Stop Crossing Town and Calling It a Life: How Calendar Alchemy Brings You Back to You

You know that feeling when lay your head down on you pillow at night and think to yourself “I did so much today… but what did I even do?”

The feeling is hard to define - is it empytiness or overwhelm? Lack of fulfillment or an over-abundance of giving all of you to everyone else?

On paper, you’re killing it. You’re the responsible one, the capable one, the woman everyone trusts to “just handle it.” You’ve built a career, a business, a life that looks stable and like everything you wanted from the outside.

And yet, your days feel like you’re just crossing town.

Driving from meeting to meeting. Jumping from call to call. Running to the school pickup line, the activity, the errand, the quick favor, the “since you’re free can you just…”

It’s movement and activity… a full calendar. But it doesn’t feel like your life.

The Hidden Cost of a Fragmented Day

Most of the high-achieving women I work with come to me feeling like they are collapsing within the logistics of their life- from double bookings, to over extending their work hours, to saying ‘yes’ to all the things when they desperately just want a long soak in the bathtub, a glass of wine and an evening of no one needing anything from her….

Their overwhelm starts as a structural issue:

• Calendars stacked with meetings that don’t actually need them, or that could have been an email.

• Errands and “it’ll only take five minutes” tasks sprinkled all over the day breaking them out of their workflow.

• Kids’ activities, carpool, snacks, bags, and bags for the bags for the bags.

• A business jammed into the leftover cracks of time when what it really needs is space for them to tap into their creative energy.
  

By the end of the day, they’ve been everywhere and done everything. But emotionally?

• They feel fragmented - incomplete like they haven’t had a momen for themselves to think, let alone feel.

• They can’t remember the last time they took a full, real breath

• Their creativity feels flat and like they’re just spinning their wheels instead of feeling alive and inspired.

• Their patience is gone which has them snapping at everyone around them, especially the people they love most.
  

They start asking:

“What’s wrong with me?”
“Why can’t I handle this?”
“Why am I so exhausted when this is the life I chose?”

But here’s the truth:

Nothing is “wrong” with YOU.
Your calendar is wrong for you.

Your Calendar Is a Mirror of Your Identity

Around here, we treat the calendar like the juiciest self-awareness tool you’ve ever met.

Because your calendar will quietly show you:

• Who you believe you have to be

• Who you think you’re responsible for

• How much you trust yourself

• Whether you’re running your life, or your life is running you
  

Most women realize they’ve built a calendar that reflects:

• “Good employee” energy

• “Good girl / good daughter / always-available” energy

• “Since I have time, I should say yes” energy

Not the identity they’re actually becoming.

You see this especially when a woman leaves corporate and starts her own business. She’s excited to finally have freedom over her time… and then feels weirdly uncomfortable using it.

Why? Because for decades, someone else decided:

• When she could take lunch

• When she could pee

• When her day started and ended

Of course it feels foreign to suddenly be the one calling the shots.

When Overwhelm Is Logistical, Not Emotional

One of my clients inside Industry Icon said something that stopped us both in our tracks.

She realized her biggest shift didn’t come from a massive mindset breakthrough. It came from stepping down as the lead of a project she’d known for a long time she shouldn’t be leading anymore.

She’d tried to let it go. No one else took it. So she picked it back up.

The cost of that? Her capacity, time and energy.

And here’s the deal: without capacity there is no capability.

And for what? When she finally:

• Stopped leading that project

• Stopped saying yes to every “quick helpful task”

• Stopped crisscrossing town for non-essential meetings
  

…her days suddenly streamlined.

And with that came the words every overwhelmed woman eventually whispers when we clean up her calendar:

“I can finally think again.”
“I can breathe again.”

That’s not mindset work alone. That’s calendar alchemy.

Fragmented Days → Fragmented You

When your day is broken into tiny fragments:

• 30 minutes here

• 15 minutes there

• A commute squeezed between calls

• Errands jammed between kid drop-offs
  

You become fragmented too. You can’t:

• Get into deep focus

• Hear your own inner voice

• Build self-trust, because you’re never actually consulting yourself
  

You’re just obeying the calendar. And here’s the part that stings a little: A fragmented day will never produce a grounded, creative, self-led woman.

Your business needs your best brain.
Your best brain does not live in back-to-back chaos.

Calendar Alchemy: Becoming the Creative Director of Your Life

So what do you actually do? You start practicing structural honesty and creative director energy.

1. Ask: Where Am I Crossing Town Unnecessarily?

Not just literally, but metaphorically.

• Which errands, tasks, favors, and obligations are breaking your day into confetti?

• Where are you “just fitting things in” that don’t fit at all?
  

Your business cannot thrive if your brain never has more than 5 uninterrupted minutes to think.

2. Ask: What Am I Doing Out of Habit, Not Alignment?

What used to make sense for an older version of you — the version who needed to prove herself, be liked, be the star employee — but doesn’t match who you are becoming?

Those habits often live in your calendar.

3. Journal Prompt:

If I were the creative director of my life, what would no longer make the cut?

The creative director doesn’t do everything.
They decide what belongs and what doesn’t.

You get to do the same with your calendar.

The Simple (But Not Easy) Shift

For one client, it looked like this:

Her kids got out of school around 3:00. She was always:

• Rushing out of work early

• Stressing about traffic

• Snapping in the car because the transition felt like chaos
  

We sat down and I asked:

“What time do you pick them up?”
“3:00.”
“Great. Then your workday ends at 3:00.”

That one decision, “my workday ends at 3,” changed everything and blew her mind.

Suddenly:

• The school pickup drive became her favorite time of day

• Instead of stress and snapping, there were car dance parties and real conversations

• Her daughters weren’t dodging her mood — they were enjoying her presence
  

We didn’t change her entire business model. We changed her calendar to match the life she said she wanted.

A Quiet, Radical Truth

You don’t need a bigger capacity to tolerate a chaotic schedule. You need a calendar that tells the truth about:

• Who you are

• What season you’re actually in

• How you want your days to feel

You’re ready to become the creative director of your days.

A Next Step If You’re Ready for Structural Support

If this hits you right in the “oh, that’s me” this is exactly the work we do inside Industry Icon and in my 1:1 coaching and intensives.

We’ll:

• Use your calendar as the starting point for your identity reinvention

• Design your life first, then build your business structure around it

• Create a schedule that supports your genius instead of suffocating it
  

So that when the dreamy clients show up (and they do), you:

• Have actual time for them

• Know where they fit

• Feel excited to serve them, not squeezed by them

If you’re ready to stop donating your days to everyone else and start owning your time like the creative director of your life, this is your invitation to step into that work with support.