I wonder

Many people ask me to tell them what keeps me so busy. Others just tend to wonder.


I find myself lost for answers. I know that I am hectically busy yet unable to understand how so little output can keep me as busy as it does. Society defines outputs in terms of income; the busier one is, the more income one should be bring in...

I seem to have the mix all wrong, or do I?

So much of my time seems to go into ventures that have zero financial yield. Charity work sucks up a substantial portion of my day. Make no mistake, it is highly rewarding and fulfilling, in that I get to use my talents for the good of others. There is also plenty of time spent with my family; the polar opposite to the situation when I was a corporate lackey. This is valuable time, real influence in the lives of my children. Then there are some entrepreneurial ventures that give me great pleasure and one day may show incredible returns, such as my foray into classic cars.

And yes, some of my time is spent working incredibly hard on projects that yield hard cash.

Sometimes, like now, I struggle to justify my choices to myself. Can I really ‘waste’ my time on stuff that does not support my family in the here and now? Is it possible to have some fun and dabble in incredibly interesting undertakings rather than directing all of my efforts towards making piles of loot? How will I afford a skiing trip for my family if I spend most of my time on charity work? How do I create a financial nest egg for our later years if I am giving away my best time for free? And so it goes...

I tend to come back to the stand point that I am trading much of my time to meet goals that are important to me and have been for all of my life. Goals that I could not have hoped to meet in my past corporate existence. As a result, my entrepreneurial life provides time but also brings much risk, excitement, and loads of self doubt.

I feel more fulfilled than ever, yet the more fulfilled I feel, the more I feel I need to do. I question if I am using my time well enough, can I not do more with what I have? I can only hope and pray that the long term cost of the fulfilled life is not too great. Then again, when I die, I would have done exactly what I had set out to do. Surely this is exactly what I want, and worth a potential difficult old age? Or as my wife may argue; a frugal now!

And the questions continue...and time moves on.

To my dear little girl

To my dear darling Isabella,


Yesterday morning you exploded into being in the form of a tiny pink baby. So small, wrinkled, and helpless! I was humbled by the notion that God chose your mom and I to be your parents. To love you, care for you, and possibly even sacrifice our lives for you. I so look forward to getting to know you better, to guiding you as you grow, to hugging you when you are sad, and to helping you explore all that you are.

I could not help but think of the life that lies before the feet you don’t even know that you have. A life wide open with possibilities just waiting to be explored. The choices you will make will either lead you to fulfilment, a mundane existence, or a life of destruction. I hope that I have the strength and wisdom to prepare you for those choices. I pray for the humility and courage to share my life with you and show you a better way to live.

Through all of the arguments we will have, through the failure you will see in me, and through those times when life just does not seem fair, know that through it all, I have loved you from the start. I will always try and give you the best of me, but in those times when it isn’t so, I hope you will forgive me, smile on me, and reach out to me again.

There is a long road ahead of us. I hope that it is filled with much excitement, laughter, and joy. It is only fair to warn you that it will also be filled with disappointments, tears, and loss. Yes, there will be bad times but they will be much easier to bear if we face them together as a family.

Your life, like mine, will be full of its own twists and turns. At times life will flow and at others become incredibly complex. Regardless, I will be there for you whenever you need me!

Remember always that you are special because you are you. That in your uniqueness you have something valuable to offer the world, the gift of you! Cherish life, learn something new each day, challenge those around you, brighten the world with your smile, and love fiercely!

All my love, dad.

Freedom

My year has been absolutely mind blowingly awesome. Everyone should have a year just like it. The highlight has been the complete freedom to choose my direction, absolutely any direction. And so I have followed my fancy and explored all sorts of possibilities.

The freedom to choose is an incredible gift. For me, an anti establishment, go my own way kind of guy, it has been a journey filled with joy. There is no doubt, it is an ideal worth fighting for!

Yesterday I dusted off my goals. Yes, those clever things that I set over a year ago. I was rather disappointed to see that even though they have been top of mind, I can tick off very few as being complete.

Have I failed?

After much thought, I believe that stamping my year as a failure would be a rather narrow view. Sure I did not meet most of my goals, but I had a rare opportunity to exercise my own freedom. Perhaps the fact that I did not meet my goals means that I really used my freedom. Hmmm, perhaps that should have been my only goal this past year!

