Just thinking out loud.

And now that we’re talking about Mr. Godin, he had an interesting post today that flows along thoughts I’ve been having for some time (probably inspired by him):

When does your mind lose the ability to keep up? Then what happens? Is it already happening?

from Redoubling to system failure, by Seth Godin

Well for me, yeah. It’s completely happening. Not just online – my entire life is too much sometimes – but mostly online. Those people who can put out a blog post and sync its release on Facebook and Twitter using Hootsuite and keep up with every comment and be educated and have time for more research…I want to be like those people, but there’s just no way. Those people honestly have made blogging their life – that is their job, and so that makes sense.

Me, I’m a woman with a full time (plus some) job and two kids and a husband and a house and a cat even, and the fact that I can even half-ass manage those things and keep up some semblance of a blog and a Twitter and follow a few friends on Facebook – heck, I think that’s pretty amazing. But toss in that I also like to watch TV online, and sew a bit, and want to redo my kids’ bedrooms this summer, and maybe even lose some weight in all that…

You can see where it may be a bit overwhelming.

A person has to find their limit of things to focus on, and make those things the best. My things have to be Family, Work, and then Everything Else. It’s probably like that for a lot of people. So for all those Mother/Wife/Homemaker types that don’t make blogging a full time sport, how do we keep all the other clutter from taking over?

A girl has to give up something. Twitter, Facebook, Blog, Squidoo, RSS feeds, News, Television, Movies – it’s very hard to draw the line. I love all of them, but they can’t all have a place.

I think I have some thinking to do. :)

Huh. You know, I’ve tried doing this kind of thing before. Here on my blog (maybe not this one, but one of them), throughout other sites, with other programs like Lose It! for the iPhone, but it hasn’t worked for me. The public humiliation bit is just humiliating, never really motivating.

I tend to like to keep things to myself, but then eventually I give those things up as well. It’s a tough sell.

It all boils down to determination. How bad do I want it? I guess not bad enough, because my pants size keeps going up, along with my weight I suppose. (I haven’t been on a scale in a year, probably.)

*sigh* It’s all very difficult. Nothing is very easy. (Now I sound like my 7-year-old…heh.)

LoseIt! logo from LoseIt.com

“Jack of all trades, master of none” is a figure of speech used in reference to a generalist: a person that is competent with many skills but is not outstanding in any particular one.

Wikipedia

Is that an insult, or a compliment? A person can be good at many things, and be a person who is respected, with a large tribe of people who will turn to her with questions and know that she will have a solution.

And a person can be good at many things, but when a job needs to get done, they may never be the one who is called. After all, would you hire someone who only changes their own oil to repair your timing belt?

I am good at many things, but I can’t be excellent at all of them at once. It requires time and effort to stay on top of the game. I can excel at work and write a great blog, but I can’t also create an amazing website template or keep up on my Squidoo lenses. I could possibly do all of those things and be an absentee parent, but that really isn’t an option. You understand.

My attention can’t always be in one direction. It needs to wander, to take care of different tasks. To be the best I can at what I need to focus on now, so later I can be the best at something else.

A jack of all trades? I think not. But I will master some.

EDIT 5/3/10:
10:45 pm tonight. A little but late, but not excessive. Today felt pretty good, after I’d woken up all the way. :)

EDIT 5/6/10:
I’ve logged two nights in bed at 10:10 pm, and three at 10:15 pm. I feel successful with my goal so far this week.

“Being 100% with my family, not just in the same room.”

To me that means:

• Not coming home just to take a nap to catch up on the sleep I missed the night before by staying up too late.
• Not staring vacantly at a movie or TV show that the kids aren’t really interested in on a school night.
• Not goofing off on the computer on a school night.
• Playing games with the kids, even if I really don’t want to.

And so I should:

• Make sure I’m getting enough sleep. Staying up until an hour before midnight and sleeping for seven hours is not enough for me. This is going to help with my overall health and weight-loss plans as well.
• Schedule time for the movies I want to watch after the children are in bed.
• Remember that the computer and the Internet will be there later – at work, after bedtime, on the weekends. My kids will only be this age doing these things once.
• Commit to at least one game, then suggest something else we can do together that they’ll still enjoy.
• Get out of the house with the kids, even if it’s for a two-block walk and my daughter asks to be carried after we cross the alley behind our house (true story).

I only get a half-hour in the morning and two hours in the evening during the week with the kids. I don’t want them to feel like we’re never around, like we never do anything together. Growing up I enjoyed being by myself and didn’t feel abandoned when I got home and my parents weren’t there – I actually really liked the independence. But maybe my kids don’t feel that way. I do remember my parents never wanting to play card games with me or board games – we did, just not as often as I wanted. I don’t want Donovan to remember that about me.

