Kittens, scraps, plateaus and new beginnings.

Not sure what all those have to do with... well, with anything? Not to mention this blog, although, this blog is just about life, and... okay, let's be really really honest here. It has been a long long time since I posted anything at all and I'm totally clueless what to post even now but I'm trying to get back into the discipline, so... I'm just going with what's going on with life lately.

so, kittens and scraps... life around here lately has been consumed with 5 little furballs all with extreme cases of A.D.D. They're fun, they're maddening but too cute to get too ticked off at. I'm thinking life will seem very different soon though as they're almost old enough to find new homes. 3 of the 5 already have homes waiting for them, and while i know the kids are really hoping to keep one if not both of the remaining, we're defnitely going to be more than willing to let the others find homes as well. That becomes more true as they tear into my wife's fabric stash and leave scraps all over, or as they leave little gifts everywhere except the litter box. all that said... they're definitely fun to watch.

Plateaus... Was chatting with my daughter's doctor during a visit a couple weeks ago and she'd known I'd been doing this whole dieting thing, so she asked about how I'd done so far and all that, so she asked if I was at a plateau right now. i thought that was an odd question, but the truth is i've been fluctuating up and down about 5 pounds or so for awhile now. so, how'd she know? did i look like it? did someone tell her? I think she could tell I was wondering that by the look on my face and she said that just the point i'm at, the amount i've lost, the amount of time i've been at it, that it seems a pretty typical place for a plateau.

great. i don't want to be typical right now!!!!

i'm wondering in some ways if the blog and the plateau are a bit related? actually that is a thought that came up as i started this post because i used the word discipline. So I've fallen out of the discipline of writing in this, at the same time i've fallen off some of the disciplines otherwise... things that make you go hmmmm, huh?

I make a lot of excuses right now, for both. Most of the excuses center around life being rather busy lately, and around that new beginnings part. Which I'll get into here in a moment. But here it is May, and when there's a total of 10 kids between us things can get crazy. I'm sad right now for having missed my stepdaughter's college graduation just because it coincided with other school activities that required my attendance. But this is one of those times when life gets crazy. But you know the amazing thing? It's great! It's hard to explain, cuz it's mind boggling at times to the point where people wonder how we do it... but... it's life, and life is something that is very, very good. I'm relishing in having all of this going on. Even if it is sometimes exhausting, there's something at the end of the day where i'm left thinking... this is what it's all about.

ahhh, so... new beginnings. Part of the reason for being so busy also has to do with launching out now with my own business. Barnabas Communications! For me it's not a new name, I've somewhat launched it before doing some different things over the past few years. All of that has always been testing the water with one foot while keeping the other foot in other pools or seeking out other pools. But now, I'm diving in. It's scary and exciting all at the same time.

Put simply, i've spent too long being part of an industry where you have to really hype up the high tech aspects of what you do when in the end it still just ends up for the vast majority of customers pretty ordinary. And yet, having been involved enough in both the marketing AND the technology/service side of things, I know all the stuff we promise is there and can be pretty extraoridary. The problem is that we don't put the emphasis into making it extraordinary, we just put the emphasis into selling it.

So I've spent a lot of time on... how do you make it extraordinary? Over the past few months as the economy has tightened, the company I worked for had to do some cutting back in December, and I survived the cut. As things slowed down more, I ended up thinking, what if there's another cut? NO ONE in this industry is hiring right now, in fact... not many people at all are hiring. But the amazing thing in those thoughts became... that it didn't turn into fear or panic, and there was this understanding that it was in fact maybe an opportunity waiting to happen. And recently the time came when we talked at work about changing to more of an independent contractor at work. And in the end, that opened the door to the opportunity. And thus, Barnabas Communications LLC is a reality. I still do a lot of work for my former company which gives me a chance to develop the business.

Right now I've got the framework put together and the basic concepts. I have the website, www.DenverPhoneSystems.com. It's what I figure to be a temporary one, because there's a constant evolution in how I think it should be put together, but this is a good start. I think anyway....

So yeah, life has gotten busy. And yet... exciting.