Life [and business] is a Blindfolded Roller Coaster Right Now, and that’s Fine. Here’s What’s Working

by | Experiences, Stage 2: Optimization, Stage 4: Business, Stage 5: Liberation

I have meant to sit down and write an update on life and business, review my photos of living liberated from life’s control, update my inspirations, recommended things and recommended people.

Do some good life design reflection. Ya know?

However, life truly feels like riding a rollercoaster blindfolded lately.

Have you ever been on a good rollercoaster where there are huge buildups, rapid direction changes, dropouts that make your gut spin…that’s pretty much the day to day right now, for the world in a broad sense, but also me personally.

It feels like any day I could be viscerally yanked in a different direction than what I had planned, both physically [kid needs me right now, client Zoom event is blowing up, drop what you’re doing] and emotionally [I’m on top of the world! to, I can’t wait to drink tequila tonight]

You might be able to relate, but who knows, maybe not.

So with life in this state, what is there to share?

Well I can share what’s working, what’s not, the state of things as they are, and lend an ear or hand to those who reach out and want to talk, work together, or connect.

 

What’s working mentally and spiritually

  • Multiple prayer partners, multiple devotion sources, it’s like I can’t get away from God lately, which is good because it’s usually too easy to ignore God
  • BrainFM for music to drown out everything around me and just close my eyes. Airpods or over year Soundcore Life Q20 headphones.
  • This anxiety breathing and visual exercise I’ve been doing with my toddler once a day has been awesome.

What’s working physically

  • Since I am working from home and spending every minute with my family, I often need to escape, this makes going for a long run or bike ride a much more reasonable thing to do than it has previously
  • Stretching, 25 minute long, hard, sometimes painful stretch sessions are a new form of meditation and workout I didn’t know could be so awesome. I am attempting to complete a straddle split.
  • Time in the garden, I know it’s not everyone’s thing but seeing things grow is pleasing

 

State of things

I generally keep some mental grip on the state of my business, my home, my family, my core relationships, my church, my dog, my work relationships, my city/village community, the world not really in that order, they ebb and flow but as I take some stock finally just finally sitting down to right, here’s what states, what statuses come to mind.

Reflecting, taking stock, is a key element on designing your life, noticing how thing are, and aren’t and how you’d like them to be is pretty much the key piece in making sure life doesn’t run you, but you run it, and steer it where you want for what you want out of life.

  • Family – great, awesome to see my youngest grow so much, 6 to 9 months seeing her everyday is amazing, and tiring
  • ITA – somehow flourishing, referrals are key, also somehow automatic more or less, several challenging projects for creators and small businesses, i like how dynamic website work is
  • Work – pretty brutal, i still love the work, people, challenge, but it’s intense and my days are pretty draining, more lows than highs but there’s only forward to go
  • Core Relationships – probably closer than usual, which is weird, most of my best friends live far away anyway but i guess we have more to talk about and so are talking more, stable, good
  • Church – so so, not because church isn’t great, it’s just not the same, i think i need to step up my game, i have only connected with a few people from church and doing zoom church every sunday is so here and gone
  • Santa – my dog is great, she loves people, so she loves just taking turns being with people all day, she had a huge swollen neck a few months back but a round of antibiotics and pain killers has her on the mend, too hot to run with her but she’s getting way more walks than normal
  • Narberth – this town has handled the pandemic really well, i’m proud of them, overall, nothing to report, good job, still like it
  • World – dumpster fire burning in the US, some other places too, wish my travel to mexico wasn’t cancelled, hope everyone recovers quickly
  • Mindfulness
  • Downtime / Playfulness

Special note on IT Arsenal, the freedom business that grew from this website, and deciding to design my life years ago.

IT Arsenal continues to be the gift that keeps giving. It’s enabled so many little joys in my life, it’s not paying off my house per say, but it’s affording luxuries and conveniences that make me and my family feel truly blessed, it also affords me the money to simply do, give and buy things I enjoy way more frequently. Outfit my whole house in enterprise network gear, totally, buy a pool and too many accessories for my kids, yep, kickstart and indiegogo too many charging cables and things I find clever, sure, invest in my house, the stock market, and buy any video game I want, uh huh, …my freedom business allows for this and no overhead stress to my financials.

I’m happy to report the business at this point more or less runs itself in terms of operations, there’s still plenty of work to be done, but for what time I have available to give it with another job, two kids under 5, and a lot of interests, it’s what it needs to be. I’ve earned well over $200,000 with it, I never thought that would happen when I started.

The people I get to serve and support are amazing, and I cherish them. I’ve learned a lot about managing a business, people’s expectations, and continue to grow in my knowledge of how to make something happen on the web. I put it in such vague terms because that’s what it’s become. Sometimes I am researching some very specific backup tool, configuring an automation, or setting up a simple website, but it’s never the same thing twice. One lesson I learn again and again in business is that you just need to be known or referred to or market for one thing, not everything, once someone has a relationship with you, the everything part will come. Don’t try to do everything, do one thing, the rest can come later. I build and enhance websites for small business and individuals.

I decided to finally make a gallery of my clients and their websites, something visual I could look at and appreciate but also share about them and further their reach on the web. Thank you.

Well there it is, an update, a reflection, maybe some insight. Hopefully it’s not so long between life design shares. I hope you are staying healthy and happy in this roller coaster of a time.

When did you last take stock?