Behind the 2008-Ball

Here we are 15 days into the new year and this is the first chance I have had to write. It's simply shameful, I know. But honestly now, how much of this is too much?

Over the past few days - years even - I've been really hit with all the social and business networking groups there are online and enough is getting to be enough. Keeping up with a blog, writing newsletters for my business, networking on LinkedIn and now Xanga and Facebook, hanging out with my online crit group and one other writing group (I put 3 others on no-mail so long ago I don't even miss them now) in addition to reading blogs (great stuff but numerous and very time consuming), volleying back the IMs in the eternal tennis match I play with IM friends/co-workers all day long, and simply trying to keep up with the businesses and business friends I deal with regularly via the 2 groups I belong to (soon to be 3) - this is ALL my online life, my dear friends. Oh! And did you know I can even send and receive emails on my Wii?! Mr. T set that up last night. But please don't try to contact me there. When I'm in the middle of tennis, I don't want to know you! I am sure I am forgetting some other facet of this hectic online life but I don't want to think that hard.

Now let's factor in phone calls, mostly cell phone, and the in-person contact with my job, business, family and friends and you have one very scattered sista before you.

I hate feeling scattered but I have been feeling that way at work as various projects I am at the helm of go on simultaneously along with intermittent requests from other departments to work editorial magic pronto and then there is just the day-to-day I do all by my lonesome (but as part of a wonderful team, of course!).

Got to then go home and do some homework checking, refereeing, constant cleaning, seeking and finding, phone call screening, maybe cooking, washing of children, email checking (if I have the energy) and whatever it is hubby needs from me too. (Most recently, hooking up his new laptop wirelessly which took about 3 days and countless hours due to still uncertain problems. But on the other hand getting my own laptop is no longer as pressing plus now I'm starting to think with 2 PCs in the house, maybe it is time to think Mac.)

In between all this I eat and read because I am determined to stick to my avid reading and I have library books so I have to return them eventually. Oh yeah, forgot to add in library trips with the kids in the list above. I do a little planning as I think about what I want to do next for the house. I figure out my money (Mr. T. handles "our" stuff, thankfully.) and try to do SOMETHING for the business. It's such a vicious circle. I'm sure I post this same lament at least twice a year if not more regularly but until I solve the great mystery of juggling it all, I'll just keep on sounding on my board because that's what it's there for.

In church on Sunday, I thought hard about what I want to add into my life this year. Right now this tid bit is just between God and me so excuse me if I don't launch into details right now. But I can say it involves preparation. I already have to prepare myself for all the changes we're making in our business this year, and now that my business partner is doing the work of 4 people at her job, it's going to be that much harder to get things done, but all these changes work with the other prep work I need to do so it should flow nicely into my current life plans. And in the end, if I opt out, I'll still be very much where I want to be so it's a win-win proposition. But the awesomeness of it all has me once again thinking about all I am involved in. January is a great time to make these kinds of assessments and it's about that time. Time to join together what can be joined together to ease my life. Time to toss out whatever is causing me too much angst and stress. Time to freshen up stale things. Time to reassess my priorities and make sure my life is still full of what is meaningful to me and what is God ordained. Usually when I tackle it all, I find that I'm pretty much where I want to be and life is not all bad after all. But I haven't reached that place yet.