Burning the Candle at Both Ends

For every woman who is grateful and completely underwater at the same time.

I don't even know where to start this week.

So I'll just say it. I'm drowning.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a way where everything has fallen apart. But in that quiet, exhausting way where things just keep piling up. And right when you fight hard enough to get your head above water… something else comes and pushes you back under.

And you're just frantically trying to make it to shore.

We haven't had a break in five weeks. Five weeks of go, go, go, figure it out, keep up, push through, do the next thing.

And it's not just one thing. It's never just one thing.

It's the pop-up events back to back. It's end of year school chaos — spirit days and career day and forms I'm supposed to remember to turn in. It's my full-time job ramping up at the exact same time everything else is ramping up. It's looking at our order count and feeling like we should be busier… and then turning around and feeling like I can barely keep up with the busy we already have.

Both of those things at once. Wanting more and feeling like more might actually break me.

The contradiction of it. You're fighting so hard to grow something. Refreshing. Posting. Showing up. Hoping. And some weeks it feels like it's not enough. And then a pop-up comes and you give everything you have to it and you come home running on empty wondering how you're going to do it all again next week.

Grateful and depleted. Hopeful and exhausted. Refusing to give up and barely hanging on.

All at the same time.

I've been snapping at things that don't deserve it. I've been going through the motions on days when I needed to be present. I've been lying in bed with a brain that won't stop running through everything I still need to do, everything I might be missing, everything that's waiting for me tomorrow.

And the guilt follows all of it. It always does.

The guilt that I'm not doing enough for the business. The guilt that the business is taking too much. The guilt that my kids deserve more of me than I have left to give right now. The guilt that I chose this and I love it and I still feel like I'm failing at it.

There's no clean version of this week. I don't have a moment where it all clicked. I don't have a lesson wrapped up neatly at the end.

What I have is this.

This blog. This space where I can just put it down for a minute. Get it out of my chest and into words and feel like maybe someone somewhere reads it and thinks me too. That's honestly what keeps me coming back here. Not because I have it figured out. But because saying it out loud makes it feel a little less like I'm carrying it alone.

But even with that… I'm still tired.

And I think that's okay to say.

I think it's okay that some weeks don't have a silver lining. Some weeks are just hard and heavy and long. And the bravest thing you can do is keep going anyway — not because you feel strong, but because you're not ready to stop.

I'm still here. Still building. Still showing up even when showing up looks like barely making it through the day.

If you're in a season like this too, exhausted in ways that go bone deep, fighting to keep your head up, giving everything you have and still feeling like it's not enough I just want you to know I'm right there with you.

We're not drowning.

We're just still learning how to swim.

— Brittney The Painted Button