Do you ever feel like this is your life?

Or this:

This happened to me about 2 weeks ago but I had some other projects working and a blog post I needed to get to first. However, I recommend when crazy or interesting things happen to you to write down the story while it’s fresh in your mind and come back to post it when your schedule permits. So here we go…

The last 24 hours have been quite a blur and a whirlwind. I drove 1.5 hours away, stayed the night with brother, was up by 7 am, drove another 1 to get to Dallas to visit with my cousin. The visit lasted about 4 hours then I had to drive back to Austin for 3 hours to get home by 7 pm that evening. When I got back home last night my sister called me a jet setter.

I felt like a mix of the 2 above photos and this:

It was crazy times because my cousin has been stationed over in Iraq for about 18 months. And he finally got done with his assignment and was whisked back over here to America with about two weeks of leave time. Then he will be stationed in Arizona for six months before heading out to our family’s ancestral homeland of Germany.

Unfortunately, he married a very demanding woman that does not like our side of the family (and being totally objective hers is no picnic which has been confirmed by 3rd parties). Piling onto the problem he bows down to her wishes and spends more time with her family. So bottom line is we had two days where he would be in Dallas with a chance to visit with him and the rest of the time he would be with her family and off limits. But the worst is yet to come…

So I go up there and we’re playing some dominoes games and just hanging out during the day on Monday before I have to leave back because I have a court situation to deal with on Tuesday morning.

And this is when I was dealt a lesson in focus. There were no less than four times right in the middle of our game when his wife interrupts us and asks him to go grab something out of the baby’s diaper bag. Another time she says, “Honey daughter has a poopy diaper and its your turn to change her.” Her being there was the “worst is yet to come” part I was referring to above.

Apparently it’s not enough for this woman to fully monopolize his time when he’s away from us but she also has to selfishly interrupt what little time we do have to spend with him. Unreal

A game which should have taken 20 to 30 minutes ended up taking over an hour. And that doesn’t even count the fact that I arrived there at 10:30 in the morning and she had him and her daughter out at the Arboretum until 1:30 which further cut into our family time. A part of me can understand her plight being the wife of an active military man and being separated from him for long stretches.

And I do empathize. But she CHOSE to marry him and knew the life she was signing on for. So that’s where my empathy ends and she needs to step aside for our family time. We don’t cut into hers because we don’t even get to see her family. So the double standard is established and this little rant about my personal life is finished.

So to bring this back home and make it relevant to your business the big point is to focus and make well thought out decisions.

All in all I had about 2 1/2 hours to visit with him and probably 20 to 30 minutes of that was him doing stuff for his wife. So there was a complete lack of focus and for the most part it was a very unproductive visit. Needless to say it was disappointing for me but the whole point was to visit with him a little bit since he will be stationed in Germany for the next 3 1/2 years and that goal was at least accomplished.

You can’t choose your family but you can choose who you marry and what business you choose to be in. So make sure you are in the business and the relationship that you enjoy and can focus your efforts so that you get the maximum return for the time that you’re spending on those efforts.

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