personal retreat – Jessie Kwak

What I did (kind of) on my personal retreat vacation

Post published:October 6, 2016

Well, I promised that I would report back after this weekend’s personal retreat to let you know how it went.

The short answer? Not as planned.

After one day, my retreat was cut short due to an emergency. It’s all perfectly fine now — don’t worry — but I didn’t have the uninterrupted days of relaxation, planning, and work that I’d hoped for.

That’s disappointing, of course, but it’s also life. It doesn’t matter how much you plan — in the end you still have to roll with the punches.

I’ll admit, I started writing this post with a bad attitude. Why bother? I thought. It’s not like I got anything done. And probably no one will notice if I don’t deliver the promised reflection post.

But as I started writing, it became clear that I’d actually accomplished quite a bit — and learned some good lessons.

What happened in the woods….

My intention for the personal retreat was — besides relaxation — to knock out several big personal projects that I had been putting off because of busyness and client work.

Despite my abbreviated time, I got some periods of deep work in.

I outlined the draft of a lead magnet e-book I plan to write as part of my new marketing push to attract more ghostwriting clients.
I drafted a book proposal for nonfiction book I’ve been toying with for some time, and sent it off.
I started drafting a short story for an anthology submission.
Oh — and I also sewed some adorable gifts for my niece and nephew.

I also got some nature time in. I went on a gorgeous hike to see the second tallest waterfall in Oregon (Salt Creek Falls), and nearby Diamond Creek Falls (the top photo).

As I’m typing this, I’m actually pretty proud of myself. I had been pretty disappointed in the brevity of my retreat, but in retrospect I actually did get a lot done. Plus, just the amount of planning I did in the lead up gave me a ton of clarity.

What didn’t happen in the woods

I’m disappointed I didn’t get to outline the next novella in my Durga System series. (The same series as STARFALL.) I find that actual writing is easy to weave into my normal day-to-day routine, whereas outlining and other preliminary work is easier to do in a large chunk with fewer distractions.

I was hoping to return to regular life with a solid plan so I could dive into the writing — but I suppose I’ll just have to set aside time during my regular work week to get it done. It’s strange being in between writing projects, and I’m itching to get started on something new!

My mind on nature vs. my mind on social media

The other thing I don’t feel like I got done was resetting my mind. I’ve had a lot of different projects on a lot of different burners, and I’ve been feeling pretty overwhelmed for the past few months.

I’d hoped this retreat would clear my mind not only by knocking out some of these side projects (which I did), but also that it would help me get back in the practice distraction-free work. I also hoped that I’d get to spend a lot of solo time in nature to help re-center myself. That didn’t exactly happen.

Since I’ve been back, I’ve been letting the stress and frenzy of the weekend color the quiet work that I should be doing. I’ve been letting myself get distracted with election coverage (*sigh*), or flipping over to social media when I should be working.

That way madness lies.

And also information overload.

Pulling the personal retreat off the pedestal

A while back, I read a post by Leo Babauta on Zen Habits about how unhappiness is a result of us clinging to our expectations instead of experiencing reality, and I think this past weekend was a perfect illustration of that.

I would have been thrilled with the amount of work and naturing I got done if I wasn’t still clinging to the unicorns-and-utopias dream of what I wanted my retreat to have been. I would have continued to enjoy my days even in the chaos of the emergency if I hadn’t constantly been thinking, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go!”

I’ve let myself slip into distraction in part because I didn’t have the blissful experience I was expecting over the weekend, but it’s time for me to stop using that as an excuse, and just get back into my practice of quiet focus in work.

There’s no reason I can’t schedule myself better and outline this novella.

There’s no reason I can’t continue to build thoughtful planning into my regular schedule.

There’s no reason I can’t take a sabbatical from news coverage in my daily life.

And there’s really no reason I can’t just take off on a Tuesday morning and go on a hike. I live in Portland, for goodness sake — it’s criminal that I don’t take more advantage of nature!

It would have been nice to have a perfect weekend, but es la vida.

Now, if you need me, I’ll be off making the most of today.

Photo by Vladimir Kudinov via Unsplash.

Planning a Personal Retreat for Creativity and Career

Post published:September 23, 2016

I’m one of those people love fall.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – summer is great. I love the whole sunshine and being warm thing. But there’s also something about summer that can be, well, exhausting.