I have spent the last couple of months in a state of mental confusion. A not too unfamiliar territory for me! Having too much time to think is possibly just as bad as not having enough. My mental oscillation has revolved around having had the best year of my life, not meeting my goals, and having no idea about my future. The latter part has been my biggest concern as I am pretty anal about having a plan. Clearly following one’s fancy is opposed to a focus on a predetermined path. I know that now, but that knowledge a little while ago would have saved plenty of mental frustration.

The complete freedom to go where I wanted at any time has been fantastic. Yet, in the back of my mind this ugly thought about sustainability kept trying to percolate through all of the salt water that seems to have seeped in there from the surfing. For all of the freedom that I have gained, I have lost my focus in life! I have absolutely no idea about what to do with myself and now find it incredibly difficult to commit to anything lest it get in the way of my being able to choose something else. Now there is an interesting problem – have the freedom to choose but don’t choose because the choice itself destroys the freedom to choose something else!!!

It is time for me to think clearly and commit myself to my future. Now that I understand the source of my frustration, I think I can move on!

As for all the freedom I will lose, perhaps too much of any good thing is problematic! If you find yourself trapped and dying for freedom, take it from me, absolute freedom is a trap in itself. You and I both need to find the freedom that exists within the choices we make.

I had an interesting insight.

One of the reasons that I resigned was to spend more time with my children. Looking at my new life with a pair of critical eyes, I discovered that I was not spending all that more quality time with my kids. That did not make sense to me at all. Here I was doing what I wanted to do, which should have included plenty of quality time with my boys and yet it was not happening.

Instead I have filled my time with great activities, all of which I want to do. Hmmm, and there is still not enough time to do everything! Like the all important time that I need and want to spend with the boys!

So you see it does not matter how much time you have, fatherhood or parenthood is still a choice that one has to make. Children need as much time as possible and more. As a parent, it is our role to sacrifice ourselves in order to provide that time. Time we would dearly love to spend on the things we want to do.

When I was working as hard and time intensively as I was, I needed to get very creative on how I fitted children time into my life. Every spare light moment was spent with them in the garden playing sport and the dark moments playing games inside. Now I see them all of the time and there is no longer that desperate need to fill my time with their best interests. Instead I am always available, which is rather a different thing. I watch them play sport at school, I eat all meals with them, and I attend their functions and parties. I am there, but I am not really interacting on the level that I would like. A level at which they have a dad who is active in their lives and who is their biggest and greatest role model and supporter.

I suppose that I have to constantly re-evaluate my choices and make sure that they are helping me achieve the end points I want. Not only my fatherhood choices but all the others as well. When critical evaluation tells me that I am off track, it is time to check out those choices again, and again!

Fatherhood is a choice. Children need as much time as possible with their dad. I want to be that dad! Time for some adjustments to make it happen.

I have a new dilemma today. I have discovered that I have so much to do next year that I am unsure how I will be able to fit it all into my new life. This is most bizarre. Just a couple of weeks ago, I had no idea how I would build a new life and be able to sustain it. That was then, in the last week I have been offered a whole variety of consulting work, enough for a number of people.

I have moved from thoughts of breadline income to thoughts of making some serious money. Bam! I have fallen back into my old ways and have caught myself scheming on how to have it all! How fast have I fallen???

My wife and I chatted about this new conundrum this evening. I need to go back to my goals and ensure that anything I do on the money making front is linked to them. Either this consulting work assists me to meet my goals or it must go. I honestly thought that I had made the hard money choice when I gave up my well paid job, now here I am having to make that decision again. For an ambitious me, this is hard. How many times am I going to be tempted to go back to new paths but old ways?

I also wonder if I am not doing myself a disservice by not taking my year off. I have saved hard to afford this break. Perhaps I should be cashing in and enjoying myself. Then again perhaps I am over thinking this whole problem! There is nothing stopping me from continually trying new things to find the ones that are going to lead me to my definition of success....

I need to count my blessings, it really is great to have a high class problem on a Monday. And to be in demand - well that is it's own kind of high.....