I would really like for all of us to get out to walk – hubby, the kids and I. My husband is often working on the family tree which is important to him, so I don’t invite him out all the time, but time together that we can do for free, that’s important stuff.

Planning those two hours in the evening can be hard. One day of the week is Cub Scouts for me and my son. He has homework that doesn’t always get accomplished after school as it should. My daughter likes to run around and play with the neighborhood kids, but we won’t let her go out without her brother. And then there’s supper, showers, teeth brushing (a nightly battle between the sibs), and the tucking in ceremony.

We don’t really have a set routine, and for the most part I’m okay with that. I’d like to set shower-teeth-book-bed in stone, because then maybe we’d have less of a struggle with that. But I would also love to not have to spend a half hour breathing down their backs to get things done. With my daughter, I understand. She’s four, she needs help. But my son is seven now, and really should be doing things by himself, yes? IMHO, anyway.

What is important to me?

1. Being 100% with my family, not just in the same room.
2. Completing obligations I’ve made to others.
3. Getting out of debt.
4. Losing weight.
5. Writing.

I really want to focus on these things over the next few days…try to visually represent the list and put it somewhere as a reminder.

I’m the only one who can live my life, and I will be the only one responsible at the end of things if I have any regrets. I need to take that responsibility by the horns and give it a good f*ing shake to make sure things are where they should be.

I know, okay? Let me crab about my window and leave me alone. :)

But more seriously, I’m worried about the window. It could be a quick fix, but I doubt it. These things never are. And they certainly aren’t cheap. Never, ever.

Well, I can’t do anything but lay down towels for now.

Life is like that, sometimes. All you can do is do what you can and hope for the best.

At least the rest of my day went reasonably well.

My husband says on the phone that he’s fixed the desk, and it no longer has sharp edges. He also points out that if we use the old desk, that we are saving that $20 for something else.

My knee-jerk response is, “But it’s only $20!!!”

The slightly more rational side of my brain says, “Dude, $20 will buy 4+ pairs of shorts for kids for the summer, or 3 wonderful lunches at Liu’s, or get us 20 more dollars out of debt.” And yet left to myself, I would still buy the damn desk.

Financially, I really want to be debt free. But it is also really hard for me to give up the shiny, new “bargain”. Shopping, buying new things (necessary or not), is fun. Cutting coupons and giving up trips to the movie theater so I can pay the utility bills and the mortgage and still buy groceries and keep the kids in daycare is not.

I need to remind myself that that’s the point that we are at.

Arg.

I’m just spending some thought-provoking time sorting out what is really important, and where can our money do the most good.  It’s another two summers and one more school year of daycare before my youngest starts Kindergarten, and then alleviates a lot of the financial pressure.

It won’t be horrible, but it won’t be easy. As my son is currently quite fond of saying, “Life’s not fair!”

I received an envelope in the mail Monday from the federal government (along with the 2010 census). It looked an awful lot like the bonds that come for the kids around their birthdays, and since my son is having a birthday soon, I didn’t bother to open it.

On Sunday, I looked at our bills. I paid bills, and looked at what was coming due soon, and I felt The Pinch. The seriously it’s going to hurt soon Pinch. The savings is gone, there’s bills and mortgages coming due, and pretty soon, I’ll be robbing Peter to pay Paul Pinch.

It shouldn’t have worked out like that. I should have received a tax credit related to a home purchase about three months ago. I shouldn’t have had to replace my car so soon. We shouldn’t have had plumbing problems and car problems and all that other crap that creeps up.

But we did, and we dealt with it like a lot of other people do – credit cards, savings when we had to, etc.

So suddenly I’m trying to think of all the possible ways we can squeeze more money out of anything. Where can we earn more money? Where can we save money? What can I sell (without selling the house)?

Tonight I opened the mail a full six days earlier than usual, and along with the census I opened that envelope with the bond. I have never been so happy to not see a bond in my life – it was the tax credit money.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

What can money buy? Money can buy security. I’ve now got the funds to shore up our emergency fund.

Money can buy a clear mind. I don’t need to stay up late sweating over bills and how to pay them.

I’m calmer now, but I need to think a bit. I need to talk with my hubby and probably a couple other someones to get a really good idea of what goes where right now. I may wait to do anything until I see what’s what in terms of taxes.

I really, really need to get a decent budget. But it’s almost midnight, and I won’t get that done tonight. It’s a battle for another day. Wish me luck.