Robinson
And she has plenty to keep her busy. Robinson started her own business, creating “The You Do You Journal,” its subtitle a good explanation of what it is: “Learning to love yourself through daily intention and gratitude.”
“On the outside, it looks like, ‘Oh, she started a new journal; that’s a new thing,’ ” Robinson says. “And it’s not.”
Not at all. Journaling helped Robinson get her own life in order. Despite the sunny personality on display on Channel 10 (KSAZ) for 12 years, she wasn’t satisfied.
“As much as I live my life in the public eye, people still only saw a snapshot of my life,” Robinson says. “In TV news, you show up for everybody else, but the last person you show up for is yourself every day. So you learn to compartmentalize anything personal that’s going on in your life because nobody wants to know about that. Nobody cares about that. It’s not your job. Your job is to be there for your viewers and the people you serve.”
She began seeing a therapist, who she calls a “life helper,” and saw what was missing.
“I was the mom who tried to do all the things,” Robinson says. “I tried to have the perfect career, the perfect family, the perfect everything on the outside. But inside, I was just dying. I just was not fulfilled … When you live in a state of living for everybody else and not doing anything for yourself — eventually, burnout happens.”
She felt like she was missing time with her husband and children. A friend gave her a journal “and I kind of poo-pooed it. I was like, ‘I wake up at 2:30. I don’t have time for a morning routine.’ ” But she saw her husband growing internally , and with the help of the therapist, started using the journal.
“It changed me,” she says. “I would sit every morning before I went to work with a cup of coffee and I was like, ‘OK.’ I’d write down what I was grateful for. It was hard, what I saw that I liked about myself. I was prompting myself to think of these things that were necessary, but I was taking for granted.”
Robinson often posted the prompts and motivations on her Instagram account. But things still weren’t quite right.
“I remember thinking, ‘I love this journal, but it has this portion that requires you to kind of assess the day, sit down at night.’ Well, as a busy mom, you don’t have any time to do any of that. You’re, like, dead tired. I was getting up in the middle of night to go to work. So I always felt like I never finished what I started that day with this journal practice. So I’m like, ‘gosh, I can make one better.’ ”
So she did.
Robinson created a journal of her own, coming up with her own intentions and inspirations.
“That was a process,” she says. “It was what I needed to ask myself every day as I began the process of working on me and my growth. I fine-tuned the questions
‘The You Do You Journal’
By Andrea Robinson. Available at andrearobinsonontv.com. as I went along.”
Once she was done, she made some copies and gave them to close friends. They loved it, Robinson says, and her husband suggested that she create them for others. She began working on them in October, found a designer, and started selling. (You can buy them at her website, andrearobinsonontv.com. The list price is $37, but they’re on sale for $25.90 each.)
As for returning to her television career, never say never.
“I’ve always said to myself, ‘I never want to live with regret,’ ” she says. “So if that opportunity comes, and it fits in that season of my life, I absolutely — I can’t say no to anything right now. But I think now, in the season where I’m at, that sort of schedule didn’t fit.”
In the meantime, Robinson’s enjoying taking her children to school in the mornings.
“I’m enjoying the little things,” she says, “which really are the big things.”