I’m a native Californian girl - living in her dream house, with her dream husband and with 3 (four if you count our feral cat Will) loved and pampered cats. We live in the San Francisco Bay Area – a place buzzing with smart driven people, good friends and family, diversity, lots of great food, art and culture, nature, technology, liberal thinking, mountain biking and hiking, and the smell of the ocean in the air.
I wouldn't be sharing any of this with you were it not for a dream I had in 2011. The dream's message was this:
Is living an ideal life something you invest in as a volunteer?
An unpaid position without say?
OR
An unpaid position without say?
OR
Is an ideal life something you invest in as an owner?
A paid position with full decision making authority and say?
While I've done a pretty good job of investing in parts of my life as an owner (a career as an executive and career development coach; my relationship, my home and my health) that dream made me "wake-up" to the parts that I've been volunteering in up until now. Parts like developing my creative muscle, better balance, and living my values of freedom, exploration and play.
That dream, and a love for managing money that I've had since I was a kid, gave birth to this blog: Invested Living - because I think that investing in your ideal life as an owner is A LOT like investing your money and managing your finances. It's about analyzing, planning, allocating and budgeting where you invest your time, energy and yes, your money too. It's about creating and managing a balanced “life investment portfolio” that takes into account who you are: what you value; what you believe; your tolerance for risk; and your vision of what you want your life to be. It's about revisiting that portfolio on a regular basis, and re-balancing, reallocating - and in some cases - creating a new vision when it's time to expand and grow.
What’s in your portfolio?
I don’t know what’s going on for you, but I do know it’s time for me to plunge in and take "investing in an ideal life" to a whole new fresh and fulfilling level. To take full ownership – especially of those neglected areas of life I’ve been volunteering in up until now. It’s time to revisit my life's portfolio and do some new visioning, planning, balancing and investing. Whether that’s about creating a new vegan /seafood lifestyle, rethinking what makes for a happy union with my husband, remodeling our home, remodeling my life, redefining health and fitness in a middle-aging body, or gaining new skills for the sake of pure fun – like investing time, money, and energy into the art of photography. It’s time. Time to create for the sake of creating. To write. Not just proposals, 360 assessments and development reports – but to write and journal about what I feel, what I see, what I think and what I observe. To write about how things are connected.
It’s time to get out of the office and into coffee shops.
To daydream, reflect, and people watch - and when compelled - to blog about what I see and feel - in photos and words with you.
This blog is my evolutionary playground.
Thanks for jumping in.
Happy Investing!
Happy Investing!