Dear Reader, I wish I could have shared an image with you. Unfortunately, my camera is completely incapable of taking timed exposure, low light photos. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to capture the scene, I decided I would have to content myself with just describing it to you. I live on the shore of a sizeable lake (in a house I don’t own). My deck looks out through the evergreens, across the water. Last night was the second night of a full moon. When I went out on the deck to complete a thoroughly noxious daily task, cleaning the cat’s litter box, I was struck by the incredible beauty of the scene. The moon was riding high in the sky, hanging directly over the lake. The moonlight rippled over the water making it shimmer like the shining, silver scales of some enormous tropical fish. The air was warm and still, without too much humidity, and heavy with the scent of honeysuckle, cedar, and warm lake water. In the background the chorus of tree frogs and crickets fought to drown out the rhythmic lapping of the waves on the shore. The moonlight wrapped the entire world in its pallet of blacks and grays. The only exceptions were the bright, yellow-green, dayglow flashes of the fireflies as they hovered in their slow erratic patterns, and the lights of the distant docks and houses across the lake. It truly was magical.
More importantly, it served to remind me of the importance of finding beauty and enjoyment in small things. Especially when faced with enormous and stressful situations. Focusing too closely on, and being totally absorbed by my current disastrous financial woes could blind me to wonderful opportunities that might be staring me right in the face, but might not be the traditional solutions to which my brain would normally gravitate. Desperately obsessing doesn’t lend its self to “thinking outside the box”. Lesson learned.
Since the goal is to make the right life change, the first step is to determine what my “passion” is. In the mean time, I need to keep trying to find sources of temporary income. I must balance the need to keep money flowing in, finding what I want to do with my life, and not becoming side tracked on my ultimate search with the overpowering demands of surviving day to day. I have seen that happen to me before. Actually, I think that has something to do with why I am where I am today. I know this pattern. I need income. I find a job, not a job that I really want, but a source of income. I throw myself into it during the “learning curve” phase and become good at it. And soon find myself totally lost in the monotonous work-a-day world of the job’s routine and the demands of a busy family. Now, I will be the first to admit…I suffered from ADD as a child. My wife swears that I have never really grown out of it, which is truer than I care to admit. I do easily get distracted. SQUIRREL! Ha ha! Not this time. I am determined to make the right choice. So…where to begin?
I will begin with making some lists. List one, things I love to do and do well. List two things my “perfect” job would entail or allow me to do. Finally, list three jobs and industries that use these skills and have the attribute from the first two lists. I will keep these lists as separate pages and add to and amend as I progress through this search. The initial plan is to use the information I glean from constructing these lists to focus in on a particular type of work, then find a unique way to use my skills in that “line of work” to create something new and innovative that will produce significant amounts of income while fulfilling my economic goals.
No comments:
Post a Comment