As many of you know, I recently made the switch from a fast-paced, corporate 9-to-5 senior copywriter job to full-time, heart-led entrepreneurship.

The transition has been interesting. 😊

I am in a growth period of assessing my career, my skills, and my vision for the future.

There have been moments of uncertainty along with moments of clarity, and what I’m finding is that I need a lot of gentleness and patience right now.

This personal transition from the familiar 9-to-5 to a new life of total freedom has me deconditioning from a lot of old stories, beliefs, and ways of living. I am peeling back layers of healing and releasing patterns of overworking, screen addiction, rushing, and sometimes pushing too hard.

As a way to nurture those inner shifts and embrace a slower lifestyle, this week I am taking what I’m calling a water week. I’m very fortunate that just as I’ve embarked on my new adventure of being a solopreneur, a new business in Salt Lake City has opened. It’s an urban bath house and yoga studio called Glow.

Glow SLC is a beautiful space featuring a traditional sauna, steam room, cold plunge, and relaxation pool where you can experience the power of contrast therapy.

The business also has a yoga space, massage treatment room, and wet treatment room.

This week, I am visiting the bath house every day as a conscious way of prioritizing rest and relaxation for my body, mind, and spirit.

I’m clearing a lot of energy.

And I’m experiencing what it’s like to slow down and allow my nervous system to feel safe even when I’m not doing as much.

I realized yesterday, I have spent so much of my life running from one goal to the next. Pushing hard in my career. Pushing hard in my personal life— wanting to achieve success with my passion projects, relationships, fitness levels.

Like many people, I’ve grown up working my @$$ off because that’s what a capitalist, consumerist, tech-centric, patriarchal society tells us to do.

Meanwhile, my feminine rhythm needs me to slow down. To prioritize rest. To move in a slow way that allows me to pause and reflect before heading into the next thing.

When I moved to Utah three years ago, I initiated a big shift in this direction of doing less and enjoying life more. I moved out of the paycheck-to-paycheck grind. I stepped into a new space of valuing myself, honoring my worth, having better boundaries, and truly embodying my identity as a writer and artist.

But I still sometimes get sucked into the hamster-wheel style grind of working really hard and forgetting to slow down.

So here I am, age 36, at a pivot phase in my career— and intentionally deciding to build more down time into this new career/lifestyle.

Glow is the perfect setting to support me in this transition.

The space itself is clean, calm, and relaxing.

The water is pure and fresh.

The heat is all-encompassing and brings me immediately into my body.

And the cold of the cold plunge is piercing, refreshing, awakening.

Even after just one day of doing the water therapy/contrast therapy, I walked out of that place feeling like a huge weight had been lifted.

And I feel a sense of excitement and happiness knowing I’m doing this for myself— that I’m creating this little staycation vibe during an everyday week in August, rather than rushing around feeling like I need to network and hurry up to build clients in my business and discover the next breakthrough and invoice the next client and make the next move…

It all gets to be exhausting sometimes, don’t you think?

Life and career and relationships and chores and just all of the adulting things we encounter in our thirties and beyond?

Keeping up with the Joneses… hitting the next big milestone… being able to afford the next car, house, vacation, on-trend outfit, etc., etc., etc…

I’m done with that rat race.

I’m done comparing my success to other people’s.

I’m embracing a new life on my terms, because I am a highly unique and highly sensitive person. Running my business is going to require a new version of me, and I’m letting myself take the time to grieve the old way, the push push push way that has felt so familiar.

I realized yesterday, it’s easy to just keep pushing at a high speed, working really hard, and ignoring my body’s signals for needing rest— because if I slow down, then I have to sit with challenging emotions.

When I slow down, I feel what’s been brewing there, beneath the surface, for years.

Emotions like anger and sadness and grief.

Frustration at the system that has trained me to work so hard.

Frustration at the unfairness, the way women are repressed, the way glass ceilings are real.

Frustration at the way the company I worked for, the team I loved so much, changed in a flash and we lost the culture of caring about each other. (The place I used to work is now controlled by an equity firm and in a span of about 4 months, a re-org disbanded the team I’d been on, tripled my workload, didn’t change my pay, and took me from feeling like a valued team member whose skills were appreciated to feeling like a robot expected to work harder and faster every day). There’s still some bitterness there that I am letting go of.

It’s tough to lose something you loved, that you thought would be your stable job for a while longer. It’s tough to see executives brought in who are constantly asking for more output without slowing down to ask, “How are you doing? How are you feeling about all of these changes? Is there anything I can do to support you?”

Being around that negative work environment has pushed me to show up for myself in deeper ways, because I’ve seen what happens when leaders fail to show up for their people.

I have a different perspective now, and despite the frustration, I also have massive amounts of gratitude. And a real awareness that I have tools that many people don’t— tools of mindfulness, like my yoga and meditation practices.

The shifts at my old job were the kick in the pants I needed to go all-in on myself. I’m grateful it was wonderful while it lasted, and I’m grateful I have the courage to leave a job if it’s causing me anxiety to the point that I’m losing my appetite and losing sleep.

I’m also incredibly grateful that I have a husband, friends, and family who support me making smart decisions like this that prioritize my mental health.

Burnout is real, my friends, and it’s something I’ve danced with my whole career.

As I peel back the layers even further, there’s frustration at a lot of my old jobs, too. Jobs I liked in the beginning, but jobs that had me playing small in desk roles, receptionist-like roles, project manager roles, behind-the-scenes, thankless kinds of roles. These were jobs I ended up hating because they undervalued me and my talents, they were jobs controlled by micro-managing bosses, jobs where I felt chained to my desk, undervalued and underpaid.

I am no longer interested in being “just an employee,” someone that can skate by and blend into the background. I am a leader— I always have been, I just didn’t have the confidence to own that for the first decade of my career. I thrive on having a schedule where I’m free to manage my time and honor my own pace.

And I’m very fortunate that I’m now in a space to do that.

To slow down when it’s time to slow down.

To listen to my emotions and prioritize my wellbeing.

And, on a random week in August, to spend two hours a day at a beautiful bath house, just lounging and reflecting and being washed clean by the water.

I’m sweating out demons that go way back.

I’m finding new depths of discipline sitting in freezing cold water, feeling my breath.

I’m letting go of the old way of being— the rigid, masculine, rushed, overexertion lifestyle that has been so familiar for so long.

I’m sitting in the void space, the quiet, the pockets of boredom, the moments of tranquility… and just seeing what’s there for me.

It’s a beautiful place to be.

Today is day 2. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Sending lots of love, patience, and compassion to everyone who feels stuck in their career or caught in the hamster wheel of burnout and overgiving.

There is hope.

Take care of you, even if it’s in a small way today.

You deserve it.

Much love,

Rachel