Summer Reading, Guitar, And Life.

So, Wednesday marked my 1-month anniversary of being self-employed. I took a leap of faith without a rock-solid plan which defies my own advice in this post . But I do have a purpose, so that’s good!

The daily commute of nearly 1.5 hours was getting more and more congested and taking a personal toll. Somedays I found myself wondering if someone had hired thousands of drivers to just drive around aimlessly. Some people can commute for years of a career, but it was really stressing me out.

There were other reasons for making a change, though. One of those was wanting more Moso time! I really like helping others gain financial confidence and freedom and the hours before work and after other obligations were already packed and not proving to be enough. And a few hobbies that had been shuttled to the far back burner have been resurrected and adding a lot of satisfaction to my life.

One of the things I’ve been doing more of is reading. I just love it. Because I don’t have to rush off to wage the traffic war work, I have started taking some time to read in the morning, usually something that will set a productive tone for the day.

I also read sometimes while I eat breakfast or during lunch or during my personal time at midday. I read at the gym and I read before bed. Books in the works or recently-read books include:

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
• The Wednesday War (heartwarming, funny YA novel)
• The Alchemist
• I Let You Go (I haven’t started this one yet so don’t consider this my recommendation yet unless you want to trust my friend’s recommendation:))
• Business Boutique: A Woman’s Guide for Making Money Doing What She Loves

What are you reading these days? It’s a millionaire’s habit so if you’re not reading, I suggest you start. And I suggest to myself that I focus on the more substantial books:) Reviewing the type of books that millionaires read has me inspired and has my hold list at the library running long.

Another thing I’ve made time for is guitar practice. My personal mentor who has no idea she is, Mel Robbins, talks in this video (start at 43:50) about practice. [I highly recommend you listen to all of it; she gives super pragmatic, helpful advice for changing your life by not letting feelings rule the roost.]

She uses the example of guitarists and says that those who get really good at guitar are the ones who practice scales, not just songs incessantly. That struck me. I usually want to just play the songs and do some grudging scale practice. But now I am taking a more disciplined approach these days and doing a consistent 10 minutes of drills before I move into songs.

I’m not practicing enough minutes a day to win awards or have that be my livelihood, but if I keep this up I will certainly be a more precise, confident guitarist. And people shall come from seconds around to hear me play.

Here we are at the end of this and I know I haven’t, until now, used the “budgeting” word.  But this post isn’t about budgeting.

It’s just about life and a little of what’s going on. I’ve been hyper-focused on Moso because I love it, but need to remind myself that I am ultimately a person, living a life. Like all of us. And that no matter how busy I get, I need to not let the richest things of life (like reading and skill practice) get squeezed out of life.

Have a great weekend! And if you have any reading recommendations or practice tips, feel free to share!

‍