Balancing Life

As I sit and work from my desk, I face the front garden. I love being able to see outside and feel it is better for my well-being to be able to see the weather, the wildlife, and the flowers. But it also has me yearning to be outside and in the garden. My work as a travel writer for a small cruise ship agency has my mind awhirl with places to go and things to see.

I usually enjoy my non-work hours photographing the garden or heading off on day trip adventures with my camera in hand. I have been doing less of that lately for various reasons, including it has just been a cold spring so far! I’m much more likely to go exploring on a 65 degree sunny day. But that’s just me.

My time has also been taken up periodically with trying to get my children’s books uploaded and available for sale. I’m just self-publishing them through Barnes and Noble’s website. But it takes some work to get them sized write and photo ready. I have about 3 more in the works, but have managed to get 4 onto the website. I’ll shamelessly add a link below.

I was the lucky recipient of about six books for Christmas this past year, and have managed to only read one so far. I don’t seem to be able to commit to sitting for 4-5 hours straight to delve deeply into a book and concentrate – my preferred way to read – as I tend to like mysteries like Agatha Christie style, with multiple suspects giving out various subtle clues. If you put the book down for too long, you forget who is who and miss the clues altogether. I need a nice rainy day where I can turn off my mental “to do” list and focus on the book – not because reading is work that must be done, but because I enjoy it.

My nightly game of scrabble or word games on New York Times is not helping either. Darn iPad has me hooked. I claim it is to keep my mind active as I age – playing word games is good for me, right?

Writing blog posts has sadly, come in last on my “things to do today” list for too long now. I need to prioritize my time – too much time in front of the computer or watching the news (or reruns of “Frasier”) and not enough time creating – whether that is via photography, acrylics, graphics, creating music playlists, or by paper and pen. I need creativity in my life in one form or another. I can’t help myself. Prioritizing is the hard part.