When the sun’s out, I feel compelled to take advantage of every gorgeous second. It’s hard to hunker down and work when people are inviting you out for bike rides, and hikes, and early afternoon happy hours on sunshiny patios.

Who wants to stay home for the weekend when you could go camping or out to the Oregon coast to get rained on? (You know. If you miss the rain in Portland in the summer you can always head to the coast.)

This morning was the first day that it truly smelled like fall. We’ve had our share of rainy, cold days, but this morning it smelled…different.

It smelled like a season of change.

I’ve been planning a personal retreat for a few months now. It coincides with a race that my husband is doing. I agreed to drive him to the start, and then I’m secreting myself away for the four days that he’ll be racing. Originally, I thought this could be a writing retreat where I could make some solid progress on a novel, or whatever needed done.

But now, with fall in the air, I’m taking this as an opportunity for personal reflection.

It comes at the perfect time – I’m ready to switch gears on a number of projects. A large business venture that my husband and I have been working on all summer long has been mostly put to bed. (At least, the most labor-intensive parts.) I’ve just put the finishing touches on an intensive novel revision, and sent it out the door to a couple of agents. I have a few big client projects on the docket, but I’m not wrapped up in anything big right now.

Basically, this is the perfect time for me to take a deep breath, look around at my life, and decide where I’m going from here.

I’ll report back after my personal retreat is over, but I wanted to offer a “before-and-after” look of how I’m planning this thing – both to have accountability, and to help others who are planning something similar.

Here are my guidelines:

Internet Use

I’m not going to go completely off the grid – partly because I think I might go crazy and partly because I’ve told a few clients that I’ll be available to chat about projects starting when I get back.

But I am going to limit my internet time to two hour-long sessions: one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. Otherwise, I’ll unplug the modem and not use my phone to check email or social media.

(We’ll see how my willpower goes with the phone. I hesitate to put it on airplane mode because I’ll just worry the whole time that something happened to my husband on the race and no one can get ahold of me. If my willpower doesn’t work, I’ll install an app like Freedom.)

Personal Retreat Schedule

I’m thinking the best way to stay on target is to set myself a schedule. I’ll probably modify it as I go along, but at this point, I’m planning to start my day with exercise and meditation – something I always mean to do at home, but never quite get around to.

I’ll set two aside sessions in the morning and afternoon to do some serious work. I’m thinking at least one session per day will be a more “intentional working meditation” session, where I set my mind to mull over a topic while my body does something active. This will likely be either a hike or a woodworking project, of which I have several to complete.

indian paintbrush on Dead Mountain — Indian paintbrush won’t be in season this time of year, but here’s a taste of the beauty of the Oregon Cascades.

The other session will be more practical application, like working on a book proposal outline, or outlining my next novel.

In the evenings, I’ll either read at home or head down to the local bar to have a drink and actually talk to other humans.

Setting Intentions

Because I want to show up on the first day of this personal retreat ready to work, I’m developing my list of intentions ahead of time.

Overall, I plan to examine my life as a whole and make sure I’m still on course. I’m really satisfied right now with my work, life, and relationships, but there definitely things I could improve on. One of my goals for this week will be to identify areas to improve and strategies to bring my life more in line with what I want it to be.

Because so much of my life is my work, I’ll be spending the bulk of my time considering that.

I always break my work into two parts – the freelance work I do for clients, and the fiction work I do for myself. I thoroughly enjoy both categories, and lately I’ve managed to get them to be about 50/50 when it comes to my overall workload. I’d like to keep it at that, so part of my considerations will be to look at my freelance marketing and niches to get more projects that I love and which pay well.

I expect that the freelance side of my business will float the fiction side of my business for a few more years – but ultimately I would like to make money writing fiction. It’ll take some strategic planning to get there.

The last thing I want to consider is travel. It’s been a few years since I’ve been on a big trip, which is something I find very important. I was really inspired by this recent interview that Ed Gandia did with Kevin Casey about freelancing and traveling. I’d love to find a practical way to incorporate more travel into my life.

Have you ever taken a personal retreat like this? What was your experience? I’d love to hear what goals you set and how you structured your time.