I started working as soon as I could.
The first ten years of my working life were characterised mostly by the type of jobs at which you have to wear oversized t-shirts, engage in small talk and smile a lot.
To be honest, I mostly enjoyed it.
At fourteen years and nine months I was SO excited to put on my very first massive white t-shirt and start my very first job making waffle cones at an old fashioned ice creamery in my home town. For 3-4 hours, a few days a week, and most days during the summer holidays, I would fill bucket after bucket with perfectly golden waffle cones and come home smelling like a pancake.
For years I carried a small waffle shaped scar on my inner arm.
A year or two later, I upgraded to a job at the local Newsagency. As a teenager I was obsessed with magazines and like many girls my age considering themselves very into fashion I imagined Carrie Bradshaw’s life to be both somewhat achievable and the most incredible dream come true. In the meantime, a 10% discount on magazines and a little less pancake perfume felt like I was taking a step in the right direction.
In my very early twenties I was hired as a student promotional representative at my University. This included driving out to schools, open days and careers fairs, setting up a booth with a small team and chatting to prospective students and their parents for a few hours, all juiced up on instant coffee and Arnotts cream biscuits.
It was through this work I was offered my first office job.
I couldn’t believe it.
Look at me making it, I thought.
Everything seemed as if it were going to plan.
Up until this point, I had never worked the same hours every week. I had always worked weekends and evenings and in different locations. I had also never worked at a job that required me to sit, at all.
The allure of an office job felt intoxicating. It felt adult. It felt as if I was doing The Right Thing and becoming A Real Person. My new office job came with a significant pay rise, a desk (with a snack drawer!!) and the freedom to both make tea, and pee, without asking for permission first. Most importantly, I could throw away the massive orange t-shit and wear whatever I wanted, every single day.
Perfection, no?
Absolutely not.
Despite my initial excitement, I very quickly longed to be back at the careers fair, which made me feel both confused and wrong.
This was a step forward, why couldn’t I step up?
One of the very first things I noticed about my new fancy adult job was how quickly I lost all and any focus, how time seemed to stand still. For the first time in my life, days felt inexplicably long. I was also, definitely not doing a good job.
All of this felt destabilising to my very core.
I had a lot of insecurities in my younger years, but my ability to focus, to work hard and do well at my job was not something I had ever doubted about myself. I lasted, I think, just over a year in this role before I was made redundant, and despite a momentary wave of shame around going back to making less money and what I had mentally characterised as a ‘lesser job’ (which is complete bullshit) it was a sweet relief to be in a retail environment again, with a varied schedule and not a single chair in sight.
This office environment lesson repeated itself again a couple years later, except this time it really was my dream job. I felt so proud of myself as I looked around my super slick Surry Hills office drinking free kombucha and posting on Instagram, all while guiltily fantasising about being back on the department store floor.
After that job ended, I moved into freelancing and teaching yoga classes. Teaching on Sunday afternoon or Saturday morning didn’t worry me half as much as five days spent finishing and starting work at the same time, or sitting down on a Monday 9am with the intention to ‘do some work’. And yet: I still thought I had to section my life into this Monday - Friday / 9-5 structure in order to ever be considered good or successful. Despite it very obviously not working for me before.
Such a shame you have to work weekends, people would say.
One day you won’t have to teach at night! Said others, with pity.
I often agreed with them, but deep down I knew the ‘outside’ hours weren’t the thing that bothered me at all.
A few years ago, I came across the concept of Venus Day on Instagram and it blew my mind.
The idea that Friday was governed by the planet Venus and energetically a day for a little romance and pleasure and self care and dressing up cute ignited a fire in every cell of my body (probably because pleasure is what I was needing at that time most of all). I immediately began to experiment with introducing the tiniest dose of sweetness into my Fridays, and writing this, I realise it was probably the first step I allowed myself to take onto the deeply healing path of living a more pleasure centred life.
