Priorities

You never quite realize how big your dreams are until you start writing down your quarterly goals for each one!

I'm about a week and a half away from launching my second business, about a month away from pitching to hospitals, and possibly only a few months away from finally getting a college degree. Bill went to look into going back to school for engineering yesterday, and while we were looking at all of his credits and what he needs, I looked into mine online. My credits seem to perfectly fall into Letters, Arts and Sciences major without me having to go back and do any further classes. I'm going to contact them this week and see if I can graduate in the next semester or two and finally be able to do the graduation walk.

I've completed about half the things I need to do to get my driver's license as well. I've gotten the physical, had the paperwork filled out by doctors, got a $9 replacement pair of glasses so I can legally be behind the wheel, found out about eye exam schedules, and downloaded the pdf on driving tests. Now I just need to get the exam, start reading the pdf, take the test for the permit, drive around for a bit, then take the driving test. It seems like graduating college, starting up a second business, putting my products into hospital gift shops, writing novels and sending them to publishers will all be easier than finding the time to practice and drive, but I'm going to add it in there anyway.

My business and writing goals are so long that they each took up a full page (so that's at least 20-25 goals per category for only the next three months!) I have so much work to do, it can get a little overwhelming. It's hard to prioritize, because everything is so important. I have to get my college degree before my credits get too old, which could be by next spring. I have to act now, and possibly do one or two more classes.

We need extra money. I need to shoulder Katie's ballet tuition, getting her ballet gear, paying for her costume and tickets, paying for birthdays, holidays, vacations and day trips, and afford all of the things I'm doing as well. (I'd also like to afford a new pair of glasses that don't scream that they only cost $9, and I'd like a laptop fund as I have no idea how much longer this one will last).  This means that I have to continue building up the business and pulling money in. And if I'm going to run one business, it's not much more time and effort to run two, and the hospital gift shops is where the money is at.

I have to do the charity. I can't run stores and not the charity, it would feel wrong. So that has to stay in place with the businesses.

I have waited 20 years to get into this position of where I can write, edit and submit novels to publishers. I'm already years behind my dream schedule. I can't release that dream again. I don't want to hold off until I'm 35 or 40 to start doing it. It's the one thing I knew I wanted to do since I was 8 years old. It needs it's time. It's time seems like now. I'm not willing to push it off until later. I MUST work on this.

Kids need to be homeschooled. That's another chunk out of my day that requires my attention and planning and that can not be pushed off. It's also a top priority.

Honestly, driving is low priority to me personally, but I know it needs to happen. It's low priority because we don't have the money for me to get my own car. It'll raise the rates of our insurance. I have to take the kids with me, which means it's extra work to go without Bill, not less. And frankly, I don't trust myself to have access to craft stores every day. My wallet will NOT be happy, even if I blissfully am! I can say no on internet stores, but holding something in person? I'm buying it. Having a car to go down there every single time I get a new craft idea that I become crazy passionate over? Not good. Having a license certainly will not do the great things for me that the other items on the list will. It's certainly not quite as important. However, it's a big deal to everyone else, so I'm doing that too and I can't push it off forever. Even my doctor scolded me about not having one yet, though he completely understood how busy I've been through my late teens and into twenties.

Looking over that, it seems like I have a dozen things vying for top priority spot and not a single one of them are willing to step down. Which means I need to divide myself in that many ways, get a really good schedule going, and start working each item into my daily and weekly time slots. This is going to be an extremely busy year, but hopefully by the end, it'll have me happier and satisfied until the rest of my life can catch up and we can finally see what's possible and what's not possible, what dreams must be given up and what's still obtainable.