How I Got to Blogging – Part 4.7
(I’m skipping some important stuff about my online life. I may get back and write about it, or not.)

About three weeks ago I enrolled in a program called Strategic Coach, a coaching program for entrepreneurs. My brother-in-law recommended it to me. My brother in law is one of the kindest most thoughtful people I know. I have called him with both business and personal problems for as long as I’ve known him and his advice has always been wise. Oh, and he also owns a Fortune 500 company. So I tend to pay attention to his recommendations.

The Strategic Coach is all about placing boundaries between work and life so that free time can be truly rejuvenating, and work time can be incredibly productive. It’s only been three weeks but I’ve already reorganized my life in ways that are making my wife and kids happy. I don’t want to sound like some kind of wide-eyed zealot that just found a new cult, but so far, I’m very pleased with the results.

Because my evenings have been freer, I’ve been able to take Stretch to and from his swim lessons.


I’ve also realized that I almost never get a chance to spend time alone with each child, and that I wouldn’t unless I scheduled it. So I’ve been scheduling time with each child and letting them pick what they’d like to do with me. (Stretch decided on the marathon bike ride we did two weeks ago. The baby tagged along, but there was still plenty of Dad-Stretch time.)

This evening was time for The Diva (our 7 year-old girl) to decide what she’d like to do with me. She wanted to draw a picture with me.

I expect calls from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the morning.

The other thing I’ve learned is that I was using my time on the web as a way to avoid work, especially boring work that had no specific deadline (paperwork, going through faxes, yuck). For the last three weeks I haven’t opened a web browser at work except to look up labs on the hospital website. I’ve been much more focused, and much more disciplined. Interestingly, my motivation to post has nearly vanished. I expect that I’ll be posting much less frequently. Two weeks ago I briefly considered resigning from the Coffeehouse entirely, but there’s no need to do that. I’ll just post when I want, and when it is a truly pleasurable diversion, not a mechanism of avoiding something boring or something anxiety-provoking.

The Diva wanted to tell you a few things, so everything in red is from her, and she actually typed a lot of it herself.

I like the idea of my daddy spending time with me. I like to color, play, type and go on rides with my dad.

The drawing was mostly made by me. My daddy drew a tree and a tire swing, and I drew birds, a nest with birds, and a house, and some other things.

Back to Part I - served up by Doctor Bean @ 9:46 PM