. You know?
I Surrender
This weekend, I felt the affects of a difficult week I brought on myself. I felt at war with the awareness that I was working hard during the week in my creative cycle when I actually needed to rest and recharge. Unfortunately, I hadn’t planned ahead for it. My schedule this past week was the busiest it had been in a while. Every hour was filled with a meeting with a person or project.
For some time, I’ve noticed my levels of energy, production, and creativity peaking and plummeting throughout different times during the month. Yet, I hadn’t made any adjustments to my schedule to make accommodations for it. Then a week or two ago, I was listening to Morgan DeBaun’s WorkSmart Podcast and I heard her mention her monthly workcations. Something clicked: “Why don’t I do that?”
“Workcation” obviously doesn’t mean no work or working through a much-needed vacation. It has different meaning and is carried out in different ways by different people. I took it to mean that during this workcation—however long it is—I choose to approach my work in a different way. More restful and restorative. Maybe, for me, it involves…
A lot less peopling—no to writing coaching, meet-and-greets with editors, and connecting with potential clients; yes to more time with kids and close friends
More quiet, deep work—writing, evaluating proposals, editing in blocks of time
Visioning—big-picture planning, goal-setting, or evaluating progress toward big goals
Connecting more personally with my core team
A change in my work scenery—work from a different, inspiring location. I work from home, which I love, but the beach is another favorite spot.
I’m Going in Cycles
Being a woman, cycles are not foreign to me. My biology functions through cycles (so does yours, fellas). But for too long, I didn’t connect those cycles to how life lived for me. Like, what do hormones have to do with productivity? Listen, I know when I say it like that, it’s like, “Duh.” I literally was studying to be a doctor before this writing and publishing thing took over. Anyhow, I think that our feminine cycles have been given a bad rap, and because I have accepted it I work in opposition to them, trying to escape rather than embrace the divine intention behind them.
God, the Creator Himself, set cycles and seasons in motion at creation. He set in weekly, monthly, yearly, and multi-yearly cycles that connect with our bodies and being in every way—from hormonal and emotional to spiritual and even professional and financial. (Read more about a writer’s cycles and rhythms here.) These cycles were not sinful and evil, needing to be rejected then, and that is not the case now.
In her article “How Your Energy Levels Change on Your Menstrual Cycle,” Renee Plant helped me process all this by saying:
Mood changes and discomfort are common before and during a person's menstrual cycle. You've likely learned what to expect from your body during menstruation, but hormonal fluctuations affect your body throughout the entire month.
Your mood and energy levels consistently change due to hormonal shifts during your cycle. This is why you may find you're more productive during certain weeks than others.
She goes on to identify the kinds of activities a person should participate in during each phase of this cycle. What she brings forward is incredibly enlightening. I recommend you check it out.
Doing more digging, I came across a graphic that expands the concept of a person’s monthly cycle into seasons of the year. Blew. My. Mind. Created by Kate Codrington, the image teaches about “seasonal cycle awareness” and how it “can be helpful even if you aren’t menstruating, even if you’re a bloke in fact (man-struating maybe??) This graphic will show you how to map your creative cycles and show yourself more kindness while being more productive.”
Permission requested.
Why All This Matters
I sort of went all around the bend on this—I realize this. But that nature, my biology, and creativity are divinely interconnected for my thriving is an important connection of ideas for me. When ideas live in separate places of my understanding, I don’t, well, connect them. When I don’t see connections, I don’t have the strength, wisdom, and imperative to enact the changes they demand.
A few weeks ago, I prayed Psalm 90:12. It says, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” I feel like this revelation is an answer to my prayers.
I gain wisdom for how to live my life fully and radiantly, powerfully and with the impact I was created to make, when I can track and respond to my days when productivity and creativity peak and when my seasons of rest and recovery make themselves known. This is much bigger than numbering the days between my monthly biological cycle so I remember when to have my purse packed with feminine hygiene products. This is so much more about thriving and living in the flow God designed for me to be able to live as my best self.
What I’m sharing here is not new, and I need to stop acting like it is. I’m not fooling you or anyone else. This is ancient wisdom manifesting and intersecting my own search for how in the world to live better. This is a wisdom my aunts and grandmothers demonstrated to me when they said in their own ways, “I’ll let you young people fuss over that. I’m going to sit right here until y’all decide what you want to do.” “I’mma let y’all wear yourselves out…”
Seasons and cycles of life call for different levels of energy and these wise women in the Fall and Winter (or Second Spring as Kate Codrington calls it) of their lives knew how to sit back, rest, and receive the harvest from the seeds their lives had planted. They let us, in the Spring and Summer of our lives, expend our energy circling around things they’d already learned. It’s so much more valuable when we learn on our own. What’s old and well-worn wisdom for them is new to us—new to me.
