A weekly photo diary + my new job!

How I spent a week off between jobs

I had a week off between jobs and my goal was to spend it on family time, being “productive” (errands deep cleaning, business and home admin, etc) and rest / self-care.

My natural instinct when I have time off work — whether it's weekends, holidays or vacation — has always been to cram as much "productive" to-do's in as I can, usually working on my writing projects, running errands, and deep cleaning.

The truth is, those things do fill my cup, but even good things that fill your cup can be too much when overdone. So, here's where my week ended up:

Monday was Memorial Day and it poured rain all day, so we spent all day inside as a family. Daniel cleaned the garage and I deep cleaned the downstairs guest room / my office (it really needed it!).

Tuesday was take your wife to work day 😂 — I hung out at the Seed House for the day with Daniel. We worked on our website, primarily doing SEO updates and listing cover crops blends for gardens and homesteads. After testing out cover crops in our gardens, we are realizing how impactful cover crops can be for a garden, so we’re pivoting our e-commerce strategy for the Seed House to start selling custom cover clop seed blends for gardens, raised beds, backyard food plots, etc.

Wednesday I met up with my brother’s family and my sister in law, and we took our kids to the zoo. The boys LOVED it and the weather was perfect for an outdoor outing. It’s still the coolest thing to see your child discover things for the first time.

I also finally finished up our vegetable garden — I needed to transplant the tomato and pepper plants I started indoors. We still need to plant our flowers and corn, and seed up the trellis to truly get the garden fully planted.

Thursday was my “self-care” day. I spent a few hours working on the seed house website and some of my writing projects at a coffee shop. Then I took myself out to a solo lunch at a Mexican restaurant because that the only option other than fast food. I spent an hour wandering around a few thrift stores and flea markets, and then went and got a massage for the first time in my life (I’m going to try to make it a monthly thing now — it was so, so good!). We then had a family chiropractor visit, got dinner at a local diner and spent the evening at a church bonfire.

Friday I went to work with Daniel at the seed house again. My in-laws drove up so my father in law could help Daniel replace two of our shop garage doors. The old garage doors were in rough shape and constantly fell off the rails, so Daniel has been scouring FB marketplace for replacement doors. He finally found a good deal on two gently used garage doors a few weeks ago — Daniel and his dad spent the day installing the new doors and they look so good!

I snuck in a facial on Friday — something I haven’t done since before I got married! We spent the evening with my in-laws — my mother in law brought her strawberry plants and planted them in the two center garden beds for us.

Overall, it was a lovely reset week, that was much needed. My hormones post-weaning this time have been such a roller coaster and I haven’t been feeling like myself the last few weeks, so my body and mind needed to slow down and reset. It’s actually truly amazing how transformative this week was for me and balancing out my hormones 🤯 — it’s got me re-thinking a lot of things!

I start my new job on Monday and I’m so excited!! I accepted the role of Tax Director of Quality & Risk Management at Armanino. It’s the same work I was doing at my previous firm but with a promotion, higher pay and an opportunity to establish and grow the firm’s tax risk management practice (the position reports directly to tax leadership). Honestly, if I wrote my own job description for my next ideal role, it couldn’t have been more spot on. I’ll still be working remote from home. This role came out of nowhere and is truly God’s provision in many ways! I’ll share more thoughts on this in a bit.

Until next time,

YPS