The significence of the holiday season means a lot of different things to a lot of different people depending on where you are from and your religious beliefs. For me, when I was a kid, it always meant family get togethers. My family is spread all over the United States some living as far as Hawaii. My mother has 3 brothers with families and we have not all been together since both of my Grandparents were alive.

I now have my own immediate family and also 2 children from my first marriage who are in their twenties. The youngest has just recently made me a Grandfather at age 47. I couldn't be happier. Unfortunately, I am not going to be able to be with them this Christmas but will be visiting them soon. This year, the family is coming to my house here in Florida.

I am making this post because I want to make sure that every one remembers why we are doing this. Here in the United States it has become the accepted norm that if you want to excel at your job, you need to put in 50 – 60 hour work weeks. This is as true for corporate America as it is for Blue collar America. Some where along the line we have become obsessed with chasing the dollar and material possesions for a lot of different reasons.

I was a legal resident of Holland for 2 years and I have traveled and worked in places like New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, and South America. I met my wife in Venezuela. The rest of the world does not think like that. Family and being happy takes presedence over money.

This goes out to all you Americans. Don't forget to have fun! Being a workahoic is not going to make you happy. I have a hard time with this myself. The job that I worked when I was traveling required me to work 12 hour days, sometimes for 7 days a week. The jobs usually lasted 3 to 4 weeks and then off to another one.

Now I work a 40 hour a week job, but old habits are hard to break. My wife thinks that I am absolutely crazy. Sometimes I will get home from work and start working on the computer until 10 or 11 without stopping. Then I'll get up at 3am and put in a few hours before every one gets up.

It's good to know that I can still do it when crunch time comes but I have made an effort to scale back. Since using the planning and the Daily Did Sheet that Alex gave us, I have been able to do away with this type of behaviour. I have a sign on the wall in my office that says "Have You Had Any Fun Today?"

This helps keep me from being obsessed by my wants. All I really have to do is ask myself "why I am doing all this?" The answer is easy. Like they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words."

Alejandro and Mary, and of course Santa

With that said, I think I'll take a break, go watch some football, and have a couple coldies

Back in the summer of 1998, I left the United States for the first time in my life. I had recently went back to school to get a degree in electronics so I could start a new career and basically a new life. Three years prior I divorced my wife of 15 years and the school and new career was a way of starting fresh and putting all of that behind me. I pretty much swore that I would never get married again and intended to spend a lot of time doing the things that I like to do with no body to answer too.

I buried myself in my studies and work for the next 3 years. I got a great job working on automated welding equipment. The job paid really well but required me to travel and work between 72 to 84 hours a week. No kidding! The company does repairs at Nuclear power plants, coal burning power plants, refineries, and paper mills. These plants lose a lot of money when their units are down so the work schedule was 6 or 7 days a week, for 12 hours a day until the repairs are made. The average job lasted about 2 weeks but I have been on some that lasted for 3 months.

Back to the summer of 1998. I had been working my job for about 2 months and they sent me to work at a refinery in Puerta La Cruz, Venezuela. That is where I met the woman who changed my life forever. I am not going to go into all of the details (this post is getting way longer then I intended already), but we met and corresponded for the next 5 years via email and windows messenger. Luckily for me, my company had a lot of work in Venezuela and I went on every job to spend time with Yvonne (my wife's name). I also took several vacations to Venezuela over the years.

She was unable to come visit me in the United States because of our crappy immigration policies, but we kept trying to get her a visa. I won't go into the details, because they are a little shady, but after 4 years we finally managed to get her a visa. Meanwhile, I accepted a position with my company as the maintenance manager for our European division that is located in Holland. We got married in the United States and then spent the next 2 years living in Rotterdam.

I then came off the road and we moved back to the United States where I took a job at the home office working in the shop. (no more traveling) This came with a considerable reduction in pay but was worth losing every penny. At least it is to me now. I hope I haven't lost you yet because I am just now getting to the point of this post. After spending 7 years travelling all over the world and being heavily exposed to South American culture, I have realized that our way of life in America is absolutely nuts!

We work ourselves to death so that we can keep up with the Jones or some other idiotic reason. (Europeans have a mandatory 36 hour work week) Family values have gone to shit in this country. We go to such lengths to chase the almighty dollar and turn a blind eye to the things in life that are truly important. Teenagers are running wild and getting into trouble. Why? Because their parents are too busy pursuing their careers to notice what is going on. They both work. The kid has been letting himself in the house after school since he was 10 and stays their unsupervised until one of the parents arrives to tired from work to even talk to him.

This has become the norm. The same goes for the elderly in this country. The minute they show signs of not being able to care for themselves we put them in a home to live out the rest of their days staring at a television. OK, this is turning into a rant. I'll stop. I just want to thank my wife, of 5 years as of Friday, Yvonne for showing me what is really important in life and how to tell the difference. If I made a list of what matters most to me now, happiness would be at the top and money and material objects don't even make the top 10.

I want everyone to think about why you have started your online business. Make sure that your only reason isn't just the money. Ask yourself this: "Am I having fun?". If the answer is no then you are probably doomed to fail. Unless you are just incredibly passionate about making it work, you will never have the drive it takes to see it through. Those programs that talk about making money fast are a crock. You have to look at this as a business and until you do, you are going to have poor results.

Start looking for ways to outsource the work. You need to be the boss, not the worker. I no that most of you do not have the money to start paying people to do your work. I know exactly where you are at. You can do it yourself as long as you are working towards an outsourcing scenario. Start recording your daily tasks in a video form so that you can easily turn the work over to an assistant when you can afford it. That day WILL come.

Don't fall into the trap. I know people that start a home business so that they can have more freedom and free time only to end up working more then they did at their old jobs. don't totally defeat the purpose of working from home. Yes, you will have to at first but don't let it take over your life. Remember to have fun! Work in spurts of no longer than 2 hours and then go spend an hour playing with the kids or hitting golf balls. You can even spend time with your wife. What a concept!

Happy Anniversary Yvonne! The last 5 years have been the best of my entire life.