So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

My goodness what a difference a year makes! Last January I was hating my life, feeling trapped and stuck and all manner of miserable. I had debt for the first time, money was unspeakably tight and I didn’t know how on earth I was going to change that. Plus I just wasn’t happy doing what I was doing.

I must confess that, because of my debt, money is still scarily tight. (Stay out of debt, people. Seriously.)

But (and here’s the rub), I love what I’m doing and I’m confident that it’s leading me in the right direction.

The feedback I’ve been getting from my Thriving Artists Project members, and from my 365 Days of Genius viewers and contributors, is validation that I’m where I want to be: creating, expressing my creativity, and helping others do the same.

I even got this in an email today:

Melissa…

My friend Paula Swenson turned me onto your website(s) just a couple of days ago and I have SO enjoyed reading you. You just shine (beam, project, sparkle) with such amazing authenticity and integrity.

In short…you rock. Nuff said.

Sandi

(BTW, if anyone ever criticized you for loving external validation, 99 lashes with a wet noodle for them. We all need it every so often in order to shore up our ability to validate internally, and we never, ever stop loving it!)

Suffice it to say that I love my life!

This, dear reader, is my true calling.

(The specifics of how it manifests may change over time, but the foundation is here to stay – of that I’m as sure as I can be.)

On the other hand…

It is also shaping up to be a helluva lot more time-consuming than one little human can manage on her own!

The truth is, the pace I’ve been keeping is simply unsustainable, and as wedding season 2011 starts to heat up, I’m going to be in some serious hot water if I don’t figure out a way to get some help. (Not to mention that it’s annoying the hell out of me that I barely have time for one post a week on LACL!)

So where 2011 is the year of Reach, Abundance and Serenity, I am bound and determined that it is also going to be the year of Outsourcing.

In other words, the year of learning how to grow up and run a business, rather than just working a job.

Business vs. Job

Proud as I am of the ketubah/calligraphy/design business that I built from scratch, it’s not really a business in the ultimate sense of the word. I can’t up and leave for a week, or a month, or (god forbid) longer.

Or rather, I could, but it would effectively shut the business down until I returned.

What I managed to create is a job.

No, I’m not an employee, I don’t have a boss who might at any minute lay me off or fire me, and I don’t work in a cubicle (in fact, more often than not I’m in my pajamas all day long!)

I’ve got a great commute (across the hall!), and I can work with my cat in my lap, or on an exercise bike (as I am while I type this) if I like. I can work at whatever time of day or night I want, I can take cookie breaks whenever I want (or hell, baking cookie breaks!)

I’m not disputing that, as jobs go, it’s a pretty awesome one.

But without me, this job would cease to be. And the fact is, I’m chained to it as much as any Nine-to-Fiver is chained to their cubicle job.

This is not news to me.

I’ve been fantasizing about hiring an assistant for years. On bad days I’ve even fantasized about selling the whole damn thing, chucking it all and starting over at something new.

That’s not a realistic option at the moment, nor is it one that I’m seriously interested in. For now, my ketubah business pays my mortgage.

However, with my new, web-based endeavors and my new direction (I’m building an internet empire, people!), I can see the writing on the wall, and that writing is telling me that it is not going to be possible to run a full-time ketubah business in the height of wedding season and keep up my current pace with tTAP and 365 Days of Genius.

Pushing myself out of the nest

Yep, it’s time for me to grow some Businesswoman wings. If my goal is to grow my online businesses into my main income source so that my current main source becomes my side business, the only way to do it is to get some help.

In fact, taking on 365 Days of Genius was one way of forcing myself out of the nest. Heather, the Grand Poobah behind the 365 Days of… network has made it clear in our partner conference calls that her goal is not to see us partners saddled with yet another job, but to help mentor us into building actual businesses.

You know, the kind where we really could take off to Bali for a couple of months, and the business would keep on chugging along.

I’m not exactly sure what this is all going to look like (though paid assistance will definitely be part of the picture) and I’ll confess I’m a bit intimidated by the challenge.

But I’m also determined and excited.

It’s time to bust through the glass ceiling I installed over my own head. Time to learn to delegate, to be a (gasp!) manager.

No, I’m not quite ready to start hiring… yet. But I’m revving up for it. Looking around at my options. Thinking about what I can outsource and how best to accomplish it.

First week of the year, and I’m plotting the growth of my business.

Kinda cool, if you ask me.

