The Problem With Marathons, July's Goal and My Brand

Hey guys,
No work today, I had the day off because I have to work in Saturday and that will busy.  So my plan was to have a studying marathon and catch up on the four hours I was short of my goal last week.  Or at least just log some.

Unfortunately, it just so happens to be a blazingly sunny and beautiful day!  And it's making it hard to concentrate.

The day started out a little rocky as a I started reading a new leadership book (because I finished 25 Ways to Win With People last night) called The Brand You 50.  I'm not giving up on it just yet, but let's just say it's not my favorite.  Tom Peters doesn't believe in correct grammar or sentence structure, apparently.  I'll still work on getting through that book, I think it just starts slow, but in the mean time I started "Leadership Is An Art" by Max De Pree.  It's also a different format from what I'm used to.  But I like what it says about writing in books:

"As a child, I often watched adults study books and learned one of my first lessons about reading.  They wrote in their books.  Intent and involved readers often write in the margins and between the lines."

Wow- this definitely describes me!  If you flip through my leadership books you'll see a lot of yellow highliter and black pen.  I wish I could say you'd get a lot out of reading my notes, but you probably wouldn't- they're pretty nonsensical to people besides myself.  My physics teacher used to tell us to "talk to the text," when we read our physics book (or if, in most cases) and that's where I got the habit. I'm constantly debating the principles, and writing in the margins, "Do I agree with this?" and "How can I say this without sounding cheesy?"

I digress.  After I did a bit of reading, I started to do a handful of other things.  I just felt all day like I had too much to do and it was a little overwhelming.  But when I step back, I really did get quite a bit done, including:

• Almost my entire FFA Application (excluding a few of the harder things)
• Called people to write me letters of recommendation
• Read through and studied the Monday Morning Monitor
• Checked in with Jeff
• E-mailed two people about training weekends
• Sent about a million emails to Rayne (or 3)
• Worked on 35 "Ways to Encourage the Heart" #33- writing thank you notes
• Read leadership books
• Two blog posts
• And I checked again just to make sure the due date for the application is indeed August 1st.

 So, up to now it's been 4.5 hours.  Which isn't bad, I guess.  I just need to not expect marathons to be very successful, because I can't focus after a few hours.  Oh well. I also got some other things done, like scheduling an appointment to get my hair cut and going to the gym (ie, March's goal).

Speaking of goals: It's July!  And it's been July for a while, but I've had this goal and have just forgotten to mention it.  So here it is: Exercise Patience.  Man, this is such a hard thing for me.  And I don't even know if this is the right wording for what I'm trying to do.  Not only am I trying to be more patient about life and the pace it goes, I'm trying to be more patient with others and mostly, control my temper.

Two weeks ago I got into a huge fight with my sister Rita, over, essentially  whether "dating" is defined as "going out" with someone or "going on a date" with someone.  Ridiculous, I know, but I totally lost my cool and it took me a long time to get in control of myself.  At one point I was ranting and my sister said, "Imagine there was a camera right here in the car (we were on our way home from Anchorage) recording you right now, wouldn't you be embarrassed to watch yourself?"


At the time I was mad, so I just thought, whatever.  But now I think, "Oh man.  What if there was a camera.  What if the nominating committee saw me at my worst, my very brattiest,  instead of this responsible, put-together servant-leader I'll be doing my best to present to them.  If they knew I treated my family this way, they would never elect me."

And, that's all very true.  So I'm working this month on that.  As a sidenote, I don't know why it's always my sister Rita who says things that impact me so much- she also contributed a quote to my retiring address.  It's probably because she's so honest- but I appreciate that.

Could this be officially considered a diatribe?  Probably.  I'm going to get to work on the harder aspects of the application now (the letter of application and the resume).
-Rachel