January 1st, 2009

Looking Back on 2008

I have spent the last week mak­ing sure that I devise a con­crete plan for mak­ing this year one of the most pro­duc­tive ever. How­ever, there is no way to move for­ward with­out fig­ur­ing out where I have been. It is a daunt­ing task but Michelle over at The Inte­grated Mother has made me take stock and fig­ure out just where I am and where I want to be by the end of this year.

She asks a few ques­tion on here blog and I will answer them below.

What choices did you make? The most impor­tant choice that I made was to leave my teach­ing job to per­sue my dream of start­ing my own web design com­pany.  Unfor­tu­nately, I also chose to put the busi­ness before my fam­ily and while I thought stay­ing home would be a great way to bond with them, my round-the-clock focus on my busi­ness cre­ated a stress­ful sit­u­a­tion much like when I was teaching.

What were you think­ing?  I was think­ing that I was tired of being asked to put other chil­dren ahead of my own while my daugh­ter spent 11 hours a day at a sit­ter. I was also think­ing that for some­one with a MST, I was get­ting a short-end of the salary stick because I was bust­ing my butt and we were still strug­gling to make ends meet. Unfor­tu­nately, I was NOT think­ing about how to gen­er­ate busi­ness and while it has been good, I need to focus more on pro­mot­ing myself.

Who did you learn from? I learned from so many. I learned from Mrs. Flinger who talked to me about set­ting strict guide­lines via con­tracts so that I never get screwed out of money again. I learned from a great graphic designer named Count who taught me to  demand pay­ment up-front even when I worry that I will lose busi­ness. The AA Moms Dis­ney Crew taught me that fac­ing my fears and putting myself out there is not as scary as I had orig­i­nally thought. My hus­band taught me that no mat­ter how hard I may fall, I am never a dis­ap­point­ment to those who love me.

January 1st, 2009

Happy New Year! Move Mountains in 2009!

December 29th, 2008

Creating a Plan for 2009

Michelle over at Inte­grated Mom recently wrote acom­par­ing her life to the man­galed tire on her SUV. Just pic­tur­ing it is enough to stress any­one out, but when she offered the link to the Wheel of Life by the Coaches Train­ing Insti­tute, I jumped at the chance to see what my life looked like.

And, well, it isn’t pretty.

The Wheel of Life gives you a visual snap­shot of dif­fer­ent areas of your life and just how sat­is­fied you are in those areas. Accord­ing to my graph (see above), my life needs work. If you look at the chart below, you will get a bet­ter under­stand­ing. The higher the per­cent­age in a cat­e­gory te more full­filled you are in that area of your life.

My life needs some seri­ous work. I am going to spend today and tomor­row map­ping out a plan for my life and what I need to do in order to live the life that I want to live.

I have to admit, I am actu­ally a lit­tle embarassed by my wheel. I have neglected so much of my life– fun, money, health– it’s kind of sad.

So how will you enter the New Year? What are your plans for 2009? Let me know.