Hello,

 

 

Every January I make a point to write down the goals I want to achieve for the upcoming year. The goals change each year, but some have rolled over from previous years. Some are as simple as FLOSS EVERYDAY. Others are more substantial like CLIMB 5 COLORADO 14ERS These

or GAIN 10 LBS. OF MUSCLE here. I even threw in some philosophy this time around and it was that point that had me sitting down to write this.

 

SPEND MORE TIME REFLECTING ON ABUNDANCE AND GRATITUDE.

Abundance and gratitude. This has been challenging for me lately. With the extra pressures at work, loss of free time, too many tasks to complete at home, and just an overall busyness I find it hard to be as thankful as I should. Time is what I crave most. I recently read some thoughts from the Stoic Seneca that life is not short, it’s what we do with the time that we are allowed that truly matters. Meaning, we have plenty of life to live if we don’t waste it on meaningless things. From a gratitude standpoint I was glad to have read that.

So I guess the key is to weed out those things from your life that don’t feel like they have purpose. There’s the usual suspects (reality TV, TV shows, the news, TV,TV,TV,) but for me, I would start with my career path. I’ve been working in the wholesale/retail field for 20 years with the same company. More and more, each day seems to be longer than the previous day. My brain has been scattered at work for some time now, and my performance has been dwindling. I have always been thankful for this job, but I guess 20 years has put me at my mental/ emotional limit. There is so much that I want to achieve outside of work that work in itself has become my biggest waste of time. Not a good place to be when, financially, I’m not yet ready to retire. This job has paid the bills for years, but has also become my security blanket that has stopped me from exploring other passions. Just awhile back I had to burn 2 weeks vacation because I was denied time off requests throughout the year. It was use it or lose it and who am I to deny myself vacation? Camping, hiking, fishing, yard work, and just hanging out in the garage was my theme for 2 weeks! I even had an old friend visit from Portland. It was all glorious! Exactly how I would want my day to day to be. I guess part of the trouble is that I have yet to figure out how to make the things that I’m interested in into usable income. I mean how do you put PRACTICE A ZERO COMBUSTION DAY 1X PER WEEK into dollar signs? Or LEARN HOW TO PLAY GOLF. If anything, that just causes you to spend more money. I mean, perhaps TAKE THE CAMERA EVERYWHERE. TAKE PICS OF EVERYTHING could go hand in hand with GET A YOUTUBE CHANNEL UP AND RUNNING. Could that make money? Sounds like a dime a dozen these days, but it would be fun to try. What if I combined WRITE AT LEAST 2X PER WEEK with the goal of SPEND 30 MINUTES OUTSIDE EVERYDAY. You better have good content. I suppose if I was doing those things I could continue working my day job to keep an income coming in. It would be a good kind of busy. Brainstorming ideas to write about , film, shoot, and produce. So, having said that, I guess I will STOP WASTING TIME, get off my ass and start pursuing what I really want to do.