I Want it All

The last few months have been quite overwhelming for me.  Packing my house in Little Rock in June and moving to my housesitting gig in Beaumont in July and then moving again to my new home in Beaumont just a little over a week ago have left me just a little discombobulated <g>, to say the least. It’s definitely been hard to focus and concentrate on much of anything this summer, in all honesty.

And, then in August I meet this amazing guy, Eric, who’s my new sweetie and soulmate.  Eric is now my newest distraction..LOL

This past Sunday, Eric and I are sitting in Logan’s Roadhouse having lunch, when he tells me that he has something he needs to share, but telling me is quite hard for him.  I’m finally successful at pulling it out of him, and he tells me is that he’s concerned he’s distracting me from my business. He senses that I’m not working as much or as diligently as I have done previously in my company, and he’s wondering if his presence in my life is having a detrimental effect on what’s going on in the business and how successful I am.

Wow, what he said really hit me like a ton of bricks.  You know, the truth always hurts a bit..:)

I guess you can say I’ve been fortunate in the building of my business.  I’m single with no children, and most romantic relationships I’ve had in the last 5 years have petered out pretty quickly, causing me only very short-term distraction.  So, I’ve been able to give the majority of my time and attention to the growth and development of my company.

I’ve never been very good at mixing different aspects of my life.  It’s either been complete school/career/business focus with little attention paid to my personal life, or complete attention paid to my personal life with little focus on my career and business.  However, now that I work for me, I can’t afford not to pay attention to my business, as it’s my livelihood.  I’ve had a number of clients in the past who’ve struggled to balance building a business with having a family and/or being a spouse, and I’ve been at something of a loss of how to coach them to balance it all, as I’ve never personally experienced their situation.

Now, just like my clients, I want it all — a thriving business and a fully satisfying personal life that includes a romantic partner.  And I’m discovering that it’s hard and challenging, but not entirely impossible..:)

Having a significant other who’s willing to step up to the plate to have honest discussions with you is vitally important.  I told Eric that this conversation was just the kick in the pants that I needed, and I love him all the more for loving me enough to say what he was feeling and thinking.  If you don’t have a supportive spouse/SO in your life, trying to find balance between owning a business and having a life will be all the more difficult.

What I’m also discovering is that I have to be Donna the Business Owner during the day when I’m in my office and Donna the Romantic Partner during the nights and weekends when I’m with Eric.  Knowing that I have roughly from 8-5 M-F to concentrate on the business and get done all that I need to do during this time frame is helpful to keep me focused.  In the past, I would know that I could play catch-up with the business at night or on the weekends, if I needed to, and now I no longer want to spend my nights and weekends that way.

This is something of a big shift for me in the way that I work, but I think it’ll be a positive change in my life. I’ve long been a fan of the free days, profit-generating days, and business development days that I have on my calendar, but I’ve never been as faithful to holding onto my free days and keeping them free from work as I ideally would have liked.  Now I have an even stronger reason to keep my free days free..:)