I’ll keep you posted…

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

Is it Sunday again already? When you don’t get your Weekly Review posted until so late on Thursday that it’s technically Friday, the next Weekly Review comes along mighty fast.

But then, I feel like I’ve done at least a week’s worth of stuff in between then and now, so it all balances out.

What I really want to talk about in this post is my quest for 2011 (ala Peter Shallard’s excellent post, How to hack your New Year’s resolutions). But first, a brief moment to look back before turning my gaze forward.

A tiny bit more of assessing back

It’s been quite a year, and with the Thriving Artists Project and 365 Days of Genius both launching within a month of each other, a year of very hard work indeed.

I’m happy to say, though, that I finished up 2010 with a much-needed (and much-too-brief) retreat. Someone very special whisked me off to a luxurious (and surprise) location in San Francisco for 24 hours of serenity and R&R, which included:

• A spacious corner suite with floor-to-ceiling views
• Appetizers in the elegant lounge
• Dressing up in my “diva” best
• A sumptuous, 5-course prix fixe meal at the Michelin-starred restaurant

I even got to play my ukulele in the car on the drive up and back.

Definitely the most memorable NYE on record, and not likely to be topped.

Plus (the best part): no computer! Yes, it nearly killed me, but I managed to get 365 Days of Genius all ready for Saturday’s launch before leaving on Friday afternoon.

I know, I know, it would have been a helluva lot less insane if I’d gotten more work done on 365 Days of Genius before the end of December, but I was just a tad busy with the Thriving Artists Project…

(If I ever schedule two launches in a row again, will somebody please slap me?)

(Except that I’m actually hoping to have the “official” launch of the Thriving Artists Project at the end of this month, which would technically make it three launches in a row, and I don’t really want to be slapped, so hold off on that, will ya?)

And now looking ahead

Suffice it to say, the end of my year felt appropriately representative of how I’d like 2011 to be:

Intense work creating something I’m excited and passionate about

…that makes a positive difference for other people

followed by

Rejuvenating “chill” time

My quest for 2011, though, includes more of the “rejuvenating ‘chill’ time” part, and somewhat less of the “intense work” part.

Not that I can’t take intense work. I actually thrive on it. But 18 hours a day for weeks is a bit much, even for me. 😉

My three words

One of the very cool things about being a partner in the 365 Days of… network is the weekly conference calls with the other partners.

For last week’s call, Heather (the Grand Poo-bah of the whole endeavor, and also in charge of the very cool 365 Days of Style) asked us to come up with three words that encapsulate our goals for 2011.

My words: Reach. Abundance. Calm.

Reach

What this means to me: Part of my larger quest is to make a difference, to make an impact, to change the world for the better. In order to do that, I need to grow my tribe of “Right People.” I need to expand my reach. I set this as one of my big goals this year.

Abundance

What this means to me: One of my huge goals to to eliminate my debt (the Thriving Artists Project is still my Debt-Elimination Project, impossible as that may seem from where I sit now). My quest for 2011 is to increase my financial abundance enough to at least make a serious dent in my debt, if not outright eliminate it this year.

And then there are other kinds of abundance: in my creative output, in my close relationships and connections with people, in my health and fitness, in the unexpected good things that will no doubt come my way…

Calm

After my micro-retreat in San Francisco, I’ve actually changed this word to Serenity.

So,

Serenity

What this means to me: Less time doing work and more time to just relax and enjoy. To walk. To read. To watch movies and hang with people I love and just “chill.”

And to create other not-so-“work”-related stuff — new songs, performance opportunities, Sandbox Art, writing that I don’t get enough time to do.

So. How will it play out? Only time will tell.

Just check back here every so often for a ringside seat.

Happy New Year!

So how’m I doing in my quest to re-invent my life, follow my evolving Blisses and create the life I really, really want?

This Weekly Review, even were it not several days late, would nonetheless be by default the Year-End Review (Part 1), coming, as it does, in the last week of 2010.

I must tell you, though, I’m not big on New Years Resolutions. Pinning all your hopes and expectations of change on one day seems pretty silly, and more often than not probably ends up creating more disappointment and feeling bad-about-yourself-ness than real, lasting change.

I am, however, a big believer in the power of milestone calendar dates.

My Calendar Milestones

You’ve probably been through at least one birthday when the weight of time felt heavier than usual. 30 was a big one for me (way harder than 40 was, btw). What had I accomplished with my life, I wondered?

