"Know what you own, and know why you own it." - Peter Lynch
As the new year begins, I've begun thinking about investments.
Investment means: "to put (money) to use, by purchase or expenditure, in something offering
potential profitable returns,as interest, income, or appreciation in value."
I want to talk about the word investment in a different manner though.
Instead of thinking of investing in a monetary capacity, I've been thinking of investments as an expenditure of my energy.
Blogging can become quite complicated when working with people. For the last five months, I've been making a living as a tutor, a homebound instructor and a personal shopper. I've had upteenth adventures but as a professional, I cannot divulge many of my stories due to privacy issues. I love the flexibility and the challenges of my jobs although my schedule can be a bit frantic. My week looks something like this:
Monday- shop, teach, teach
Tuesday- teach, teach, teach
Wednesday- teach, teach, teach
Thursday- teach, teach
Friday- shop, tutor
Saturday- tutor
I also try to keep a couple of pieces of art in local stores and once a month, I clean a former client's home. Try squeezing 5 hours of cleaning into that schedule! It gets really tough!
I was looking at the back of our house, lamenting a never-ending bathroom renovation, when I thought about what I wanted to invest in this year. One thing I want to invest in is myself and therefore my family. I'm blogging about this for personal accountability as well. I need to look at when the Praxis are. It's one thing to talk being able to teach a subject, it's another to pay for the exams and become endorsed in the subjects as well.
While I immensely enjoy the freedom of my work, I miss the stability of a "normal" job. I'm working on the perfect combination of work and family. I would love to have my own classroom and an 8 am - 3:30 pm schedule, still allowing me to shop and keep my artwork up. Ideally, I would love my own art class but if this is not possible, I'd be a great English or Spanish teacher as well. One of my goals and investments for the year is to take the Praxis for English and become endorsed in English as well.
This is one of my goals for the year, one of the investments that I will make. What will your investments look like in the year 2014? Will your investments be monetary, spiritual or career-oriented?
