I have been thinking a lot about what I want to do differently in my life going forward, but I haven’t really thought about the details on how to go about making those changes. I had an interesting conversation today with a friend of mine and she so nicely reminded me that I tend not think about how to follow through with the ideas I come up with. So I started to think about all the wacky enterprising ideas I have had in the past.

I admit I have a small problem with my short attention span. Don’t get me wrong, I am full of energy and great ideas, but I am not so full of initiative on how to implement those ideas and make them real.

I don’t know when or why I developed that bad trait. I had a lot of motivation and sense of urgency when I was younger. I planned and followed through as if my life and the life of my child depended on it. I waited for no one or nothing to make things happen. I made them happen. But lately, (the last ten or twelve years) I have been a little more complacent and nonchalant about what I want to tackle next. I think I just let things get in the way a lot. I like thinking about a new idea, planning it, researching it, and sharing it with my friends, who also think they are great ideas, then I encounter a hurdle, or I realize that the success of the idea will not be overnight and so the idea becomes short-lived and fizzles quickly.

So here are some great ideas that have fizzled over time:

Catering Business
So I thought I could be a really great cook, make a ton of food, and people would buy it. The problem is that even though I was inspired by “Top Chef,” I really don’t have a culinary background, I would need to get some kind of certification in food and safety, it is not legal to run a catering business from home, and I would have to market the business as well as invest a lot of money at the beginning. Not to mention, that I am only an average cook, I am better with smaller meals, and my strength is Mexican food.

This idea made a comeback recently when I thought I can create a “prepackaged” Mexican meal service, in which I would cook, prepackage it, and sell it as microwaveable meals. Yeah. Not such a great idea.

Ecommerce Site
My education and background are in user interface design, so I thought I could build a web site, make or find products to sell and put them online so everyone would flock to purchase them. The problem is that I didn’t know much about building a transactional site; I didn’t know what products to make or sell that people would want to buy. I didn’t have the funds to invest in building an inventory, and I never found the time to actually research what it would take to create an online store.

Selling Poems
Back when I discovered eBay, I thought, what could I sell on eBay that people would pay for, so, I thought I could write poems that people would want – customized for their mothers, or children, or for birthdays and holidays. I thought people would want to pay for a service like that, but after talking about it aloud with a friend, I thought this was a dumb idea.

Fashion Design
When “Project Runway” hit the airwaves, I got so excited at the possibility of designing and making clothes. I had done some sewing back when I was in high school, and I loved making my son’s Halloween costumes from sewing patterns every year, so I thought I would create and market a fashion line for women’s clothes. I actually bought some “how to sketch” and “history of fashion” books and embarked on trying to create a line. But I soon realized I couldn’t draw at all, and that I would have to sew without a pattern and the “outfits” were looking very similar on paper, so that idea went out the window.

Bilingual User Training and Web Site Design Firm
This one is bittersweet to remember, because this one actually did come to fruition. At first we did very well and the business concept seemed promising. The business had a location where I was training people to use different computer software packages and I even conducted training in Spanish. I had some solid web site clients and built some great relationships over the four years I had the company. But alas, the business ran its course; it was difficult to continue pushing for sales, and eventually I opted for full time employment. I consider it one of the high points in my life because I was able to fulfill the dream of having my own business, but it was a lot more difficult than I thought, and in the end, as revenues started to decline, it became too challenging to remain competitive.

It is difficult for all of us to see our imperfections, but I embrace the fact that we are all full of flaws. Although these are just some of the ideas that have noodled inside my head, I can attest that I have had plenty more. Some are fleeting instances of a flickering light bulb; others are deeper thoughts of “what if.” What I have learned about myself is that I never stop thinking about what I can do next, what I have to change is how I plan to make those things happen.

~A