To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition – Dr. Samuel Johnson

I stumbled across this quote recently and have stayed stuck on it for several weeks now.  It seems to be a simple truth, and yet it can’t be that simple or we’d all be happy at home.

I’ve given it a lot of thought and suspect that we lose our way to happiness at home because we forget or never fully explore what being happy at home really looks like.  In fact I suspect that being happy at home has nothing to do with the size or the material contents of our actual physical homes.  Instead it’s more about the people, the pets, the memories, and maybe even the creativity enabling and peaceful resting spaces our homes contain.   

Do you know what makes you happy at home?  Is the way you’re spending your time – your hours, days, weeks, months and years – really contributing to your ultimate ambition of being happy at home? 

Below is a picture of one of the spots in which I’m most happiest at home.  Nearly every day this space  allows me to be productive and creative while still interacting with the pets in a way which isn’t distracting but still makes them feel loved. 

I have something to confess.  I have become fascinated with other people’s business stories.  The seeds were planted when I saw “Julie and Julia“ while still in the midst of running my first business.  I am a big Julia Child fan and was surprised (and yet comforted) to realize she and her two co-authors argued over royalty distributions.  If the great Julia Child couldn’t create without encountering bumps in the road, how could I expect to do so?

However, my fascination fully bloomed when I recovered from my meeting with the successful (and really very kind) Lincoln businessman who quizzed me unrelentingly about my first business and then explained that everyone has at least one bad business experience in their life (click here if your memory needs refreshing).    

So you can imagine how I anticipated seeing “The Social Network.”  My bookclub had even read “The Facebook Effect” the month before so I had an inkling of what to expect.  However, I was still surprised.  Not by the movie so much, but by how my fascination shifted afterwards. 

It may not seem amazingly insightful to you, but then you may not have yet experienced the hazy fog that can envelope you when you start a businesses.  There are so many unknowns and so many wrong steps that can be taken.  So many decisions to be made and so many people saying so many different things (and even the same expert saying absolutely opposite things in the same breath).  Most of all, there is so much work (physical, mental, emotional) that needs to get done at the right time – and the right time can be one of the unknowns.   And there is so little restful sleep or time to think… 

As I sat in the dark after the movie, not really seeing the credits or hearing the chatter around me, all I could think was that everyone had a little bit of the truth, but that every one of them believed they had all of the truth.  No one was completely right or completely wrong.

I have been trying to completely avoid all the noise associated with the start-up fog, but I think the real trick is to make and take and brutally defend the time to be quiet so you can better discern and piece together the bits of true and useful information for moving the business forward.  In other words you remove yourself from the start-up fog so that you can make more sense of it and discern the bits of truth when you return to the fog.  How you do this I’m still uncertain. 

Like I said, you probably won’t think this is very insightful if you’ve never experienced startup fog.  When you do experience it though, I hope you remember this idea.

Looking back, I don’t know how I could have demanded the time in some situations to think before taking action.  I do suspect that it would have been easier to make the demand if I’d had more sleep and more confidence. 

Which gives me hope. 

Here’s an image from my last experience with physical fog.  Traffic was reduced to 20MPH on a 55MPH state highway. 

For the record, my new fascination is strategies for coping with start-up fog.  Let me know if you have any thoughts…

Two things happened recently.  First, a professor told me that he thought I was really brave to make the transition back to school (at my age was sort of implied).  Then I stumbled across this quote from E.E. Cummings:

It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.

The thing is, I think they might both be wrong.  Rather than courage and bravery, I think it might first take fear.  Fear that you’ll be more miserable not making a change.  Fear that you’ll slowly die (creatively, intellectually, emotionally and yes even physically) doing the same job year after year.  Fear that the world will be missing something wonderful because you wouldn’t get off your butt and create it.  Fear that not changing will end up being harder and more difficult and more gut wrenching than the change process itself. 

Besides, can we really be courageous without fear?  Does it qualify as bravery if we’re not at least a little afraid?  Can we grow into what we’re really capable of doing if we don’t fear the consequences of not growing?   Fear is an impetus for action.

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Or can your fear

actually help you

move forward?

I did a lot this summer, but the biggest thing was probably starting my doctorate studies in Public Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s School of Public Affairs.  

It’s been exciting, but also a bit of a transition into being a full time student again.  I love all the new ideas and the new perspectives they allow me to have on old projects.  They’ve also given me a lot of new projects including joining a team that’s writing a policy manual for a county department. 

I suspect future posts will dwell a lot on balancing school and business development, as well as what new ideas have me amazed, excited, stumped or overwhelmed that particular week.  Hold on, the fun has just begun…