2011 has finally FINALLY come to an end. I can’t even begin to tell you how thrilled I am that it’s over. Haha!
It’s not that it was a terrible year, it’s just after June it exploded into six months straight of 60+ hour weeks and 16-19 hour days. I’m burnt out. For some reason my work just got busier and busier. I ran a class every Monday. I’ve always been around the same google ranking (nope, apparently we’re now first), but the amount of work just overloaded us and I started to feel a bit burnt out.
The quality also broke down.
It all came to a head earlier in December when we got bad feedback on a very big order. I didn’t take it as badly as I thought but I knew it was coming after we finished the work and it still hurt. I worked my butt off on that order but it just didn’t turn out like I planned. There were so many problems. It just proved we couldn’t do it after all. All I could do was profusely apologise and now wear the shame of it – whenever I see/hear about that particular place my heart hurts.
But I took the feedback on board and immediately changed how we did things. I stopped taking orders for the entire month even though we were only three days in. I set my holidays to start earlier and completely changed our menu and dropped a product for now until we can get it back on the road again. I started making new plans for class structures and offered gift vouchers for Christmas. I stopped over booking myself.
We could have taken what probably sounds like thousands of dollars in orders this month if I continued to take them on board, but after that bad feedback and the amount of work we put into it, I started to feel burnt out. I started to dread emails and work.
If you ever feel like that, you need to reconsider your life. I turned my hobby into my work, and if I start to hate it, I will have nothing in my life to turn to. I play video games, but that is really the only other thing I have. The end of this month I’ve been on holidays since the 19th, and with just three orders until 2012 it has been a nice slowdown, but I’ve also been a bit bored when I have no work to do. I don’t really remember life before this.
You might get people asking you to do things all at the same time – but you have to set a limit. Help everyone, and the quality of everyone is compromised. Help just a select few, and everyone walks away absolutely delighted. You be the boss.
Have a very safe and Happy New Year, and I hope 2012 brings you all wonderful things. For me, there’s only one step to take my work, so that’s where we’re heading. 
Monnie x
