When your life takes over your time

Regular readers may have noticed my absence this summer. When life takes over your time, you may be doing exactly what you want to do. This doesn’t mean that you are getting the things done that need doing.

Does that make sense? This year was finally the year of my new kitchen. I waited 25 years for a new kitchen even though I wanted a new one the day we moved into this house. You can see some of the demolition photos in this post. The young man in the photos is my youngest son who was also the general contractor and carpenter on this project.

When life takes over, everything else gets put on pause

I didn’t blog much this spring and summer even though I know how critical blogging is to my business growth. When the kitchen was under construction, I was busy trying to manage my business and helping as much as I could. There were inconveniences — like washing dishes in the basement for 3 months and learning how to use the grill for things like lasagna, stir fry, and even fried eggs. But we muddled through, knowing there would be a reward in the end.

Once the kitchen was done, we started having a few celebration dinners with friends. I am sure that will continue now that I feel confident that I can invite people over for dinner without being embarrassed. See the old kitchen photo… Yuck, right?

I waited for a long time to reach my goal and I put up with the inconvenience.

When life takes over your goals

Sometimes life just happens. In my case, there were many reasons that we didn’t get this project started. The chief one was financial. However, I didn’t want to continue to put my life on hold.

In the Southern part of the country, life is taking over many goals. I lived with inconvenience but I can’t even comprehend what people in Houston, Rockport, and the rest of Texas, as well as parts of Louisiana, are going through. It will take a long time for those areas to return to anything like normal. The interruption of daily life has to be tremendous for anyone there.

As I checked in with various clients live in Texas, I learned their challenges and hardships. One client is not sure if her condo survived, she is ready to relocate to Texas to be closer to her family. Another former client spent three days in a hotel in Houston without power. She travelled right before the storm to help with her niece’s first child. Her own house in Galveston survived the storm. Her new job is in insurance and she is very concerned about her clients, who are primarily elderly.

Want to help? Here are some suggestions direct from the FEMA website.

TO DONATE TO RELIEF EFFORTS (from the FEMA website)

The most effective way to support disaster survivors in their recovery is to donate money and time to trusted, reputable, voluntary or charitable organizations.

Cash donations offer voluntary agencies and faith-based organizations the most flexibility to address urgently developing needs. With cash in hand, these organizations can obtain needed resources nearer to the disaster location. This inflow of cash also pumps money back into the local economy and helps local businesses recover faster.

Please do not donate unsolicited goods such as used clothing, miscellaneous household items, medicine, or perishable foodstuffs at this time. When used personal items are donated, the helping agencies must redirect their staff away from providing direct services to survivors in order to sort, package, transport, warehouse, and distribute items that may not meet the needs of disaster survivors.

Donate through a trusted organization.  At the national level, many voluntary-, faith- and community-based organizations are active in disasters and are trusted ways to donate to disaster survivors. Individuals, corporations, and volunteers can learn more about how to help on the National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (NVOAD) website.

In addition to the national members, The Texas Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster (Texas VOAD) has a list of vetted disaster relief organizations providing services to survivors.  Texas VOAD represents more than three dozen faith-based, community, nonprofit and non-governmental organizations.

Life takes over and changes things

When this post was first written, I wrote about the issues in Texas and Florida but not much later I learned even more first hand about how hurricanes affect lives from my friend, Raul Colon, in Puerto Rico. When Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, Raul became my source of first-hand information on the devastation. He videotaped and photographed much of the aftermath. I shared his information and also reached out to people who could help.

My relationship with Raul and his family continued long after the hurricane. When I needed help with the SEO on my website, I hired Raul and his company, Limonade, to rebuild the website last summer. He continues to be my resource for the website as well as a business advisor on potential opportunities in the future.

Put one foot in front of the other

Sometimes the only thing you can do is put one foot in front of the other.  If you struggle because of natural disasters or because you lost your job or hate your current job, you have to find ways to be innovative and not be afraid to take a step forward.