Catching Up-or Picking up the Pieces

                                            

It is a cold, blustery day here in the Midwest. I got a call early this morning that the offices where I work are out of power and I don't have to come in until 10:00am.  It was nice to get a little more sleep and to now sit with coffee in hand, watching the autumn colors blow outside my window.

It has been awhile since I have looked at, much less written, on my blog.  And although I won't write much right now, I just wanted to let my readers know I am still here. Since my father's passing earlier this month, I have been spent time with memories, getting caught up at home, at work and helping my mom catch up, too. With this brief, but most welcome gift of time,  I thought I would take a few minutes to do a little catch up inventory for blog and business. 

A few things fell by the wayside over the last month and hold some lessons learned. Even though most of these are directly connected to my dad's illness over the past year and the sad events of October, I believe that some of these hold lessons that would be true, regardless.  I take on too much too fast.  A recipe for disaster. And because a lesson learned is really not helpful unless there is a plan for applying the lesson, I will include my plan, too.  And I am stopping at three.

-I totally forgot about and "flunked" my two online courses for photography and online writing.  I flunked them only because I did not finish them by the deadline.  Two online courses were too much with everything else I was trying to do, not to mention working a fulltime job.
Lesson learned; don't be so eager that it becomes too much and nothing gets done.
So, I will take them again.  This time, I will just take one at a time.  My deadline; hmmm, not sure with holidays approaching, but will have signed up by year's end.

-All my plans to get designs into an online store stopped, as did creating more designs
Lesson learned; I don't need a full line of product to begin and to open an online presence. I just need to begin with a few good choices and get the account/store created.
Choose four designs, then open a Cafepress shop by year's end with photo gifts and stationary.

I stopped doing something everyday.  That's ok, the lesson here is sometimes there are more important things in life.
No regrets, I was where I needed to be. Begin again, today. Do Something Everyday!

Now, to be fair, I have done something over the past few weeks. I was very pleased and honored to have created my dad's memorial service program. I worked hard with my new software to get it just right and learned a lot about the Serif PlusX4. The heart that went into this project will be a good standard to hold the rest of my work to.

And so today begins a new day.

Progress Is Good

Do something every day.

This is what I keep telling myself if my business of the heart, and learning how to be an awesome blogger, is to succeed.  It doesn't matter right now if it is big or little, takes all day or only moments. What matters is that I keep the momentum going.  I feel the pull of that momentum, the passion for the task, the excitement that keeps me moving forward. 

However, I know from past experience that with so many other aspects of life tugging at me for my energy, once the ball stops rolling, the energy stops with it. My dreams and heart are put on hold, by choice, to attend to other things I also hold in high value. Now, I am also choosing to make room and time to give voice to my dreams, my heart. So I do something every day to keep the energy moving forward.

So, what have I been doing since I last wrote? In no particular order (because I don't think I could remember), I have;

1. registered, downloaded and begun two online classes about Internet writing and using my photoshop elements.
2. jotted down many notes, resources, and websites-ordered a few new books (I love books!)
3. continued to try and figure out affiliates
4. researched and read other blogs and businesses similar to my vision of what I plan to create
5.thought, what seems to be 24/7, about various aspects of my business and how it should harmonize with the rest of my life.This is probably the deepest stuff for me. 
6. tried to come up with some sort of financial plan for the transition from full time to hopeful new business
7. decided on my next blog, I think, though I am still not ready to begin it until I have work through some other things-like html codes and customizing pages and affiliates.


Of course, each of those things leads to more things. One of the biggest things I feel I need to do right now is organize and get all this into some sort of working order. I would like to be able to come home from work at my FT job, transition for 30 minutes, make dinner etc, then sometime each evening sit in "my space" and dig into where my passion lies.  Currently, I have been fitting it in here and there and it feels disjointed.

So I think before I proceed with anything new, it is time to recap where I am and establish a working order that gives value to my dream.  This is a hands-on, offline, sort of task.  I'll let you know how it goes.

As always, any ideas and thoughts are welcome.  I would be interested, in particular, on ideas related to successful blogging and home office organization.

I need a coffee refill.  How about you?