Search Results for: blog what are your priorities

Balancing Blogging and Mothering

I squinted to make sense of scattered letters through the glare on my screen.  Focused attempts at deciphering HTML became distracted by bursts of giggling from the other side of my window.  Rejoicing from finally making a text box that scrolled, I missed a small excited voice asking me to “look at me”.  Dripping hair and sopping wet footsteps ran inside to beckon me to join their mini water park complete with a blow up monkey pool.  Promising just five more minutes I shooed away wet fingers from my computer.  Next I looked up and the time for sprinklers, popsicles, and water slides … Continue reading →

Teaching Your Sons to Be Better Men

In a world where playing video games is more appealing than providing for a family or going to college it is especially important to teach our sons the value of working hard and growing up. While I intend to keep my son little forever, eventually the universe is going to combine against me and make him grow up. For some men, this doesn’t mean much. They are grown up but living in a child’s world. Believe it or not the number of men playing video games between the ages of 18 and 34 surpasses those between the ages of 13 … Continue reading →

Know Your Seeds: Seed Language

The language of seeds can be intimidating for a new gardener. What’s a hybrid? Hint: it’s not a plant that grows cars. What’s an open pollinated seed? Aren’t all seeds pollinated? Here’s a quick guide to some of the more common seed language you’ll see this winter. Hybrid seeds are created when two lines of seeds with desirable characteristics are crossed, and the resulting seeds are collected. Hybrid seeds are good if you’re looking for a specific characteristic. However, since these seeds breed with the characteristics for a single generation, if you try to save the seed from a hybrid, … Continue reading →

Recast Anxiety: Setting the Stage for Peaceful Scenes in Your Life

If anxiety plays a starring role in your life, it’s time to recast. You deserve the starring role. Anxiety need be little more than a subplot. Make that a cameo. No, even that draws too much attention to it. Anxiety should be one of those characters like “woman on bus” or “man reading newspaper.” You’re aware it’s there, and it serves a purpose, but once the scene’s over, you never think about it again. Certainly, this is an ideal scenario; it’s much easier said than done letting anxious thoughts go for good. But try to remember, you call the shots. … Continue reading →

Ousting Anxiety: 11 Steps to Taking Charge of Your Life

Those of us with high levels of anxiety generally respond in one of two ways. We either immerse ourselves in one “productive” task after another, or we do nothing at all. The root cause is the same – fear that we do not have control over our lives. When we scramble around manically marking things of our to-do lists, we are holding out hope that the more we get done, the closer we’ll be to control. And the more control we have, the closer we’ll be to relief from anxious thoughts and feelings. After all, once we have nothing left … Continue reading →

Love Your Kids While You Can

One of the downsides of working in TV news is being forced to stalk families who’ve just suffered devastating losses. I absolutely, positively, unequivocally despised having to request interviews from parents, who had just buried their children, be it due to a rare disease, a fatal accident or some other type of tragedy. Back then, I was young, single, and knew if I didn’t knock on the doors of the grieving families I risked losing my job. Today, I am an older, no longer taking blood money, and more importantly, a mother. I highly doubt I could stomach walking up … Continue reading →

Give Your Business a Tune-Up

Every so often, your home-based business needs a tune-up. Just like your car needs regular oil changes, tire rotation, and other maintenance to keep it running smoothly your home-based business can benefit from regular assessment and adjustment to keep it running at its best. Today, I discovered a good resource called the 9-Hour Business Tune-Up by Acey Gaspard. The program is available for free on the A Touch of Business website. Nine hours may seem like a big commitment, a chunk of time that you simply do not have. Fortunately, the program is broken down into nine, one-hour segments. If … Continue reading →

Priorities 3

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Recently I’ve been writing about priorities because I’ve been having a priority party in my mind recently, and I invited all of my ongoing and recent tasks to the party. We discussed all of the problems each one of them has had and noticed failures in the planning stages (or earlier) that caused major problems later on. All of this came up because I decided to work on a project that didn’t have a clear direction, had really loose (and ultimately somewhat meaningless) deadlines, and put me in a pretty bad position overall. Because of the lack of focus, leadership, … Continue reading →

Priorities 2

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Last time we took a journey through my personal history of prioritization (or lack there of). We left off at graduate school, where I wasn’t handed a planner, but a handbook. Did I dutifully learn to prioritize now? Did I learn to abandon procrastination — forget its very name — and press on boldly into the future? Did I do all of those things that seemingly guaranteed my success as a student and (theoretically) as a future professor? Did I? Or did I fail to do those things, find myself wallowing in a pit of despair (of my own making), … Continue reading →

Priorities 1

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When I started high school I was told that I’d have to prioritize my life. I was handed a planner (along with the rest of my class), I sat down with my academic counselor, and I was repeatedly told that I needed to keep track of things better than I ever had before. So I dutifully wrote down my assignments in that planner and completed them as they were assigned, right? Well, partially. I sort of worked out my own little system and made it all work. So I moved on to college. When I started college there was an … Continue reading →