The other reason this all matters is because there’s an enemy at work against the things God has established for us to be creators like Him, to live as we are in His image, to live well, to live in shalom (peace). The enemy uses patriarchy, racism, capitalism, religion—whatever he can get his hands on—to undermine the divine rhythms God established for our work and our rest. He wants to keep us living separated, ignorant, and in opposition to the rhythms, cycles, and seasons of life God established before the foundation of the world. He knows when we do, we will surely die—and not just physically, which is all of our fates now, but also we can die creatively, emotionally, and spiritually when we don’t find our flow in these cycles and seasons.
New Rules
So, yes, my life as a woman is impacted rather obviously by cycles. My creative and productive life as a woman leader is also profoundly impacted and follows a similar cycle. It is to my own demise if I choose to continue in ignorance and defiance of the ebb and flow of the cycles and seasons of my life. Because living a life I feel proud of, where I know I’m leaning into my strongest, most glory-radiating self, I’m not only going to surrender to my cycle of creativity, I’m also going to embrace it with grace and gladness. How good is God to bring me to this place of peace and rest?
Going forward, here are my monthly cycle rules:
Don’t give your weekends away to work. Don’t promise anyone anything over the weekend. Take your Sabbath.
Take one week a month off for deep work, your kind of workcation. (For me, this is week 1.)
Schedule hard stuff and high-energy implementation and engagement during weeks 2 and 3.
Close things up, finish them off in week 4, or reschedule/set delivery dates for week 2 of the following month.
I’ve always sort of had an annual cycle with shutting high-energy activity down during the last quarter of the year, and sometimes into the first quarter of the new year. My annual cycle is so similar to my monthly cycle, it’s wild I missed the connection.
A Final Noticing: My Cycles Don’t Line Up with the World’s
What’s interesting about all this is that deadlines, delieverables, and launches are usually set for “first thing in the morning,” the first of the month, or the first of the year (which is January and technically midwinter if you think in terms of seasons of the year—not actually a great time, I’ve noticed, for me to be starting something new. March/April are great times for me. Anyhoo…). So…
What do I do to still meet expectations?
This is new for me, but here’s what I’ve learned so far and am working to get better at:
Plan in advance and deliver early when possible.
Communication frequently and honestly with stakeholders.
Manage expectations.
Give myself more lead time.
Accept my limitations and welcome this acceptance with it being an opportunity for others to be included in a client’s success.
Say no. (Read more about how your no may be the most powerful tool in your productivity and creative arsenal in my article “Maybe Means No.”)
These are the most effective ways for me to deliver what people need while still nurturing in myself what I need to be the whole, happy, and creative person I need to be for them and myself. Otherwise, operating under a lack of this awareness (and in defiance of what I need to be wholly effective) has been difficult and costly.
What do you think of this idea of creativity flowing in cycles? Is your creative life informed by cycles? How do you maintain and sustain a productive and full creative life?
__________________________
*A note to clarify: I’m sensitive to the fact that African American women are at a higher risk of depression than women of other ethnic groups. What I am describing about myself here is not depression. Admittedly though, I, like other creative people, may be more prone to anxiety and depression as I share here. Still, I do have a therapist and a therapist mom. I have not been diagnosed as being depressed. What I am discovering and sharing in this piece is more about my limited-energy self [enneagram 5] balancing her high-energy, A-type tendencies [INTJ; venturer on the Predictive Index] with her biology and simple need to rest sometimes—LOL!—alongside what happens when I don’t listen to my body.
In case my sharing about this raises questions about Black women and depression, here’s a bit more on the subject:
A. Rochaun Meadows-Fernandez, “Strong Black Women Are Allowed to Have Depression, Too,” Healthline.com, April 18, 2019.
dforsythe, “Depression In Black Women: How Do You Know If You’re Depressed?” Black Women’s Health Imperative, July 31, 2017.
If you are wondering if you may be dealing with depression, click here or access the article just below for a list of symptoms.
“What Is Depression?” American Psychiatric Association
Please also don’t hesitate to reach out to a mental health provider if you suspect you may be dealing with these symptoms.
Finally, in light of what we’ve all sort of been dealing with throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, I found this article incredibly enlightening about our capacity for functioning the way we did pre-pandemic:
Tara Haelle, “Your ‘Surge Capacity’ Is Depleted — It’s Why You Feel Awful,” Elemental.Medium.com, August 17, 2020.