Losing focus

byLaurieP2219

303 followers

7 years ago

I've been here before. A moment when the business mountain seems impossible to scale. And my brain's reached near capacity with all the new information I'm trying to process and absorb in spare minutes and hours- while life continues to rollick chaotically along.

Right about now is when I balance precariously on a sharp divide between pushing through all the chaos to gain new ground- or fall back, exhausted, questioning why I ever thought I could do this...

Again.

In the last few weeks, I've had not one but two power failures... more downed limbs from the ancient walnut tree in my backyard (and a nonworking chainsaw)... grass in my half-acre yard reaching harvest height if a local farmer could get a mower back there to put up hay.

And me with only a push mower and a weed eater to combat the wild overgrowth.

Then there was the moment the other night when my internet connection via Google Fiber decided to go from working fine to the flashing red light - and because I work from home. I lost a half day's worth of pay before the tech arrived to perform the 10-minute repair job. (But hey, Google gave me a 2 dollar credit for the inconvenience of 16 hours of downtime, so that makes it all ok!)

But that's just the highlights of a typical summer for me. (How is it already July?!)

Free time is already minimal. And my day job just announced that the company made it's biggest client acquisition ever - and all hell is going to break loose in less than a month when the new client is brought on board.

The last straw came early this morning - on a day off when I anticipate hours to devote to my own business - only to open my old laptop, which greeted me with the gray screen of "it's not happening right now".

Seriously?

After rebooting it twice - only to be met with the same gray screen of non-cooperation - I finally took the worthless battery out, plugged the laptop into a power outlet, and tried one more time.

I did a hard reboot. And finally, my ancient Asus powered up (I know, it's time to do a backup of everything and repair or replace my laptop).

And so, I must write... call it a brain dump. But it helps relieve the internal pressure to figure it all out yesterday - and refocus my endlessly looped thinking into firm action.

So I write to remember why I'm here in the first place:

• To do what I really want to do, instead of running safely with the herd of mediocrity.
• To win my freedom from the corporate job with stagnant wages.
• To build something I can leave to my kids - and show them they can do it, too.
• To pay someone to do the lawn care for my ginormous yard.
• And all the other things on my goals list.

I've got a mountain of training, purchased and free. I've got oodles of support and inspiration.

But nothing will change if I give up and fall back, will it? As someone once said:

"Nothing changes if nothing changes."

I know I'm not the only one pushing through some challenges big or small today. How do you turn down the internal chatter of discouragement and refocus?