We love this Ted Talk by Stefan Sagmeister, for many reasons. The guy is a design genius so Arran and I respect him immensely. He is standing up in front of millions of people staying ‘hey I can admit my design work was getting stale and boring’ and he had the balls to actually take an entire year off to explore his creativity.
Arran and I can’t take a year off due to a number of reasons, with the most important that I want to teach and educate as many people as I can and I see it as my Dharma, my purpose. So the time for taking a full twelve months off is not yet mine to explore. But we absolutely see the value in taking time off, especially when we apply ourselves as ferociously as we both have this last 12 months. There has been a little to much Mashing going on truth be told. Everything you see with The Broad Place we have created from scratch. I do all the teaching and education platforms, Arran manages all the design, product development and research and the online store I manage with my gorgeous helper Charlie who works two days a week. We touch everything, and every component we manage personally. It’s a huge task.
So, we have made the incredibly bold (and slightly scary to be honest) decision to close our online store and studio for 2 months, for December and January to take some time off. This means that we don’t have to check emails, and respond to staff and issues and all the jazz that comes with trying to ship a candle to a country we’ve never heard of. It means that we will be overseas, luxuriating in being a family and regaining some balance. This means putting our sanity and our little family first.
So over December we will be drinking coconuts, and lying in the sun and sleeping in the day and surfing and exploring remote Indonesian villages and reading and researching. We will be connecting as a couple and as a family. Then we return and 16 hours later I board a plane on December 30th and I travel to India with my girlfriend and fellow meditator Nic to undertake a research trip to Delhi and Rajasthan and then to stay in an Ashram for Panchakarma. Then I return mid Jan before travelling to Melbourne to teach and talk at MPavilion. We’ll open the studio in a new location at the very beginning of February with a jam packed teaching schedule, with new projects launching and new product to show you that Arran has been developing these last few months. It’s going to be exciting, and we will be grounded and ready to go thanks to the balancing act of taking some time off prior.
This means that our online store will take it’s last orders 2pm on Tuesday 25th. We’ll then ship those and pack on down!
We will also be holding a HALF DAY SHOP POP Sunday 23rd November from 12pm – 4pm for anyone that wants to come in and buy your Christmas gifts from the studio.
The entire trip I will still be posting away on Instagram so keep in touch there, and checking emails every so often.
I hope this inspires you to take your time off seriously. Put away the emails, monitor how much time you spend on your phone, and live this Christmas to the fullest.
Thank you for your incredible support this very first year of The Broad Place being in fruition. We wish you the best most amazing time off, and send you lots of love!
Jac, Arran and Marley