Impossible to slow down?

It’s Saturday night. It’s been a week since I’ve been back to work full time. This week, I did all sorts, with the one constant task which I’ve returned to every day being a new product booklet that we are hoping to have ready for the upcoming Spring show season. I feel like I cannot settle down to work deeply for very long. Either there is an interruption in my day brought on by one of our people, or the interruption is due to my inability to concentrate and my apparent need to bounce my mind around. But who doesn’t need a break periodically when staring at a computer screen and trying to wrestle multiple creative elements onto one cohesive page? Then I also feel like the product booklet should not be taking so much time to complete. But perhaps I simply overestimate how much work I can get done each day or week?

After supper at home, I’ve worked on the Wilde Treats website. Here, I have tremendous fun. Building websites or e-commerce stores is so much fun. At least the architectural part of it is so much fun. Sometimes I think I would enjoy running a website design firm. But really, doing the architectural web design would be the fun, not doing all the necessary administrative work. I also feel this to be true at work. It is the creative work that I crave (especially web design) and not the laborious admin work. I’ve sometimes felt like a mother when doing admin work. At least in the sense, that I am indispensable and so much energy is being sucked out of me. I’m sure there are people in this world that thrive on admin work.

Some days I feel like trying to slow down is futile. I work 7 or 8 hours at work and then come home to work on a website. Effectively this makes for a 12-13 hour workday. I don’t know. Then I have more and more ideas that continually rush into my head. More product websites to build. More things to sell to customers that I would enjoy using myself. And on and on… I need unlimited amounts of time and money and a general manager who would happily do all my admin work so I can go on my website building adventures. Good night, and happy new week!

Green Grass

1. The grass on the other side of the fence tends to appear greener.

2. Sometimes, we need to find greener grass on the other side of the fence.

3. Both of the above statements are true.

The fact that we have a warm tiny house to stay in, and a vehicle to drive that takes us wherever we want to go, plus many other things, means we are wealthier than millions of people around this globe. We are not living on $3 per day. Our dollar consumption per day is many multiples of 3.

And yet, sometimes I wish that our debt load was smaller, and that my work responsibility was smaller. Downsizing both of these would allow me much more freedom in my schedule, which would potentially allow for more experiences as a family.

By nature, I am a dreamer or visionary or whatever you want to call my type. Sticking it out over the long haul is not one of my strengths. Coming up with new ideas is. It is difficult, however, to experience the benefit of compounding gains when switching attention too often. Being able to focus my attention on one project or business over time is the only way to gain traction.

On the other hand, it is difficult to replace diverse experiences with anything else. Travelling, ziplining, skiing in the Rocky Mountains, eating ethnic 😀 North Carolina BBQ, camping, etc. etc., all come to mind. In the phase of business/life we are in, it feels like it's difficult for us to get enough of the above onto our calendar.

I need to remind myself to count the simple blessings in my day:

• our sonny who is almost 3 years old and dreams of a tricycle with a hitch and trailer to go with it, for his birthday

• a business that provides me with tons of satisfaction in exchange for tons of stress (read this post on stress)

• a tiny cabin that keeps my family warm, even in the harshest of weather

• the ability to dream.