What Is Enough?
The pressure we put on ourselves
It was mid-December and my business was humming, operating at capacity with the real holiday push yet to come. I watched special orders roll in as I worked to prepare and organize my team for the onslaught of physical labor that would soon be upon us as we fulfilled and distributed hundreds of holiday roasts while expecting record traffic and sales over the butcher shop counters. All of this would be in addition to the ongoing operations of meat processing for wholesale and subscriptions sales that supported my local butchery.
What I also saw at that time was the rapidly approaching end of the calendar and fiscal year. As the sole owner-operator, I would return home once the doors to my two facilities were locked and my staff had retired for the day, only to retreat to my home office where I would muster any remaining energy I had to review the company finances. A deadline loomed to make expense payments, submit grant reports, and complete a host of other administrative tasks due by December 31st.
I felt a ton of pressure to keep up and maintain order in the business amidst the approaching chaos of the holiday sales sprint. For my business, like so many in food and retail, fourth quarter sales were often how we turned an annual profit that was necessary for survival. In a meeting with one colleague regarding my loan obligations, I promised that several reports would be in order for the following week, and they responded with a question I’ve since held on to: “Is that a deliverable that was assigned to you, or did you put that on yourself?” I realized in that moment, as I was running on empty and drowning deeply in my many to-do lists, that I had muddied the “must” tasks with self-appointed “should” assignments to a point of being completely overwhelmed.
Today I am no longer a business owner, but in my capacity as a technical consultant for small businesses, I support other owners in crucial strategy and decision-making work. I like to think of myself as an accountability partner. However, in doing so I am often the assigner of homework around things like budgets and cash forecasts–more deliverables for the list. In response, these business owners negotiate with themselves just like I used to. They say things like, “I should be able to get that to you next week, just as soon as I (insert a list of self-imposed goals to grow the business here), and after I (insert functions required to keep daily operations moving at the necessary pace here).”
Our meetings are usually squeezed in between my clients’ time working “in the business”, while the work we identify as necessary is often difficult to prioritize among the many other goals that fall into the bucket of working “on the business”. For these small enterprises, making money today (and I don’t mean profit, I’m simply referring to revenue) is a must-do that so often feels more critical than planning for tomorrow. After all, cash planning requires cash.
Here’s the thing. While I’m now telling this story from the all-so-wise perspective of ownership afterlife, I still do this too. I struggle with the balance of working in the world and working on myself.
Over the past year, after a brief period of recovery from the burnout that led to shutting down my business, I’ve slowly ramped up a workload of professional commitments to a point that often feels precarious to fulfill without sacrificing the personal time and space I now know is required to keep me from slipping back into the dark hole. I’m once again devoted to my calendar, and I’ve reinstituted a practice of reordering my own to-do list of deliverables (tied to supporting those of my clients) in order to manage the anxiety I feel creeping in when my brain does the math on available hours in a day and what I’ve promised to others that I will accomplish within them.
I know I make these commitments and put this pressure on myself. The therapist who supported me through the period of my company’s closure, and all the feelings that followed, encouraged me to simply practice saying no. I tried, or at least I tried saying maybe as a step towards no. Do I lack discipline? Perhaps. But I can’t help being a yes person, especially when I can’t unsee the perils that face our local economies and small business owners.
If you are an entrepreneur, you’re likely a doer and wannabe change maker. And if you’re like me, you’ll chase goals at the expense of well being. Once you’ve solved a problem or conquered a challenge, you’re on to the next. When it comes to impact, there is no such thing as “enoughness” for people like us. There is always more work to do. Which is probably why I am still unable to draw a line at what is enough in a day, or a week, or in life, regardless of whether my time is fairly compensated.
Some impacts of burnout are lasting. The number of deep work hours my brain is now capable of in a day are fewer and more precious than ever. Therefore, it’s necessary to maximize their value, and yet, I have found myself in another vicious cycle of being a do-gooder to the point of being a financial martyr. In my business, I often prioritized mission over profit when these ideas were incompatible, and when it came to cash management, I paid myself last. Now I am overcommitted with pro-bono and discounted work that often serves undervalued businesses and industries that need, but can’t afford, the type of assistance I can provide.
