How We Find Balance Between Work and our Lifestyle.... and other stuff!

When your business is also your lifestyle and your passion, is it even possible to separate life from work?

We are far from the first people to turn their passion into their business. There are also many lifestyle creators who have also turned their day-to-day into content, which is how they earn an income. If your lifestyle is also the basis of your content, and the passion that was once your hobby is now your lifestyle, then surely the overlap between all these essential elements of one’s life– passion, lifestyle, work– means that, basically, we never truly work and spend each day enjoying our passion for sailing and boat life? Right? Right?!

This certainly sounds like the dream scenario. And, believe me, it is! We often– daily–muse to ourselves and each other that we are incredibly fortunate to have found a way to turn our love for sailing and our alternative lifestyle into our work. However, we have learned the hard way over the years that there must be a clear(ish) delineation between work and life, if we’re to avoid overwhelm and burnout. When the lines become blurred, then our entire lives become fodder for content, which is a slippery slope in terms of maintaining both our privacy and our sanity.

Carving out ‘me time’ is an important factor in maintaining one’s sanity while living on a boat

When we first started our YouTube channel 8 years ago, we just filmed everything and edited on the fly. We didn’t think about filming in any organised way or separating our life from work. In fact, we didn’t consider filming and making videos to be ‘work’ at all; we viewed it as more of an optional hobby that we could dip in and out of as we pleased. In fact, we didn’t monetise our YouTube channel until we hit 10,000 subscribers, and we didn’t start Patreon until we had gained 20,000 subscribers.

However, when our channel started gaining some traction– namely during our Catamaran Review series– we started to realise the importance of approaching our work in a business-like way. And in fact, we found another good reason to to shift our mindset: for the sake of our mental health. The merging of content creation and daily lifestyle was becoming far too extensive, the boundaries significantly blurred, and we were starting to lose track of what was ‘content’ and just our own… life. Where do we draw the line?

When we shifted our mindset to view our YouTube channel and all our various offshoots– socials, Substack, Patreon– to our ‘work’ and viewed everything we did through a business lens, that’s when two things happened. One, the demarkation between work and life became much clearer, but two, we started to feel like we needed time away from the boat so we could take a break from feeling like we need to film everything. If we weren’t on the boat, we couldn’t film, and while that was certainly a double edged sword due to the need for us to publish a weekly video, it also gave us some much-needed breathing room. Additionally, at this point we’d returned to Europe on Ruby Rose where the sailing season doesn’t realistically extend into the cooler months, so it made more sense to store RR (and, later, RR2) over winter like most other EU-based sailors/cruisers and take the opportunity to travel home to see friends and family, and edit or work on other aspects of our business in a fresh space.

Getting some salt off the back of the boat

During our sailing season, we do struggle to make that determination between what constitutes work and our regular life. If something happens– good or bad, funny or difficult, anything of note– then it’s extremely tempting to pick up the camera and start filming. This could be anything from a beautiful sunset to a dramatic turn of events such as our anchor dragging or being hit by a squall. Generally we do have ‘filming days’ and ‘non-filming days’ and our filming days are always when we’re actually sailing from one place to another. Often we’ll film just that one day, which is why you might notice a lot of our episodes follow a familiar formula: get up and drop our lines or weigh anchor, undertake our sailing passage, arrive at our destination and admire it, do any boat jobs that need doing, go ashore in the evening for a quick exploration/run some errands, have a sundowner, end scene. We might do this 2-3 per week, which essentially means we’re filming 2-3 episodes a week. If we’re only publishing one episode per week on YouTube, then this allows us to take a few months off over winter to decompress and refocus.

Another reason we like to take time away from the boat is because Nick also volunteers as a dental surgeon for disabled orphans in Vietnam several months a year. This is something that we self fund with help from our Patreon and Substack community.

Time away from the boat also gives us the opportunity to get any necessary boat maintenance done. Since taking delivery of RR2, we have worked through her warranty work and have had additional necessary work undertaken.

Beyond content planning, there are also some valuable lessons we’ve learned in managing our mental wellbeing while living on a boat. As I probably don’t need to point out, living on a boat with your significant other can be quite the pressure cooker. In our early days of boat life, Nick and I would often butt heads over the distribution of labour– so very different from ‘land life’– and our individual preferences when it came to our sailing and cruising plans, the pace we set, and also how we respected the other’s personal space. For example, for the sake of my own sanity, I need to do a workout or some yoga most days– I’m no gym bunny, but exercise is my valued alone time. In RR, it was impossible to find a location on the boat which was out the way, so Nick would often be walking around me or stepping over me to continue his tasks while I exercised– hardly an arrangement that was conducive to a self-care motivated workout, and I was in Nick’s way too. Very annoying for everyone involved. Eventually we agreed that I would do my workouts in the afternoon while Nick had a nap, which was far more preferable. This is a small example of how something that we take for granted in ‘normal’ life– doing our jobs or chores, fitting in our exercise– can suddenly become a source of conflict, stress or irritation in a boat setting, contributing to that ‘pressure cooker’ environment.

Nick’s pressure valve release is music. He always has a musical instrument to hand– usually a guitar– and spends an hour or two playing it most days. Sometimes he’s happy for me to be nearby; other times, I try and move elsewhere so he can play without an audience. Over time, we’ve both learned what the other person needs to ensure their mental health needs are being met. We jokingly call our swims off the boat our ‘mental health swims’ because a dip in the sea always makes us feel good (my father, a keen surfer, calls this “getting some salt”). If we’re somewhere that’s conducive to walking, Nick will often go for his ‘mental health walk’ while I do my ‘mental health workout.’ Using this kind of language is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but serves to remind us to prioritise our mental wellbeing and self care.

You might be thinking, “Hold up– these two are literally living the dream. What could possibly be stressing them out?!” And you’re right– we are incredibly lucky to enjoy such a privileged lifestyle and have a very privileged job. However, we, like everyone else on the planet, regardless of their circumstances or how blessed their lives appear from an external lens, have our own sources of stress, anxiety, pressure and discontent. Some of that pressure comes from the lifestyle; some comes from work– but again, this is totally normal for most people who live on a boat and run a business at the same time.

Boat life can be tough; work can be tough; it can be tough when the two things are the same thing. A lot of people reading this can relate in some way, I’m certain.

What do you do to release that pressure valve and practice self-care while living on a boat and possibly working? I’d love to hear your perspectives!

Much love,

Nick & Terysa