I would be lying if I said the last few weeks were anything but difficult. Expanded expectations at my day job, significant work at home as I close on a new house and get my old house ready for sale, moving into the new house, kids returning to school, all on top of the daily grind that is life. This has left very little time for side projects. I feel like I will soon have a Jessie Spano breakdown screaming, “There’s no time!!! Never any time!!”

It should pay off in the near future. The move to the new place has lowered my daily commute by about 30 minutes and has been an even bigger improvement for my wife who used to drive me early to the train station and have to sit in her car before her shift. She’d usually end up sitting waiting for me at the end of the day as well, sometimes a total of 2 hours in a day just sitting waiting. Work at the old house is coming to a close as well, and the house is officially on the market as of this last weekend.

It has been difficult to do something every day, one of the admonitions that I have tried to live by since starting this whole thing. Sometimes I have 10 minutes; not much can be done in 10 minutes. I should say over the last 6 weeks, most days have had 10 minutes. During these days, I’m spending that 10 minutes reading an article or two on related news – a new fitness app or how a startup is dealing with SEO. I spend time reading posts in Facebook groups I have joined, reading the experiences of others in entrepreneurs.

I have managed to do the follow up discussion with my daughter on the art and paying her differently. In the end, we decided that I will outsource the art to someone else. Ultimately, it ended up being too much pressure, and it was pushing her away from art, and I certainly don’t want to do that. She explained that she would sit down to draw something, feel guilty that she wasn’t drawing for the card game, then quit drawing before getting very far. The pressure to complete art for the game was stopping her from drawing altogether. Now I’m on the hunt for an artist to do the work.

I expect the next few weeks to continue to be slow going in regards to the card game and fitness app. As long as my old house isn’t sold and there’s continued turbulence at the day job, I will have fuller weeks that will get in the way. I’m still not totally settled in the new place either. While these things will slow me down for the time being, I will not let life deter me this time, and will continue grinding forward at whatever pace I can muster.

What obstacles are in your way that are slowing you down? What adjustments are you making to get past them?