Before we delve into this post, I want to thank those who are reading my little blog. The last post seemed to excite some interest and I appreciate all the positive comments that were sent in my direction! That particular post went a tad darker than I originally intended when I started writing it, so I'm thankful that people found it to be encouraging.
My last post was basically a summation of a low point that I reached towards the fall of last year, where I had overburdened myself with just too much, and the realization that I had a driven, almost addictive need to be busy busy busy all the time. I knew there a lot of internal work to do and the first step I needed to take was to eliminate all but the most necessary elements of my daily living and start from the bare bones.
The first thing I eliminated were the pipe dreams, the things that I had in my mind that I wanted to do, but in real life had done nothing to move them forward. In 9 months I had no less than 4-5 "serious" business ideas that created fevered excitement when thinking about them, but they had never moved beyond the conceptual phase. I should explain a little bit about myself here -- I'm a highly imaginative individual and imagine myself to have an entrepreneurial mindset (whether this is true or not is up for debate). However, I am also easily discouraged -- when I can't see past a particular problem that I imagine might appear, I become paralyzed with self-doubt and everything freezes...until I'm inspired again, get excited again, and then paralyzed again...it's really a nasty (albeit funny) cycle. I almost feel like if I'm NOT coming up with new ideas then something must be wrong. But what is really wrong is coming up with ideas and never doing anything about them.
For the most part these pipe dreams were easy to dismiss (at least for now) as I had no concrete attachment to them, neither in time or investment. Everything I had done for them had been in my own imagination.
The next part was tricky, that was filtering out items of business that were in process. There were some things that I could NOT take out of the equation -- I had a job that wasn't bringing in a great deal of money, but it was still a paycheck. And I had my CE studies. On the surface these weren't necessary in life but my job requires that I constantly hone my skills and stay on top of new research So these two were truly interlinked and neither could be eliminated.
However, I had a blog (not this one) that I enjoyed immensely. I was legitimate excited about it and loved writing it for the brief time it was active. However, I was increasingly lost on how to determine my direction and "voice" for the particular topic it covered. Plus I felt like I lacked some of the equipment and computer know-how to make it the blog I really wanted it to be. Rather than being a source of joy, my ambition was making it a source of frustration (see the above paragraph -- I had issues and couldn't see past them...). This one needed to go, or at least be put on hiatus. This choice was hard... REALLY hard. I fought it tooth and nail, but the more I struggled to hold onto it, the less happiness it gave me. I finally came to a compromise -- I would let it go for now, with the hope that when I had reached the right time I would give myself permission to start it back up again (keep in mind I'm regaling events of several months past, and I am at the point where I feel like I MAY pick it up again, a prospect that both excites and scares me!).
After letting the blog go, everything else was easy. I didn't have an immensely active social life at the time, so it wasn't as if I needed to let go of many events or other time commitments.
One would think that I had reached a place where I could relax but the reality was quite the opposite...
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