I was seeing a wonderful therapist at the time (I’m a big believer in the power of good therapy, too – but it has to be good therapy), and I remember her confirming that yes, as you go through life it can be a lot like walking up a staircase with your gaze focused on the step right ahead of you. Then you hit a milestone birthday, and suddenly your focus shifts to the entire stairway rising up ahead of you, and falling away behind you.

It’s not just milestone birthdays, though. Any anniversary can act as a road marker.

I have some special events I attend regularly, usually every year: my Spring Retreat with my calligraphy guild, Jazz Camp West, California Coast Music Camp. These act as wonderful gauges for where I am with my skills and on my creative journey this time, compared to last time I was there.

And then there are special dates on the calendar that come around every year, whether I get in my car to go someplace special or not. Particularly three that come in the last few months of the year: Rosh Hashanah (Jewish New Year), my birthday, and New Years Eve.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the two holidays on the Jewish calendar that together make up the High Holy Days, are historically a time for reflection, “repentence” (or more literally, returning) and forgiveness — both of others and self.

My birthday is an obvious moment in time to consider how far I’ve come in the past year, and how much in alignment I am with my core values.

And then, of course, there’s New Years Eve.

The notion that this one date has any inherent meaning – that any one date has any inherent meaning – is, if you ask me, rather solipsistic. We create the meaning ourselves, and invest it in the date. But the fact remains, we have invested the changing of the Gregorian calendar with quite a lot of meaning.

More important, as a culture we have chosen to mark the 365 1/4-day cycling of the earth around the sun with a “beginning” and an “end.” (It’s got to “start” somewhere, right?) And since January 1 has been agreed upon by followers of the Gregorian calendar as day one of the next cycling, it’s only natural that we look back at what transpired in the previous cycling, and ahead at what we’d like to transpire in the next.

So, with that in mind, what are the memorable things that happened this year, both good and not so good?

What was hard

2010 started off very hard indeed. Money was tight, I was facing serious debt for the first time in my life, and all of my attempts to turn my business around had mostly just dug me deeper into the hole. Part of me also knew that I was living what Tara Sophia Mohr refers to as a “B+ life,” but I had no idea what to do about it.

Honestly, I was more miserable than I’d been since the year before my divorce.

Turns out another breakup was coming, too, as just 1 1/2 months into 2010 my then-boyfriend announced he was moving out, taking his contribution to the rent and living expenses with him.

That. Was. Hard.

As was feeling lost and desperate for what felt like forever… until I started to find my way.

Once I’d figured out what I really, really wanted (to express myself creatively, spend most of my time doing stuff I loved, and to help others follow their own evolving bliss(es)) and started figuring out how to get there, even a dislocated knee and painful surgery – while definitely in the “hard” column! – didn’t put a damper on my happiness.

Happiness is like that: if you’ve got a solid foundation of it, rough patches are a helluva lot more tolerable.

What was awesome

Discovering how much I love to write.

Discovering the fun of painting and sewing on stretched canvas.

Discovering the ukulele! And writing a new song for it!

Discovering, after years of resisting, that I actually love Twitter!

Meeting a new business partner (on Twitter!), and launching a new website.

Creating an online course, the Thriving Artists Project, out of thin air, and successfully (pre) launching it before I’d ever thought possible. (And can I just say that the TAP members are the coolest people ever!)

That said…

Many of the awesome things were (and are) also really hard things.

For example, if anyone ever tells me I have to launch a new website on January 1st, please whisper in my ear to say “N. O.” And if I don’t say “N.O.”? Just shoot me and put me out of my misery.

Did I mention that I will never launch a new website on January 1st?

In case you missed that, I will never launch a new website on January 1st!

Regardless of the calendar date, it’s probably not the wisest move to launch a new website in the middle of also creating content for a brand new course, whose “official launch” is scheduled pretty much right after the launch of the new website.

Um, yeah.

Not the best planning, I admit. But certainly in keeping with my usual M.O. That hasn’t changed in 2010, at least. (Ah, well, always something to work on, right?)

And if I weren’t so damned tired from all this launching, I’d probably have a helluva lot more to say, in a much more articulate manner. But I don’t, so I’m going to bed.

Happy New Year! (And do check out 365 Days of Genius when it launches on Saturday.)

Next up: Year-End (or Year-Start) Review Part 2: Questing Forward