Tag: career

Why You Should Keep Writing Despite A Full House

On By Robert EvenhouseIn The Writing Life19 Comments

On Saturday, my daughter Emily was born. It was surreal. One moment I was sitting there, the next I was staring down at this helpless little creature with chestnut hair and deep blue eyes.

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If I am honest I wondered how my wife and I were going to get through another baby. Not that we don’t love them, we absolutely do, but four is a high number. The responsibility, the balancing of time between kids, money. Oh yes. Money.

I decided I should take a step back from my writing to make room for Emily and the morsels of sleep I’ll need.

But then I changed my mind.

Here’s why.

My children are getting older and they watch me closer than ever before. How I love their mother, the jokes I tell, the way I treat an inexperienced waiter, how patient I am in traffic. But also what I love and the passions I chase.

So I am going to keep writing because I love them. I will keep planning and dreaming and taking action because they are watching me and I want to be a good example.

How To Make More Time For The Things You Love

On By Robert EvenhouseIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

If you are reading this chances are you want to do something extraordinary. The problem is that you need margin in your life to make it happen and just don’t have the time.

How do you create this space?

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No one can conjure up another three hours each day unless you are Hermione Granger with a Time Turner. But what we can do is cross examine how we spend our most precious resource and see if it matches our long term goals.

FINDING THE LOST HOURS

Get ready. This may be painful. Do you watch The Walking Dead? Is Sunday ‘football day’? How much time do you spend on Facebook? These are the lost moments, or hours, that we need for our passions.

If you want to go after your dream, something has to go, at least at first. There is no possible way to continually add new items to your agenda. When you have your empire up and running, perhaps you can sneak in a little football, but not now.

WHAT TO DO NOW

Now is the time for action. Now is the time to push harder than ever before or as Jon Acuff puts it, we must hustle. The best way to do this? Evaluate the time we spend on things other than our spouse, family, and job and then ask ourselves if several hours of football-like activity is worth our long term goals.

Are you losing time each week? How can you reclaim those hours and put them to good use?