A year and a half ago, I wrote here about the power of finding your anchor during uncertain times. When you feel you are not bringing enough, when you need time to find the thing that sparks joy, fuels your passion and brings you close to your purpose.
In my case: to empower myself to empower others, especially women.
I didn't plan to write a sequel. But enough has shifted that it feels almost necessary – more for me than for you, surely.
What Rest Actually Taught Me
After two intense years of managing uncertainty, learning by the day and pushing myself to the limit – partly because I couldn't say no, partly because I could feel the end approaching – there was this constant pull: deliver to the highest standard and figure out what's next, at the same time.
That feeling is hard to describe. So many moving parts. New projects that made me feel alive and genuinely needed – projects that fueled my passion and kept me busy, but the good kind of busy. Busy enough that it was easy to lose myself in the work and push aside what I knew was coming.
But the deadline wasn't moving.
After that adventure – one I would never regret, and would choose again even knowing how it ends – the summer gave me something I didn't know I needed.
For the first time in my career, I got time to slow down. I pushed myself to stop controlling every detail and just be with the girls and the family. Enjoying being a full-time mom, a full-time wife, a full-time daughter, a full-time friend. Time to work out, read for hours, long lunches, slow mornings, gardening.
No calendar running my day.
Ok, wait. That isn't me. No calendar?
Of course there was a calendar – a colourful one, full of doctor appointments, social plans, PT sessions, reformer pilates... But for the first time, it was flexible.
Well… kind of flexible.
Now we are back to school, and I'm genuinely grateful for that summer. I would tell anyone going through something similar to take that time, if they can get it.
But somewhere in the middle of all that rest, I noticed something I hadn't expected: not being productive – in the strictest sense of the word – doesn't sit well with me either.
That surprised me, although apparently it surprised absolutely no one else.
I have spent so much energy over the years learning to let go of control and stop measuring my worth by how full my calendar is that I assumed the opposite lesson – that once I had time to sit still and do less, I would be fine with it – would come just as easily.
It didn't.
Rest gave me what I needed, physically and mentally. It gave me time to get back on track, to put myself together. But it didn't give me what makes me feel like myself.
What Productivity Actually Feels Like
I have tried to describe what exactly changes in me when a slow week turns into a full one.
It isn't adrenaline, and it isn't the tidy satisfaction of ticking things off a list – although that feels good too.
This goes beyond that. It's closer to focus.
My thoughts stop scattering across ten things and line up behind one. Conversations get sharper. Curiosity explodes. I notice I'm quicker to laugh, not slower – which is the opposite of what I would have guessed before I paid attention to it.
I feel a kind of aliveness in being useful for something specific that just enjoying "free time" alone has never quite given me, no matter how much of it I have.
I don't think that makes me someone who can't switch off. I think it makes me someone who knows exactly what switching on feels like – and misses it incredibly when it's gone.
The Equation I Can't Ignore
A few weeks ago, work picked back up – intense, right in the middle of a lot of family socialising – and it felt good. Really good.
Not because I love intensity for its own sake, but because I could feel my brain switch back on.
I'm at my best when work, family and sport move together.
Not one instead of the others. And not one after the others are finally "handled." All three, moving at once.
That is not a preference I'm choosing. It's the combination that makes me feel alive, and I have stopped pretending otherwise.
To be clear: this isn't about loving the girls any less when I'm not fully present, or needing to escape family time. It's the opposite. I love that time precisely because the rest of me is switched on too.
What I'm Looking For Next
So while everyone keeps telling me to enjoy this time – and I am – I also can't wait to find my place in a company again.
Not just any company, though. I have become pickier, on purpose.
I want to work somewhere that is genuinely focused on what matters rather than what sounds good in a deck. Somewhere that deliberately brings together great talent and, above all, great people – people who care, who are passionate about what they do, and who want to make a difference. A company that actually invests in and develops its people instead of simply hiring them and hoping for the best.
I have been lucky enough, more than once in my career, to work in companies that operated that way, in teams run by strong, empowered women who led by example – places where people were genuinely at the centre, not just words on a values poster in the lobby.
I know what that feels like from the inside, and I'm not interested in settling for less.
I'm hoping to find that again.
Staying Useful in the Meantime
None of this means standing still.
I work out every day, and I feel stronger for it – in ways that have less to do with how I look and much more to do with how clear my head feels.
But I also want to keep exercising my brain, reconnect with my purpose, and put some of the experience I have been fortunate enough to build over the years to good use.
So I recently volunteered to join Ashoka as a Communications Support Partner, using my experience to support an organisation that backs social entrepreneurs and helps them sharpen how they tell their stories.
There is something meaningful to me about using the privilege of having this time – and the experience I have gained along the way – to give something back.
Staying useful and contributing to something that matters feels far more important right now than simply staying comfortable.
And it keeps that muscle warm – the same one I'm looking forward to bringing, full-time, to whatever comes next.
The Anchor, Again
An anchor doesn't just hold you still. It tells you where not to drift.
A year and a half ago, mine told me to slow down and reconnect with why I do any of this.
Right now, it's telling me something different:
Keep moving, Cris!