I've been thinking for a while now that I'm not really making the most of my time and my talents - I've been trying to work out which of my talents I should be focusing on at the moment and how to use my time more effectively.

One of my talents is being good at organising things - trouble is lately I'm not very good at organising myself. I've come to the conclusion that I find it far too easy to take on too much at once, for me this usually means I have a huge list of things to do. From a personal point of view I'm very good at making lists of jobs but not always very good at prioritising them (though I'm getting better) so I end up overwhelmed and getting stressed... this in turn results in me being far less effective than I ought to be. When it comes to other people, I hate letting them down - if someone asks me to do something I feel bad if I say "no" so I say I'll do it... trouble is I usually end up letting them down anyway because it takes me so long to get round to doing it or it just doesn't get done at all.

This reminded me of The Parable of the Two Sons

It's been very difficult recently - between trying to get our webdesign business off the ground, writing material for the offshoot business aimed at churches and other Christian organisations, keeping on top of the housework, gardening, etc, and fitting in chill out time things seem to have gone to pot. I'm trying to play catch up with quite a lot and find myself a system and a routine so I can be more efficient.

It strikes me that with the generally busy and chaotic pace of modern life it's all too easy for us to over stretch ourselves when really we should be focusing on doing a few things well rather than taking on too much and not being able to devote the right level of time and energy to do a good job.

Because there is so much going on at St John's it feels all to easy to get roped in to lots of things - it seems to me that we often approach things the wrong way round... events and activities get orgnised and then people look for volunteers. Surely it would be more sensible to work out if there are enough people to help out before setting something up? Of course I may have the wrong end of the stick - it could just be that after the initial enthusiasm the volunteers drop in numbers, it could also be that my cynicism is getting the better of me but having been approached at the 11th hour several times recently I can't help wondering.

I guess the upshot of all this is that I think from a personal point of view I should be focussing my attentions on getting my business off the ground, keeping house and home together and finding enough time to chillout too. I need to get myself more organised and get better at priotitising my workload. From a church point of view I need to concentrate on being a member of the PCC and keeping the website up and running. I don't feel it would be fair to commit myself to anything else right now. That said if people are still interested in the photography club we're happy to try to get it off the ground because taking phtos is one of the things we do to chill out and hopefully one day if we get good enough at it we can incorporate photography into our business so the practice will come in handy

Paul and I work incredibly hard to keep the website working properly, updating the things that need updating, correcting all the spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes that occur on a daily basis, thwarting the attempts of crackers and spammers, constantly looking for things we can do better. We take great pride in our work with the website and we really enjoy it most of the time (we wouldn't be building a business out of it if it wasn't fun) though I've been wondering if we were too ambitious with this version of the site, and whether we're guilty of expecting people participate when they are possibly feeling overwhelmed by all that goes on too? We thought the community features like the forum would give people a chance to connect with each other more easily - and it seems to be working well for a minority - but is it just another distraction from more important things?

I hope this doesn't come across as gloomy or grumpy it's not meant to be - it's mostly an excercise in thinking aloud and trying to get my head straight... life is ticking along quite nicely - we had a good month last month and have been given a fresh enthusiassm, we reached the end of the month with enough money to survive for a littlelonger thanks to getting paid for three websites, the portfolio is growing too which is useful. Now I have to work out how to get better at all this... I've been given a talent and with that talent I've been given a real passion and enthusiasm, I really hope I can continue to make the most of it.

Thanks to everyone who has helped make the website what is is - it's enabled us to learn an enormous amount of stuff, inspired us to start our own business and have a lot of fun in the process.