Fast and Focused

2011 is flying by.

There's never enough time to do everything, but the temporary move has helped me change my priorities.

I'm nowhere near on-track for my 30 book challenge -- I haven't even finished the first book I started this year! I do love reading, but it's just not as important as many of the items that get my time lately.

I told myself that 2011 would be the year I finally got back into running shape and I seem to be committed (at the expense of books, clearly). I'm more or less in sync with my running goals, especially if you count last weekend's downhill skiing at elevation as acceptable cross-training instead of weekend long runs. I guess I'll find out when I head out for a 12 mile Saturday run with Z (who's flying up to join me for for my first half marathon this year!) followed by a 10 mile Sunday run through the Sierra Nevada foothills.

Work is busy for both E and me. Since we both work for ourselves, this is a good thing. We never have trouble making time for work a priority. On the other hand, it's hard to leave work at work when you work from the kitchen table of a rented apartment in a city away from your home.

By moving, we've eliminated the casual daily social interruptions, like business lunches or evenings/weekends outings with friends. Instead, our social life is much more dense but only in bursts. When I'm in California, I jam pack my schedule full of visits with clients, friends, and family as well as events -- but it's a limited time and I can only see those who have time to see me when I'm available.

In Washington, I'm basically free of social obligations except for time dedicated to people who made the effort to travel to see me and a few scattered friends who, because they live in WA, are not a daily part of my life. Over time, of course, if we were to stay here for longer, this would change. No doubt we'd develop a new social fabric in WA and slowly drift away from the California network. But, since we are so busy and we are only here temporarily, it's very easy to just focus on ourselves.

Between our travels and visits from family and friends (which clearly have been made a priority by everyone involved), we're living simply -- walking everywhere we can, eating healthy, enjoying lazy weekends without any obligations, basically, just enjoying being married to one another and building our businesses without too much external social interaction. It's interesting how easy it is to do this here, whereas at home it would probably feel unbalanced since it would be at the expense of all of the normal things we are used to doing.

Despite the WA social break (or perhaps because of it), this year is shaping up to be quite intense on both the social and the travel front. We already did South America and Whistler, and it doesn't look like we're going to slow down very much for the rest of the year.

Between almost weekly flights back to the Bay Area by me for the next 3 months, visits from family and friends, 3 weddings to attend (and all of the associated events for the two that involve family-like friends), training for and running a memorial day marathon in Idaho followed by a road trip through Yellowstone and a drive back to California, the incoming niece and nephew we are expecting (within 1 month of each other!) and visits to meet them, a half business/half pleasure 3 week trip to Europe, the annual week-long visit from my oldest neice to attend summer camp, and, holiday travel for Thanksgiving and Christmas, it looks like our entire year is spoken for.

Oh, also, back in California, we need to get a new roof, fumigate the house, and we keep going back and forth about the kitchen remodel.

Off to run!