Way Behind and Overwhelmed!

Suddenly.

Where had I been for the last 10 years? Why hadn't I noticed? What was I (NOT) thinking?

And now how do I fix it right now, this minute? I must do it right now. I am already 10 years behind. TEN YEARS! How could this happen? Did it happen suddenly or subtly?

Have any of you business owners/leaders ever felt this way? Everything was running along smoothly and all of a sudden you see something new that every competitor is doing, but you hadn't noticed it before today. And now that you have noticed it, you see it everywhere. Your numbers had dropped off but you blamed it on the economy. But now that you have opened your eyes, it wasn't the economy. It was you. You quit trying. You gave up. You took your business for granted.


That just happened to me. I was going along my merry way speaking consistently 70-80 times a year. Getting rave reviews. My marketing plan was simple: Do a great job and when referrals come in be polite, say "yes" and do a good job for them, too. And I was so proud of myself for going beyond the call of duty. I was sending out thank-you letters. Wow!

I knew my web page needed updating, but I was too busy. When I created the web page, back in the day, I was on the cutting edge. Not many speakers had one. Well, I didn't pay attention. Obviously. Because the next time I looked up it was 1o years later and everyone had a elaborate web page with bells, whistles, animation. Twits, Blogs. Linked in and logged on. I wanted to bury my head in computer chips and gigabytes. "I am behind. I can't catch up. I should quit. I am too old. I don't know how. I want to cry."

Have you ever felt that way? I called a friend (one of 3) and whined into her answering machine. I'm glad she didn't call back right away because it gave me time to stew in my misery. I have always been a "can do" person. What had happened to me?

It took me 4 days of soul searching. I waffled between deciding whether it was that I couldn't or I didn't want to. It was a combination. I didn't want to because I couldn't because I didn't know how. Effort. This was going to take an enormous amount of effort. And to be honest it has been years since I had to put forth effort.

It is cathartic to bear your soul.

But here I am 5 days later. I have shaken the computer chips and gigabytes out of my hair. I have joined face book, I have a blog, I am linked in, and I have found someone to help me update my web page, and it really wasn't hard at all. (I had wondered if it was all that hard how did those drug dealers and porn people figure it out???) Well it seem as a lot has changed while I was asleep at the microphone. No longer do you have to write in DOS. There are now web page templates. Click and you're done. Click and blog. Click and tweet. Click and a picture appears. Click and you have video. This isn’t bad.

The only problem I foresee is if somebody tweets do I really have to tell them what I am doing?
Who would care? And if I don't blog for a while, will people know that I am just sitting home bored, waiting for my next inspiration? Do I really want people to know that much about me?

I just checked my rating. No tweets, No followers. All's safe for now.