I got a very cool new toy for Christmas from my wife, Sandy! A graphic pad for photo (and other) editing. I love it, thanks babe!

Ouch, so almost three months later I come back to the blog. A bit sad. This summer has been one for the books. I came back from the vacation facing MAJOR technical problems with my business. My primary money making server was crashing at least once a day and everything else was seemingly crumbling before my eyes. On top of that, there were plenty of other things to deal with, including some family outings to see extended family and some business trips.

Long and short, 90% of the technical problems are now resolved (100% of the critical ones). I definitely broke all the rules of Life/Work balance and some of my own resolutions this summer. For about six weeks I worked about 14 hours a day, attended to family and church duties a couple of hours, ate and then finally slept about 5 hours a day. Oh well.

I am even more resolved than ever to change the way I do things. This is going to be a process of goal setting and accomplishment though, not a one and done decision that easily leads to better times. I have not “designed” my life such that I can just fall away from the responsibilities I have right now. But I know that I can slowly get there with some creativity and hard/smart work.

I have some projects that are progressing, far more slowly than I want, but given recent distractions, I’m just happing they are still going. I will try to do better on this blog to keep my mind focused on the important stuff.

Compassion has been on my mind a lot lately. It was a topic of study for me about two months ago and has continued at “top of mind” for me. It is also one of the definitions of relent that I discussed in my first post on this blog. Leo from ZenHabits has a post on cultivating compassion with a specifically Buddhist bent. I am not Buddhist, but enjoy many of their teachings and particularly how they teach.

One thing I love about the practice of compassion is how powerfully effective it is in nullifying wrongs done. And it works both ways. Compassion can be a great vehicle to receiving forgiveness from somebody you’ve wronged, certainly. But even more powerfully, compassion seems to have a soothing effect when you yourself are being wronged. Somehow, finding compassion for the source of your difficulties can eliminate the feelings and negative emotions generated by the actions. Ahh, the beauty of counter-intuitive “soul lessons”!

Today has been a bit of a difficult one for me. Today is my birthday. But, my wife and I received some disappointing news regarding an adoption we are currently pursuing, and I am frustrated by a group of people because of it. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself to have to deal with mental anguish on my birthday (poor me:). But even the thought of having compassion not only for the child we wish to adopt, but also those that are struggling to do the best they can is a balm. Bad news is bad news, but who knows what tomorrow will hold … and why not be compassionate in the meantime?

A guest post on ZenHabits takes on the issue of a fast paced world and the benefits of slowing it down. The guest post was written by Christopher Richards, author of SlowDownNow.org, a site I will take some time to look over … when I get a chance .

I had a conversation with my eight year old son the other day that has been on my mind since. He was asking when his “half-birthday” would fall … his birthday is in February, so his “half-birthday” will be in August. Anyway, he then asked if I would be getting him any presents for this so called “half-birthday”! I told him, of course, I wouldn’t and that Christmas is just a short time away and he would get plenty of gifts then. After the expected groan, I said, “But wasn’t Christmas just like … yesterday? And that was about half a year ago, and we only have another half of a year to go until the next one. Just be patient, it will come before you know it.” He rolled his eyes and said back, “Christmas was forever ago, and I don’t think I can wait that long before getting more presents!”

Aside from the obvious issue of overblown expectations regarding constant gift receiving, I was thinking about the difference between his and my perceptions of six months. The thing is, I feel like the flow of time has been increasing exponentially for the past decade or so. Ever since I got married, started working, had a child, started my own business, had a few more children … you get the idea. What is interesting to me is that as time has become more important and the supply of “ultimate time” (the time ’til I die!) diminishes, it seemingly moves faster. Not that time itself is speeding up, but my perception of it reads it differently. Like a baseball hitter in the zone can “slow the ball down” through awareness and perception. But right now, I see a fastball coming not at 95mph, but more like 250mph. And if six months feels like a day or two, that means I have about 4 months to live! And in about three weeks my eight year old son will move out of the house and starts his own “accelerated life line”.

This does have to do with my goals. Part of what I want to create is a slower lifestyle that is more apt to slower, more connective moments with my wife and kids. So, I don’t have the financial resources to do this right now, but I am learning that money is often irrelevant where creativity can pick up the slack. I need to figure out some strategies, tricks and actions I can take to slow my life down. And I need to do it now, not only for my own sake, but to try and teach my kids a better way of living. Example is everything in raising children and they will almost certainly stay on the path I helped establish for them.

So like I said, I will be reading more on SlowDownNow.org, but first I’ve got about two weeks of work to get through today!