Sunday Update: Back to Business

I missed you all last week.  It’s a busy time in my life – both personally and professionally.

This blog’s intention is to write about small towns and small businesses, and my interaction with them.  I’ve partnered with Becky McCray and started a business, SaveYour.Town, where we help small towns grow.  I also am the Chamber Director in Webster City.  Then there’s personal commitments, my family and friends.

I tell you all of this because these Sunday updates will be sporadic over the next two months.  I’m traveling to Lisbon, Portugal to attend the Web Summit in November.  I’ll be in Galveston Island over Thanksgiving.  January brings Tucson for Institute for Organizational Management.  It’s the holidays as well.

One of the most important things about self care is managing your time so you don’t give it all away.  You’ve got to schedule in self care and treat self care as precious and sacred.  I haven’t been doing that as much as I should, and that is changing as well.  This past month has been enlightening, difficult and a bit of maddening.  My natural inclination is to eat the foods I want because I feel I deserve them.  I’ve worked hard, I give my all and damnit I deserve this treat.  I’m not doing myself any favors with that attitude.  I’m better off, both physically and mentally, to go for a walk and let my head clear.  So changing my self care habits is moving to the top of the list.

You’d think that by 61 years of age you’d have it figured out.  You don’t.  Not all of it.  Yesterday I had a conversation about quantum computing and how the world is going to look very different, even in my lifetime.  Machines will take place of many things, there will be so much more free things because it no longer will make sense to charge for it.  Hard work, the staple I was raised with – the more you do, the harder you work, the more valuable you are – will not be required.  Or even recognized as the important thing a human can do.  Shocking, right?  For us baby boomers, it makes us very nervous.  Humans will have time to work on the things they want to work on – art, travel, leisure.  Our dreams of what could be (think Star Trek) are coming to fruition.

It’s been a long rambling post to get to this final point.  I’m making changes, big changes.  Putting myself first, working on things that matter to me, building my future: and they will be taking priority.  The east wind is blowing pretty hard and clearing out all the unnecessary things in my life and making way for a new way of being.  Hang on, I’ll be sharing about it.  These Sunday Updates will be more sporadic, and the rest of the week will be more frequent.  Back to business.