Back From Vacation and Looking for Suggestions

Now that my trip is over (to New England to see father, sister, brother, offspring--and their offspring--and my jaunt to the EPIC writer's convention--where I did not win the award), I have returned to real life and realize precisely how much stress my real life involves and how overextended I am.

This 10-day trip was my first vacation in 6 years. That should have been the first indicator of the degree of my out-of-control lifestyle/schedule. The second tip-off was the fact that I did next to no writing and actually forgot to call the office on a couple of days. Since I own two businesses, that probably wasn't a good idea. Fortunately, my staff is quite capable and handled things without me. Thank God I'm not indispensable. (I learned that lesson about 7 years ago. So, okay, I'm a slow learner...)

My youngest daughter and I had a conversation about addictive personalities recently. I mentioned, in all seriousness, that I was fortunate to have escaped my family's genetic predisposition to such a thing. She asked, in equal seriousness, "How would you classify workaholic?" Her point hit home: like a sledgehammer.

So here I am, pondering a number of serious issues, the most important of which involves the fact that each day of my life contains 24 hours and that I have to quit jam-packing a day with 34 hours of stuff to do. The second serious issue is correcting my mistaken understanding that requiring less sleep as a person ages does not equal the actual elimination of sleep in order to secure more hours to do stuff.

I will keep you posted on the results of my new "plan" and welcome your advice and suggestions about how to reduce the number of "important" duties/responsibilities in my life and how to focus more on me (aka being selfish) and less on other people (aka being nice and kind).

NOTE: Picture #1 shows the Mississippi River Bridge in the background. My sister and I were at the Riverwalk in the French Quarter. Picture #2 shows the congratulatory flowers my husband sent me BEFORE the award-winners were announced. He figured I was a winner no matter what the EPIC conference judges said. (He's a keeper.)