In order of priority of things that need to get done, writing a blog post is at the bottom of my list. “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” (Awful grammar, I know, and the report has precious little to do with this post but no one expresses the sentiment better than this gal.)  I still repeat that wise quote, “Ignore the urgent, take care of the important.”  This is one reason why I decided I was way overdue for laying some words down. It is why I did NOTHING yesterday because rest is important and we worked our butts off this past week and we needed to recover. (The boys did help our friends by moving their horse’s corral fencing yesterday, not a small job, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised to find you can teach kids to enjoy hard work. They said they were glad to have something to do and got to do something we certainly don’t do around here. Plus the horse was happy to have fresh grass!)  It is important that I fit in laundry and school and feeding my crew and reading to my children and cleaning at least some of my house and, and, and….

Here’s the thing; as a business owner,  that urgent/important thing morphs into a gelatinous glob and there are things you urgently NEED to take care of because it’s important they happen A.S.A.P. because the health inspector could show up any minute OR, if you don’t enter sales into QuickBooks, you can’t file your sales tax and don’t get me started on that, OR, if you don’t return that call that potential client will find someone else OR, if you don’t post something on HootSuite, people will forget you’re there OR, if you don’t update the website OR, if you don’t test a recipe OR, the bills (need I say more?) OR, OR, OR… All of these ORs monopolize my days and I have only fragments of  time to get anything done. One of my husband’s mantras is everyone is given 24 hours in their day. Any homeschooling mom and/or mom of many will read that and wonder how many times I’ve punched my husband. Throw in running a small business and I wonder myself, “how long until I have to hide the evidence?”

I learned a long time ago that I need to take time or myself, to do something that recharges me or I don’t function at optimum levels. My enthusiasm and energy are depleted; I can’t focus and am easily discouraged and overwhelmed.

SO, before I am engulfed by these post-it notes of urgently important things I have to do,

I decided to sit down and just write. It’s not very creative but it’s writing. I miss it when I don’t do it.  I need the practice plus it’s where I think and it scares me to consider the possibility that when I go a month or more without writing I haven’t been thinking that whole time!! That should scare everyone.  I keep thinking that I will write or read like I used to before the business: at the end of the day when I finally sit down with my feet up after a hard day’s work and sigh and relax with my laptop, notebook or a good read. That was before the business. Now, the end of the day ends with me collapsing too exhausted to read more than a paragraph, a page at most.  Forget writing. By that time, writer’s block has become writer’s rigor mortis. Maybe it’s time I became a morning person.

What’s not shared is lost,