Decisions

I'm tired of decisions.

Every day, people have to make all kinds of decisions. For some people it comes easily, others are okay with it, and still others have a hard time with the simplest decision. You know, like people with A.D.D.

Adults with A.D.D. have symptoms like:

• Hyperfocus, tuning out the chaos by becoming totally absorbed in tasks,


• poor organizational skills (home, office, desk, or car is extremely messy and cluttered),


• tendency to procrastinate,


• trouble starting and finishing projects,


• low self-esteem and sense of insecurity, and


• sense of underachievement.

So what am I doing? Trying to make it as an entrepreneur with online publishing, and each and every day there are decisions, projects to start and finish, things that need organized...

What do I work on today? Priorities, priorities! What needs done next? What will get me where I want to go faster? Which is more urgent, or more important?

What assignments should I give my outsourcers? Should I take time to train them to do something more?

Which tools are worth buying and which should I ignore? Some software helps me get more done. Sometimes deals come up that are a bargain, and sometimes they aren't.

Like just last night I listened to one seminar about marketing and how to make ads and split testing. At the end they talked about a new software that makes ads with 'plain' pictures, or animated .gifs or with flash. It's loaded with templates, and you just put in the text and change pictures if you want, and viola! In a few minutes you have a complete set of ads in all sizes accepted by the network. Instead of spending hours doing it, and an amateur result, you get quick, professional results.

I would have loved it, but $997 is out of my budget right now.

And then there was an offer for a complete course on learning how to use Camtasia, which is THE movie-making software used by most web publishers and marketers, PLUS a course to show you how to use movies in your marketing. The real sweet deal with all this was the fact for the first 24-hours it was available, you also got the $299 priced Camtasia... FREE.

Decisions, decisions.

And no one to talk to about those decisions.

Okay, that's not entirely true. I have one very good friend who listens to me talk about what I'm doing and what I need to be doing, even though she hasn't got a clue sometimes what in the world I'm talking about. But she 'listens' and that's priceless.

Another friend is also an onlline entrepreneur, but she is doing some different stuff, so we don't always mesh on what we're doing and why. But it's great to have someone who understands what you're talking about!

But neither can really help me on decisons about how much money to spend on what, or how much time to spend on what. Or tell what direction to go with my business, or any of the myriad decisions I need to make every day.

Nope, I'm on my own.

Some day my head will just explode, or maybe the voices will just tell me to do something really stupid.

Or maybe I'm just stupid already. Ah, it's just too much trouble to decide!

From Incommunicado to Communication

For three months I was close to being totally incommunicado. I had taken on a big project, and was just trying to get it DONE. It turned out to be even bigger than I anticipated, and my email in-boxes started to overflow. And I've got a number of email boxes, between private and business emails, so it's a flood!

At the same time, the phone calls started. It seems like every medicare supplemental insurance company in the U.S. wants to talk to Michael King. Besides phone calls, there are still one or two or three pieces of mail addressed to Michael arriving every day.

The trash can deals handily with such mail, but it's the phone calls that drive me around the bend. I've had up to 12 messages on the answering machine at a time, and all of them wanting to talk to Michael King. I don't even listen to most of them these days, but just delete, delete, delete.

So unless I recognize the number, I don't answer the phone these days, and if you left a message and I didn't reply... sorry, it probably got deleted.

And just to be blunt, unless all these people calling want to hold a seance with a medium who can communicate with the dead, I don't believe they are going to be chatting up Michael. Nor do I think it's going to do much good to try and sell their insurance.

I suppose the biggest kicker was the day the insurance guy showed up at the door with a cheerful, "I hear someone is turning 65 here!" I asked him if he was looking for Michael King, and then informed him that she wasn't available. After all, her ashes have been residing in an urn for almost two decades, and I don't really see any way she's going to be needing Medicare insurance at this point.

Then we had the tornadoes and no electricity for a while and more email piled up.

What with medicare insurance pushers, project overload, and a time without electric, I just haven't kept up with snail mail, email or phone calls. Even Facebook is mostly a distant memory. I have no doubt missed some important communications. Like just this morning I was trying to slog through some of the email, and noticed there was a blog entry saying the kids had sold the house! Yeah, I missed that until later when they mentioned they were moving and I was wondering when they sold the house!

Anyway, I am slowly trying to get back into communication. But I still have more to do than I can handle, so it's a slow process. I've already dealt with a couple of people wanting to use pictures from the farm blog for books and paintings, and thinking over an email from someone asking about buying one of my blogs. But there is just so much there it's overwhelming.

Incommunicado still? Not quite. Communicating? Sometimes.

If you had something important to say to me and I missed it... sorry. Will I eventually see the communication? No guarantees. Sometimes I get in a deleting frenzy and probably delete something I shouldn't.

And now this rambling communication is at an end, though there is so much more I could be saying about depression, pain, projects, sunshine, a wounded cat, decision overload and ADD, and... the list goes on.

Nevertheless, for now I bid you adieu.