Can you believe it’s October already? Are the leaves changing where you are? I live an hour from the White Mountains and I’m so looking forward to taking a drive north in the near future. I’m also preparing for a trip to Michigan to celebrate my childhood best friend’s marriage. Yay, autumn! I hope you have at least one apple-picking excursion planned.

September taught me a lot about living my best life. I had a snafu with a sketchy insurance agent that left me (gasp!) without health insurance. (So frustrating.) That situation made me re-evaluate my monthly budget and lead me to the decision to give up my studio/office space.

It was a hard decision. I rented that space for a myriad of reasons, but one of them was as a physical representation of my success as a small business owner. I didn’t work from home anymore! I had a place to meet clients! I had an office and a home and they were a quarter mile apart! Celebration! Confetti! Muppet arms! Other enthusiastic expressions of joy!

But, it was kind of expensive. Also, the internet was really unreliable. (It’s hard to run an internet-based business without an internet connection.)

My work space is now situated in one corner of my bedroom. On one hand, I am in love with this. I have two desks – a standing desk and a seated one. (Standing desks are awesome, by the way.) My art supplies are everywhere — organized but accessible. I like that everything is in one place.

On the other hand, I feel like a fraud.

My business is two years old. And lucrative. And I’m working out of my bedroom. That’s not how that’s supposed to go, right?

Except… According to who?

Here’s the thing I’ve come to terms with the past few weeks: This being-your-own-boss thing is a process. It’s a journey. It’s a practice. It doesn’t have to look a certain way. This isn’t about passing milestones. It’s about creating a life that you are happy in, and doing work that feels good to you — work that nourishes your soul and makes a difference to the world around you.

I give you permission to do what works for you and your business. It’s okay if you work out of a cabinet desk in the corner of your kitchen, or if you work at the crowded cafe across town, or if you sometimes work from the sofa, still in the clothes you wore to yoga this morning.

I also give you (and myself) permission to leave any one of those places and go to the gym at noon on a Monday. My boss said it was cool.

(Pssst – see what I did there? The beauty of being your own boss is that you get to make the rules. Have you taken advantage of that recently?)