Do the Hard and Tedious Things in Pretty Places:

Moms building an author, writing, or artist business when things get boring or hard.

I have seen a lot of rhetoric recently that people should be focusing on fun things in their business. Business should be fun and fancy free. I’ve written about this before on the blog that hard days will happen. Hard and boring tasks still need to be done. Yet, there is a message that things in life and business should be easy. I see this more in the coaching space than any other, but the reality of any part of our life is:

Life and work come with difficulty and tedium. This is the truth for business, for motherhood, and for all of life…

Once we accept that, the hard parts of business and the drudgery of motherhood become easier to handle, even if we have ADHD and crave novelty. Even if we have another form of neurodivergence that makes the tedium less understandable or navigable. Even if we are chronically ill and the difficulty knocks us on our butts.

Accepting that every role we play includes difficult and boring moments, full of decisions and tedium, we can set a plan to make them more palatable.

And my solution? Add whimsy. Do the hard and tedious things in pretty places.

Do the boring things in pretty places: adding whimsy

I live in a particularly pretty place. I’ve already talked on my social media and my youtube channel that some people just get to live in beautiful places. It’s easy to put out lifestyle content like that. Which is exactly how I live my life.

You can do that, too, even if you don’t necessarily live by the ocean or in the mountains. You have parks. You probably have lakes or rivers. You may live in the dessert where you can go to a cute café with gorgeous red-dirt landscapes around you. You can find pretty indoor spaces for harsh winter or summer weather.

Sure, not every hard and tedious task can be done in pretty places. But as often as you can, just changing locations adds whimsy and makes those tasks easier to manage.

Honest limitations of this in motherhood

Summer is particularly difficult on this one for me. At least it was this year. This year, the kids didn’t do camp. Summer felt shorter. We were down to one car, and life kept piling up difficulty after difficulty—financially, energetically, and time wise—and I was still seeing clients. This meant doing work in pretty places was harder.

As a matter of fact, I’m writing this from my couch while my kids make all kinds of noise, play video games, and it’s still too warm for my Western Washington little heart. This is decidedly not doing the hard thing in pretty places.

This is doing the important thing among the ordinary. We have to be okay with that, too. If we’re going to run an author/writing business or an art business—or really any kind of business (speaking as a private practice owner)—we need to be able to tackle and manage the mundane in pretty places and the important things in the ordinary places.

Any other “coach” who tries to tell you something different is likely selling you some over-priced snake oil.

Some times this summer, I did do work in the pretty places. Most of the summer, though, my time in pretty places was focused on not work. Focused on family fun. On refreshing my spirit. On just being. Because none of us can work all the time, that’s not a good life for a mom of young kids.

What I do know is that when school comes back in session, I get to go back to doing all the things in pretty places. I get to have days that I just go to the pretty places because I can, with or without work. I get to set a better schedule for running my author and mentorship businesses that got neglected in a summer of other needs.

Because motherhood and creative business looks like: typing up a blog while arguing with a seven year old about game mechanics while the six year old insists he’s playing his way. It looks like whole days off because you never get these days with the kids back but the manuscript will be there tomorrow. It looks like holing up in your office/room working furiously because a deadline is coming and knowing you can crash after.

This work has to be flexible. It has to be built naturally and sustainably. And that means being able to tackle the hard and tedious tasks. So, do the hard things in pretty places.

Until next time, go find your pretty place,
Candice