REMINDER: take more time for what is important

While I won’t go into the details, the day has been a major wake up call in the sense that I haven’t necessarily been taking enough time for the most important person in my life, my husband. So tonight we had one of the best heart to heart talks about what we need to change in our relationship to continue to grow closer together.

With Valentine’s day approaching, I might start a new feature on my blog to cover “Crafty Holiday Ideas”, of which, I would share some of the things we might do this Valentine’s day.

At first, I was looking at this goal as a way to help me achieve work/life balance. However, I believe that’s a goal in and of itself. So that’s become a separate goal for this year.

Now I’m looking at this goal as a reminder to ask myself what’s truly important in the big picture sense. So with all my goals at 43things, I’m striving for balance. Balance to get the chores done. Yet at the same time, have a little fun, enjoy life, laugh, smile, and maybe see how I can influence and help others out as well. There have been a couple times here when I went out on a limb to offer advice/support…and surprisingly, it was well received.

In talking to my husband last night, he acknowledged the progress I’m making, but in the same token, he hand wrote a goal for me “be nice to the husband”. And really, this goes further from just him. While I’m great at getting things done and achieving my goals, sometimes I forget to acknowledge the people that help me along the way. Sometimes I can be a little “bitchy” when I get frustrated at the situations I find myself in. So I need to give it some thought, and think of how I can improve my people skills. Because it goes much further than just complimenting one person a day.

Maybe I should read how to win friends and influence people, eh?

We have a motto at work about achieving work/life balance, and in a lot of ways, they try to make this work. However, in my unit, there tends to be times when the overtime is excessive such as right now in the middle of year end.

While I love my job and willingly put in the hours, there are times I question if it’s the best choice in the big picture. That is, I haven’t really made any artwork since being promoted back in September. It’s just been too hard mentally to make the transition from extremely analytical work to being able to just let go and embrace my creative side.

I have even tried posting entries that suggest how to fit creativity into busy schedules by spending chunks of 15minutes at a time in an activity…but in reality, I’m not practicing what I preach. So where do I go from here?