Has anyone seen the month of May? I seem to have misplaced it. When I sat down this morning to post to this blog, I discovered that my last post was on April 30. I could have sworn I wrote those words no more than two weeks ago. Perhaps gremlins changed the date on my blog page.

But no, further detective work in my office indicates that May really was somehow stolen from my working life. I located a stack of unopened mail with May postmarks in the vicinity of my desk, which turned out to hold both an undeposited check and an unpaid bill. Yikes!

If I wasn't even opening the mail last month, it's pretty likely I wasn't making any progress on my heroic journey either -- you know, the "Big A" agenda I have for making the world a better place. Not a good thing.

I could just write the month off. After all, I have a good excuse -- I must have been busy. But how good an excuse is that really? Here's some food for thought from success author Zig Ziglar: "...are we really busier than we've ever been? In reality, based on what 10,000 people recorded in their hour-by-hour time diaries, Americans, on the average, have 40 hours a week of discretionary time which they can invest as they please. This is more than they had 30 years ago and five hours more than they had in 1975."

I could argue that as a business owner, I have less discretionary time than the average bear. But that's nonsense. In reality, I have much more. I don't have a boss telling me what to do with my work time -- I'm telling myself what to do. If I'm not spending enough time on the things that matter most to me, there's really no one else I can blame.

I ran across a quote from an old interview with Michael Landon, and I've decided to make it my theme for the month of June: "Someone should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it, I say! Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows."

Labels: life purpose