Years ago, my husband caught me watching Ginny & Georgia in bed at two o’clock on a Tuesday.
Except “caught” is an interesting word, because I was a grown-ass woman, in my own house, watching my own television.
But you wouldn’t have known that from my reaction.
The second I heard the front door open, I turned off the TV, grabbed the book next to me, put on my glasses and sat upright.
The book, incidentally, was one I had already finished.
But I needed a prop.
When Dale walked into the bedroom, he looked confused.
“Weren’t you just watching TV?”
Busted.
And because lying would have somehow made this already ridiculous situation even more ridiculous, I told him exactly what I had done.
“When I heard you open the door, I turned off the TV, grabbed my glasses and this book, and uncovered myself.”
He stared at me.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t want you to think I’m lazy.”
There it was.
Not particularly flattering.
Not particularly rational.
But absolutely true.
I didn’t have a name for it then, but I do now: productivity guilt.
I Had Already Been Up Since 3:45 A.M.
Here’s the part that makes this story even more absurd.
My alarm had gone off at 3:45 that morning.
I hit snooze twice before rolling out of my cartoon dog flannel sheets at 4:03, showering, bra-ing up and heading to the coffee shop so I could open by 5:00.
It happened to be Customer Appreciation Day, so for the next several hours I mostly “worked” by giving away coffee and talking to people.
Around 8:45, I left my lovely employee to fend for herself while I jumped on an advisory board Zoom call for our community.
After that, I paid bills.
Returned phone calls.
Counted cash.
Made the deposit.
Handled whatever other tiny pieces of running a business needed handling that day.
Then I went home and MADE myself go for a walk because I’d committed to one of those challenges where you publicly announce you’re going to walk a 5K every day and therefore have to do it because the internet knows.
By about 1:00, I was done.
Bra off.
Socks off.
Back into the cartoon dog sheets.
Ginny & Georgia on.
Peace.
Until I heard the front door.
And despite everything I had already done that day, my immediate instinct was:
Someone is going to think I’m lazy.
I Thought Work Ethic Was a Character Trait
For a very long time, I didn’t just value working hard. I tied my self-worth to productivity without even realizing I was doing it.
I used it as evidence that I was a good person.
Hardworking meant responsible.
Hardworking meant ambitious.
Hardworking meant useful.
Hardworking meant worthy.
And lazy?
Lazy was practically a moral failing.
So any suggestion that I wasn’t working hard enough, even an imaginary suggestion from a husband who had not actually suggested anything, could send me into a full-blown internal panic.
It didn’t matter how much I had already accomplished.
There was always something else I could be doing.
Another email.
Another project.
Another load of laundry.
Another idea.
Another business problem.
Another room to clean.
Another way to prove I wasn’t wasting my life.
My attention was always looking for somewhere else to go.
Rest wasn’t something I did when I was tired.
Rest was something I had to earn and when I hadn’t sufficiently earned it, resting made me feel guilty.
And apparently, even after earning it, I needed to hide the evidence.
“I Don’t Know How You Do It All”
People used to say this to me all the time.
“I don’t know how you do it all.”
It was meant as a compliment.
But every time someone said it, I’d have a tiny panic attack.
Wait. Am I doing it all?
What am I forgetting?
Is there a deadline I missed?
Did someone need something from me?
Which ball is currently hurtling toward the ground while everyone stands around thinking I’m some kind of organizational wizard?
Because I absolutely did not have my shit together.
I missed appointments.
I forgot practices.
I forgot conference calls.
Sometimes dinner was whatever everyone could find.
There were unanswered emails, messy rooms, forgotten permission slips and probably at least one child somewhere waiting for me to pick them up.
The cherry on top was that I was hungover every single day.
But we were alive.
That was sometimes the organizational benchmark.
And yet from the outside, I suppose it looked like I was doing a lot.
I was.
But here’s what I understand now that I didn’t understand then.
Doing a lot and working all the time are not the same thing.
I Wasn’t Trying to Build an Easy Life
For years, I would explain my strange entrepreneurial life by saying something like:
It’s an easy job.
That was my disclaimer.
My defense.
Yes, I own businesses.
Yes, I start things constantly.
Yes, I’m involved in the community.
Yes, I’m doing seventeen projects at once.
But don’t worry, everyone. I’m not giving myself too much credit.
I can still lie in bed at two o’clock on a Tuesday.
See?
Easy.
I don’t say that anymore.
Because I didn’t build an easy life.
I built an autonomous one.
And those are very different things.
It took me decades to create a life where sometimes work starts before 5:00 in the morning and sometimes Tuesday afternoon happens under cartoon dog sheets.
Sometimes I work ten hours.
Sometimes I write something in an hour that matters more to me than something I spent six months building.
Sometimes I have an idea and disappear down a rabbit hole for an entire day.
Sometimes I sit outside with coffee and a book on a Wednesday morning because I can.
None of those things tells you whether I’m hardworking.
More importantly, none of them tells you whether I’m worthy.
Maybe Productivity Was Never the Point
Even back then, buried underneath all my obsession with work ethic, I think I knew what I was actually trying to create.
It wasn’t more work.
It wasn’t a bigger business.
It wasn’t a packed calendar.
It wasn’t proving I could hustle harder than everyone around me.
I wanted to contribute.
I wanted to make things.
I wanted to create spaces people wanted to be in.
I wanted to provide jobs.
I wanted to build community.
I wanted my work to matter.
And I wanted enough control over my own life that I could decide what mattered today.
Sometimes that’s opening a coffee shop before sunrise.
Sometimes it’s writing.
Sometimes it’s taking care of my family.
Sometimes it’s building something that didn’t exist yesterday.
And sometimes it’s watching trash tv in bed at two o’clock in the afternoon.
Turns out, none of those things requires an explanation.
I Don’t Hide the TV Anymore
Because somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting a life that looked productive and started wanting a life that felt like mine.
No guilt. No shame. No anxiety.
Now, that doesn’t mean I stopped working hard.
I probably always will.
Creating things is part of who I am.
But working hard isn’t proof that I’m a good person.
Resting isn’t proof that I’m a lazy one.
And my value isn’t determined by how much I can accomplish before I’m allowed to crawl back into bed.
I spent a lot of years trying to earn the right to live life on my own terms.
Maybe the strangest part of finally getting some of that freedom is realizing I don’t have to justify how I use it.
I didn’t work this hard to become better at working.
I worked this hard to have a choice.
And sometimes I’m choosing Ginny & Georgia.
PERMISSION SLIP
You are allowed to rest before everything is done.
You are allowed to enjoy the life you’ve worked so hard to create.
You do not have to look productive to be worthy.
