What’s most important in your job or business? Making money is most likely near the top of your list. Gaining respect from clients and peers is certainly up there as well. For me, working with new clients and undertaking new projects has been vital to growing my public relations and marketing company.
To make my goals a reality, I sometimes (OK, most times) clock insane hours. I joke with my husband that I’m the first person in our house to wake and the last person to go to bed.
I try to personify Wonder Woman, picking my daughter up from school, taking her to dance class and her other weekly activities. (Truthfully, I envy her social calendar). We spend time together at night reading, painting, playing games or just talking, but my thoughts too often veer to a client project, an email that I had been waiting on, or unfinished business from the day. Most days I’m there without being fully present, which isn’t fair to my family.
Hence the lesson to be learned. My husband and I have entered the sixth month of our daughter being inexplicably sick with chronic stomach pain. So sick that eating hurts her more. So sick that our already thin daughter has lost and continues to lose weight. Between taking her to doctor visits, the emergency room and visits to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia it’s become harder to be all things to all people. My Wonder Woman costume no longer seems to fit.
For the last six months I’ve just wanted to be mom. I’ve just wanted to hold her and make it all go away. The fact that I can’t fix what’s wrong like kissing her boo-boo and putting on a band-aid, breaks my heart.
I know we will get answers as to what’s wrong, hopefully sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I want to find the
positive that’s come from this ordeal. The only silver lining I see is realizing that I’ve been focusing far too heavily on my business goals. I somehow forgot that my overarching reason for becoming my own boss was to have a more flexible schedule and be able carve out more time for my family, especially my precious little girl.
It’s taken six months of hell for this lesson to fully sink in, but I have finally become reacquainted with my most important business goals.
How about you? Are you struggling to better define your business or organization and its initiatives? Drop me a line and share your experience: Theresa@KatalinasCommunications.com.