I used to teach a yoga class every Friday night for years and years, so around midday, between my morning and evening classes I would challenge myself to take a bath, or read in the sun listening to jazz. I say challenge because I felt a cloak of guilt covering my whole body for ‘doing nothing’ during the ‘work week’ even though I regularly worked outside of it.
I felt such a positive effect from the Venus day experiment I began to lean in more.
In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need anything outside of ourselves to ‘give us permission’ for living life a little differently, but in reality, it does help when we feel something deep inside of us that seems so out of place with the rest of the world… and then realise we are not actually alone. In a world that constantly broadcasts one size fits all advice, we cannot underestimate how important this truly is.
When I discovered Saturday was governed by Saturn it made so much sense why Saturdays had always been my favourite day to work. When I discovered Tuesday was ruled by Mars I laughed, because throughout my whole working life, my Tuesday schedule has always been the busiest of all.
Of course, learning about the planetary energies of the days of the week is not about finding another system and squishing yourself inside of it. It’s more about noticing if you have your own inner rhythm and finally, starting to trust it a little more.
Maybe you are simply not productive if you sit down for too long.
Maybe you don’t really eat sugar or gluten but a croissant always calls you on a Friday.
Maybe you’re telling yourself you should ‘chill’ and ‘rest’ on Saturdays but there’s something about sitting still that feels kinda off.
Maybe you love working out, but the Monday morning class is always the biggest struggle of them all.
Maybe you desperately try to schedule your week in advance but it always goes wrong.
It’s less about: It’s Mars day, so I must work extremely hard!! And more about: expanding our view on what ‘productivity’ can look like, and trusting ourselves to make the right decisions for our energy in the moment.
It’s been years that I’ve experimented with this way of working, and no other productivity advice or system has made so much sense to me. It’s not like I follow it exactly or think about it all the time, but in the moments I doubt myself, in the moments I’m having a conversation with someone who disagrees or is trying to understand, I remind myself that the stars and the planets shouted this from the sky long before someone made the rule about working 9-5.
Tomorrow evening at 7pm AEST, I’ll be teaching a workshop breaking down the energetics of each day of the week, what that could look like regardless of your current schedule and walk through examples of how I’ve played with this over the years to find self acceptance and balance between discipline and pleasure, getting shit done and doing nothing at all.
Of course, this is complimentary for everyone enrolled in Bud to Bloom, a three month Cocoon for the seasons of work, business and creative life.
Thank you for being here, and maybe this playlist can support you through the rest of your Mars Day 🔥
CELESTIAL RYTYHMS 〰️
A soft business workshop ☁️ / for a new take on ‘productivity’
This Wednesday night we will deep dive into riding with the energetics of the days of the week, take inspiration for your work, business, fitness, spiritual practice, creativity and self care from the ruling planets of days of the week.
This workshop includes an in-depth exploration into the energetics of each day, with suggested tasks, practices, reflections and examples of this in real life.
With time for community sharing and Q&A, this is *not* a prescriptive workshop, but instead, encouragement to find and trust your own unique rhythm and way of moving through your unique and precious life.
〰️ A REPLAY IS SENT OUT TO ALL AFTER THE LIVE CLASS 〰️
Included with Bud to Bloom if joined before May 10th!
For the longest time, I kept trying to 'make' my self employed WFH dreamy creative artist life a 9-5 to emulate the people around me and maybe justify that what I do is valid and serious and allowed, lol. I love how you said, "a Real Person." Its so wild to me how in this society we only feel like a Real Person when we have a struggle/suffer/serious office job hahaha, I have operated that way for so long.
This is so lovely. I’m fascinated by the stories we inherit or attach to when it comes to what work and productivity ‘should’ look like. The comments from others who think you’re lacking or somehow stuck or behind in life if you don’t work full time, five days a week. These themes come up a lot for me in my conversations with clients, most of us are so heavily conditioned to accept a very specific version of what career success apparently is. I love the way you talk about the importance of figuring out what works for us and doing things on our own terms. Very keen to learn more about the planetary rhythms, my daughter goes to a Steiner school and R.Steiner was very much guided by these rhythms also. Thank you for sharing 💛🌻