LIMITATIONS

‘Like most rural women, I wear many hats. In no particular order, I’m a mum, wife, food writer, social media educator, caterer, recipe developer and farmer.’

This was my opening line at a writers’ festival some years back; in that one line I listed five careers like it was no big deal.

Some time, and some anxiety about trying to stay across this multihyphenated creative career later, here’s the lesson I learned: without limits I end up feeling like a ‘jack of all trades, master of none’. And that’s not a nice feeling.

Fifteen years ago, I moved from Sydney to country New South Wales. In a high wind of new love, I’d quit my job as an editor and bid farewell to a career in magazines to live on a farm and marry the handsome man I’d just met.

Soon afterwards I started writing recipes, taking photos of them and sharing them in the newsletters I’d write for the farmers’ markets (we were on the road selling our farmed venison nearly every weekend for 10 years) and also online, in a tiny corner of the internet I made my very own.

My blog Local is Lovely was born and from there (cue loads of learning and hard graft) came all kinds of previously unimaginable opportunities. A cookbook. Then two. Now a third in the works? Crazy! Collaborations, cooking workshops, social media seminars and catering for private functions. I started my own podcast, I taught e-courses on content marketing to small business people around the country and then I won the 2016 AgriFutures National Rural Women’s Award.

It is incredible just how many different opportunities can present themselves if you put yourself out there. I was saying yes to everything, and it was great and exciting and provided an income stream that was complementary to our farming business. But, for me at least, it wasn’t sustainable.

In my experience, having no or few limits to your professional offering is stressful. There are no limits to the things you need to learn, stay abreast of and be ‘top of your game’ at. It’s exhausting. As any freelancer knows, closing yourself off to work is a scary prospect, but it was the sensible thing to do. I needed to pick a lane.

All over Instagram and beyond we see platitudes telling us to ‘live a life with no limits’, but what ever happened to the idea of doing just one thing well? And how do you choose that one thing?

So I wrote lists, brainstormed business ideas, made spreadsheets and ultimately listened to my gut. I realised that the thing I’ve always loved most and am best at, is writing and sharing recipes and stories around beautiful produce and the people behind it.

Here’s where I landed (and it’s my new ‘about me’ line): ‘I help producers and food businesses create, capture and share recipes and stories in a way that builds communities of advocates around their product or service.’

Next, I edited my ‘work with me’ page, started referring jobs to capable friends when I knew the jobs weren’t in my lane, and reframed the way I talked about what I did. I also signed up for online courses to deepen my skills, concentrated my reading and research. My confidence and my productivity bloomed.

This was all just a few short months ago, but so far so good. I am creating recipes and content for a manageable but wonderful list of clients, I am working on a reboot of my blog, a recipe-related podcast and I can’t wait to take my third cookbook on the road next year.

And when I do, when I stand up to talk about what I do at book events, I’m not going to talk about all those hats.

I’m just going to say, ‘Like most women who have had career changes, breaks, bumps and blips, it’s taken me a while to figure out exactly what I want to do. And this is it.’ n @locallovely; local-lovely.com

There are no limits to the things you need to learn, stay abreast of and be ‘top of your game’ at.

Words Sophie Hansen Photograph Annabelle Hickson