Psst.  StingRay here.  If you don't know who I am, think of me as your reality check.  I like to stop by the House of Shine from time to time and put "shine" into perspective.  We're half way through the year as of today.  It means you've either taken advantage of, or lost, half of the time that you and M.J. Ryan allocated for your "This-year-I-will-goals."

For some of you, this is a time to congratulate yourselves.  For others......not so much.  Let's take a look at Claudia for example.

Her goal for the year was to write a book.  How do you think that's going?  Well?  What we do know is that she's spent a lot of time going to have pictures framed, going to Roasts, eating at restaurants that bring cotton candy with the check and taking pictures of Dandy Lions on the side of the road.  She has baked thousands of cookies and written more than 150 posts.  She finds time to iron sheets, go to Rotary luncheons, organize conferences, watch Iron Chef and Chopped, hang out at Starbucks, go the gym and get her eyebrows waxed.  Her goal for the year; the all consuming and ever-present monkey on her back, the single most important next step towards being a self-actualized creature.  Far too busy for that one.

It's like my Dad always said, "son, you're running out of time."  Wouldn't matter what I was doing, I always knew that I was running out of time.

Guess what?  "You are running out of time!"  This is the time to decide whether you're going to fish or cut bait.  It would be easy to throw in the towel and look to next year when things will be different.  They won't.  Time will pass and you'll be no closer and even more frustrated.  Fear not though.  I have an equation for you.

(15*180)/60

This is how many hours you can put towards your goal by spending just 15 minutes per day.  For those of you who can't do it in your head; that's 45 hours.  You certainly can't write a book in 45 hours, but I bet 45 hours would get a lot of goals accomplished.  Now imagine if you or Claudia found an extra hour a day.  That's 180 hours.  Now we're getting somewhere.

So?  Decide.  Are you going to fish or cut bait?  Visit us in the Community Forum labeled, Today's Post and let us know.

StingRay out.