Turning a Page

2018 was an easy year to say goodbye to.

The struggles I faced last year quite simply wore me out.  I feel convinced that I aged a good 5 years over the last several months and the white hairs growing in my beard might be the proof of that.

I recognize the growth I gained from this experience.  I have learned so much as the days passed and I know I am the better for it.  But for goodness-sakes!  I feel like I barely made it through.

Just in the nick of time, our contractors finished their jobs, inspections were passed, we all hustled to get the finishing work done, and an occupancy certificate was issued FINALLY giving us approval to move into our new home.

Then the move was on and we made quick work of it.  Furniture, boxes, shelves; it all had to come to our new home.  The trips back and forth finally petered down as the last items were loaded in the trailer, the lights shut off, and the door locked behind us.

We were able to open in the New Year in our new location.  Although it took much longer than I ever wanted or expected it to, the timing ended up working well.  January 2nd marked that new step for us and we were eager to take it!

Now this one victory is not and will not be a fix-all for the stresses I faced last year.  If I tried to explain all of the pieces of the puzzle you’d have your reading material for the next three years.  But it was a large piece and that will allow me to focus on some of the other turbulence I am striving to smooth out for our business.

I had a 5am wake up call this morning.

You’re supposed to be able to sleep in on your birthday, soaking in all the comfy goodness your bed offers you.  It’s interesting how much I want to sleep, but how hard it is to get a good night’s sleep anymore.  As a child I could sleep and sleep all I wanted, then go to bed at night and sleep some more.  Not anymore.

I guess my daughter had enough sleep for one night because it was her rummaging around in her room and thumping up the hall that brought me back to the world this morning soon after 5am.  Next thing I knew our bedroom door opened allowing the light from the hall to spill in on us.  (J6 has to turn every light in the house on when she get’s up on mornings like this.  She usually then retreats back to her bedroom leaving the entire house fully lit.)

Doing my best to lay perfectly still, my bluff must have worked and she slowly closed our door and, quite surprisingly, quietly let it latch.  It must have been a fluke though, because a mere 10 minutes later I was startled by the bang-latch of her bedroom door slamming shut.

What I learned after tossing and turning in an attempt to add some more zzzz’s to my nights’ rest, was that she was up, dressed, and rearing to go for the day!  My wife shared her frustration with this as the typical morning routine consists of my wife prodding J6 every 5 minutes to take the next step towards being ready to go out the door for school.

After a shower and being greeted with my favorite breakfast made specially for me, I undertook building a fire in our stove to heat up our home for the day.  As my daughter bounced around our living room, coming and going about her business, I inquisitively asked J6 “How come you decided to get up so early today?”  Her cheerful, care-free response was: “Because I wanted to play”.

I later mentioned to my wife in passing how I wish I could wake up so cheerful and full of optimism for the day.  I was feeling quite jealous of her youthful innocence and naivety to how the world treats us adults.  And that’s when my wife spoke a simple truth; “well you’d wake up that way too if you were going to play”.

“Next year syndrome”

I have mentioned before how I’d keep saying “give me a year” to different commitments or complications this past year.  Somehow I hoped that this would solve many of the problems, stresses, and headaches I would experience.  But as the months rolled on in 2018 I began to realize that I was just camouflaging my procrastination with this cloak of a project.

Sure, this project was a big commitment and did eat up a lot of my time.  Yes, it was an added stress in my life that, in reality, should ease a bit now that our business is fully moved over.  Alright, anyone in my situation would feel a bit overwhelmed and want to limit their commitments while they dealt with such a big life event.  But, at the end of the day, I could have seized the opportunity to learn some better time-management techniques and ran my life a bit more efficiently.

What I came to realize is that as these changes come and go I allow them to control my time.  The program I am currently running isn’t working for me, so maybe I need to make a change that allows me to run my schedule versus my projects running it for me.

I had a chance to chat with my wife on the subject.  The problem I am facing is that my day can be so unpredictable.  I can walk into my office, develop a plan of action for the day, and next thing I know it’s 5pm and I have checked one item off of my list.

A printer went down, a quote was needed, a VIP client needed some attention, etc.  There is a lot that goes on during the day that needs the Boss’s attention.  These are items that I can’t schedule and often need addressing now in order to keep the rest of our business flowing properly.  So this is the first hurdle I need to try and figure out how to get over, or at least somewhat manage.

My hope in this new year, starting with my birthday, is to find a way to wake up feeling like I get to play.  Like I have some sort of control over what my day can and will be.  To wake up feeling like it’s a new opportunity facing me versus a brick wall I am trying to chip my way through with a tennis ball knowing there is another brick wall behind it.

I honestly have no idea what my plan is, or how I’m going to make it work.  I’ve never been very good at setting goals and such.  So really I’m just thinking out loud as I present this post.  But I can update you as the year goes on.  Share my successes and my failures.  Share the next page as I turn this one over.

My first step:

I made a list.  I’m going to call it my prayer list.  You might call it a wish list, a priority list, to-do list, whatever.  I’ve done this in the past and I’ve proven it to work.  The results weren’t immediate, but I did see every item on that list through to a successful completion.

Basically I took a sticky note and wrote down the biggest concerns that were on my mind.  Those items that I knew were very important, needed my diligent attention, but that were too hard to solve in just one day, one week, or even one month.

I made this list and told myself each morning I would take a moment, read them over, and ponder on them a bit.  In my case, I say a prayer over them as well and seek the counsel of a higher power as I try to find solutions to the concerns they present.

I don’t spend much more time than that on them at that moment.  But what I realize it does for me is keeps that list fresh in my mind so as I go through my day ideas can pop in, I can recognize things related to those items, and it allows me to put mental bullet points below each item.  These bullet points eventually build into a guidebook that leads to the solution.

Now this doesn’t mean I only focus on that item for a few minutes each day.  Often, as I find time, I will pick a point and do my diligent research, studying, etc. in an effort to find the solution I need.  This is another way that I build my mental bullet points that add to the mental pondering I do for each item.

I don’t really know how else to describe it.  That morning pondering, wish, prayer, or whatever else you’d like to call it, list, somehow keeps those items fresh on my mind and allow me to mentally work on them day by day, and week by week.  Adding points here and there until I can recognize the right solution for me.

Like I mentioned before, the results aren’t immediate.  But it helps me avoid those “panic moments” when I’ve put aside a larger problem, only to remember it a month later as a wave of anxiety washes over me because I haven’t given it any attention while I dealt with everything else that’s demanded of me.

Step two…….

Step two is on my list….  So I don’t have that one yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.