I want to champion a possible future where a living local economy thrives, and yet I often feel, or should I say fear, that I am failing to lead by example. All of which has me thinking a lot lately about enoughness and how to achieve it.
Tara McMullin asks in a recent newsletter titled, “Good Work and Good Pay”, “Why would anyone choose to become a teacher today? Or a social worker? Or a librarian?” To which I would add, “Or a small business owner (or advisor)?” She explores the concept of “vocational awe” in which our society idealizes these jobs and institutions, but fails to support or truly participate in them. Do we really value these roles if we don’t assign them an appropriate value when it comes to compensation?
In “The Radical Business Owner’s Guide To Profit”, Kate Tyson encourages the possibility of enoughness in an anti-capitalist sense of seeking real, sustainable models for non-extractive profit in business. These ideas are not new to me; I sought Kate’s advice multiple times as an owner striving to achieve balance and wellness in my business. But when I sat down to read this new zine, I found myself considering her words from a new perspective–as a professional human being who must earn a living to support and care for myself. It was a reminder that if I want to pursue impact driven work that takes care of others, I must advocate for my own value in the form of profit.
This whole essay has perhaps been a long winded admission: I’m once again trapped between a pressure-inducing tendency to offer myself up as a solution to today’s urgencies and a learned need to reserve capacity and guarantee my own resources for tomorrow. I want to do better. What I want, for all of us, is to find balance in a state of enoughness.
Consider this a progress report. I’m working on it.
Insights and Distractions For A Tense Time
I was recently turning the pages of Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America's Food Industry (which I learned about from my pal Steve Sabicer when he interviewed author Austin Frerick on his Enlightened Omnivore podcast) and it got me pretty heated, just like this newsletter about “Chevron’s risky new fuel project” that’s being deceptively promoted as climate friendly, or news that the farm bill has failed to pass. Which you likely haven’t heard about, because despite the fact that this will have a massive impact not just on farmers, but on our food systems, it doesn’t seem to be news.
I try not to fan the flames of cynicism, but it's hard some days to not feel crushed by the weight of corporate greed and influence in America, especially as we’re all wondering what will change after the upcoming election. That said, if you’re interested in diving deeper into the messy interwoven history of how policy influences the food we eat, I really enjoyed this recent conversation about “How food in the US is used to divide and conquest” with Andrea Freeman on Mark Bittman’s Food Podcast.
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According to some, kitchen table economics will decide this election. So even if you’ve decided on your candidate for president, I’d like to recommend you read Maria Rodale’s latest newsletter, “The Price of Food vs. The Presidency”. It’s an elegant summary of the complexity of food pricing that I wish more people were educated on, although few of us have the benefit of Maria’s lifetime of firsthand experience on the matter:
There is no Presidential power that enables whoever it is to determine food pricing. The capitalist markets are the first thing that determine pricing, followed by things like the farm bill, consumer behavior, global political and environmental situations, and farm labor.
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These are historically tense times for all of us. But at least there will always be books, right? I’d like to believe the many articles and reports I’m seeing about the “The Decline of The Novel” aren’t true.
I took a quick fiction break from my dystopian non-fiction bender to read Ann Tyler’s Dinner at The Homesick Restaurant (which I added to my list after reading about Judith Jones’s experience editing Tyler in The Editor), and I’m happy to report I found relief getting lost in the words of this generational family saga.
A good read might be just the distraction you need right now. Maybe consider putting down your phone to abandon the news cycle and pick up a book this evening? I’ve got some recommendations for you here including some all-time favorite food memoirs I’ve just lately re-read, like Blood Bones & Butter, and Save Me The Plums. If food is a source of joy for you too, I promise they won’t disappoint.
As always, thanks for reading and just being here.
XX, Heather
Well-said! This really resonates with me…Thank you!
Thanks for the mention!