Complicated

As per usual, the beginning of a school year marks a season of change around here. My boys are all settling into their classes well, and I have even managed to have at least one day of the first week of school in my home office alone to be all productive and stuff.

One of the things I’ve been doing has been reassessing my schedule, which I tend to do on a quarterly basis (if you’ve been around here for a while, you’ve probably noticed), but especially when I’m looking to make a change in my business activities. And lately, I’ve been trying to figure out how to work in some things that have been being neglected more than I like as well as see where I can cut out inefficiencies and spend more time on the things that produce value.

That is NOT an easy process, let me tell you. And I’m sad to report, I won’t be going into it in this post. In fact, I’m feeling a little discouraged about it right now and have some hard decisions to make over the next day or so about which very valuable activities are going to have to go so that activities of more value can remain.

Please send happy and calming thoughts to me, because these kinds of decisions are not easy for me. I love all the things I do, but as I’ve often mentioned before, I have a finite amount of time. I have to decide where my “yes” will be, and what needs to have a “not right now.”

So, thanks to that extreme dearth of extra time I apparently have, I’m keeping this post short. Last Tuesday, I posted on Instagram a bit about a recent book I read (in keeping with the “Back to School” theme) called Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover. Several of my tribe responded that they had found the book equally impacting. If you haven’t read this yet, I recommend it.

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Since this is the first day of back-to-school around these parts, and I totally did NOT take a picture of my kids this morning (Mom fail!), it seems like a good day to talk about this book. I listened to this on Audible several months ago (which is why I photographed an on-the-shelf version for this post. I know. SO tacky.) and it has not let me go. Wow. This memoir was pretty tough to listen to in parts (like, "she survived to tell about it so I'll keep listening but otherwise holy cr*p I just can't") but so inspiring and incredible. I highly recommend it. (Also, the audiobook narration by Julia Whelan was enjoyable to listen to.) . What are you reading this week, friend? . #educated #tarawestover #bookstagram #amreading #bookish #reading #igreads #bookworm #booklover #booknerdigans

A post shared by Talena Winters (@talenawinters) on Sep 3, 2019 at 1:20pm PDT

And, to go along with that, I created a free desktop wallpaper for my Patreon subscribers—but since I haven’t really thrown the doors open on that yet and don’t have any subscribers, I’m sharing it with you. Click to open, then right-click and “set as wallpaper” to use or just save the image to your computer. (Photo by Logan Weaver, courtesy of Unsplash.com.)

Free desktop wallpaper. “We are all of us more complicated than the roles we are assigned in the stories other people tell.” Tara Westover, Educated. 1920x1080px.

Happy Sunday, friends!