Day 76 Back at It

Every once in a while, while I was growing up I would hear an adult say something like, "His eyes are bigger than his stomach." As a kid I pretty much had no clue what that meant.  Kids are literal, just like people coming to the U.S. from other countries and cultures. Our idioms just don't seem to make much sense to them.

Of course, eventually, you come to know that eyes bigger than your stomach meant you wanted more food to eat than your stomach could handle.

We do that with other things too, especially our time.  We need to make time for our spiritual life, our work life, our home life, our volunteer life...you get the idea.  Sometimes all those lives get to be like that old saying.  We need to do a lot of things, and we also want to have fun and recreation and maybe a little relaxation by way of television or visiting with friends.

It can all get to be just too much.


When that happens we really need to prioritize, especially the extra curricular stuff. We've all seen what happens to a family when the family life is neglected.  When spouse time is pushed aside, often voluntarily by both sides, initmacy suffers.  

When you are working full time and trying to get a business off the ground and feed your creativity and do all those other things, something ends up left out.  The easiest and smartest thing to cut back on is television. 

Sometimes it is just hard to not get sucked in to a television

program. Thankfully, I have Netflix so I don't feel the rush to get home by a certain time to see what happens to Dr. Wonderful and his cross time adventure into the Dark Ages. Score Netflix.

I really do feel fortunate that I can take the time to write these posts and it isn't a burden.  Working my business isn't a burden. It is something I enjoy as long as I keep my head in the game.

I've been doing a fair share of reading on sustainable industries and businesses that have a "heart" for a special cause.  My business school is really emphasizing that business today can't be like the businesses of the past that had an emphasis on making money.  While money is a nice by-product, it shouldn't be the end all. The business should leave a minimal carbon footprint and be of service in some way.

But, setting something like that up takes time. Time that is in short supply for a busy person.  A seeming lack of time would be a great excuse for not taking a step forward in something you feel passionate about, it would be a great reason to not get involved in a cause and it would certainly be understandable if a person did not start a business because they felt all the time pressures.

But, in the words of Nike, "Just do it."

I wonder if I'm too old to take swimming lessons.  Maybe. But, I wouldn't want to be ten years older and ask myself the same question. Because now I am ten years older.

Confucius said that the journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step.  What he is really saying is that you have to get started. It doesn't matter if the first day you take one step or twenty; what matters is you took a step.

My first step on my year of dangerous living was starting this blog. I'm just a normal, average person trying to improve my life. Today I did some studying and was asked to look at the things I get excited about.  Some things really resonate with me like writing a.k.a. story telling.  I also have always loved helping people. A couple years ago when the site manager wanted to put together a volunteer team to organize events for site employees to participate in, I was in that group. That excited me.

I'm also pretty passionate about education. All kinds of education, but especially education that can encourage creativity and or provide the basic understanding needed to allow creativity to break forth like a brilliant sunrise after a week of stormy clouds.

My business idea is going to incorporate writing, education and helping others.  I'm not sure just yet what incarnation that is going to be, but I know these will be among the principals that I want my business to include.

Continuing to learn lets me get back at it.

I think I took more than a step today.