Belize Sounds Great, But I’m So Happy To Say I Shouldn’t Win This Trip

My business partner, Micheal, shared a Fast Company article with me recently that highlighted a cool new co-working space in Belize. (Talk about an amazing setting!)

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Here’s a description of what you’ll find there:

“The bungalow is situated over the brilliantly blue water on Tobacco Caye. The coworking space has an open-concept layout to help coworkers feel right at home and make collaboration easy. There are standing desks, a wellness center, executive parking, a VIP boardroom, and, of course, Wi-Fi and a killer view.”

Sounds pretty excellent.

And the Belize Tourism Board is even running a campaign to give some lucky people an all-expenses paid, five-day trip to experience it for themselves. Here’s the prompt for entering:

“…send an email before April 9, 2019…explaining why you’re the perfect workaholic candidate in desperate need of a new location.”

Micheal and I figured we should absolutely enter. (I mean, a trip to Belize? Yes, please.) But the more I thought about the prompt, the more it became clear we didn’t qualify. And I was totally okay with that.

In fact, I was so okay with it I decided to go ahead and send an email anyway, and wanted to share it here on my blog as well. Since joining forces in a full-time capacity with Micheal last October, we’ve worked hard to carve out an intentional culture and vision for our little company. What we have is pretty darn special, and even though now this job feels like my normal, I want to do my best not to take it for granted. After all, I wanted this for a long time, and now it’s here. I dreamed about more independent work — work where I could really have a say in the vision and who and what we say yes to and work that allowed for more flexibility in my life. I have that, and I feel so very fortunate.

And for those reasons, I thought I’d share the letter I sent to the Belize folks here with y’all, too. I’m really proud of what Micheal and I have built here:

To whom it may concern,

I read about your co-working space in Fast Company, and it sounds pretty amazing!

I would love to go to Belize, and know my business partner feels the same way. That said, we are pretty happy in our cozy, light-filled little office in downtown Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
For that, I feel so very lucky.
Your prompt — to send in the reasons you’re overworked and desperately need a trip to your co-working space — is a funny one, but I know it’s also alarmingly relevant to many people. When my business partner and I joined forces to create a two-person ad agency, we did so with different goals than many agencies. We are fortunate enough to have a handful of clients we adore, and it’s our goal to do really good work for them and dig in deep, rather than constantly be pitching new business. It’s our goal to remain small and nimble, pulling in outside resources where we need to. It’s our goal to make work WORK from a lifestyle standpoint. We want it to be a component of who we are, and not take us over.
Both my partner and I are wired to be achievers, so sometimes that slowing down — that separation — is something we really have to work toward. But we are doing just that, because life is so much bigger than work.
So yeah, a trip to Belize would be pretty darn incredible (and I think we’d do a great job really being present and soaking it all in, because we’ve been working really hard to do that right where we are). But that said, I also know it might need to go to someone who desperately needs an escape.
Regardless, congratulations the launch! It’s just gorgeous.

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