At eBay Live last weekend, one of the guest speakers addressed the room full of powersellers and small business owners and asked "Why did you go into business for yourself?"

He forwarded to the next slide on the PP presentation and it said only one word. Freedom.

"Freedom," he said. "That is the number one reason people decide to go into business for themselves. And you got freedom didn’t you? . . . The freedom to work any 80 hours a week you want."

I am a bit of a work-a-holic. Every night this week I have said I am going to take time off and play a computer game. Even tonight I said I am going to do it and I still did another few hours of work. And even now I am writing a blog entry which is a bizarre form of social work. I don’t know when I got this way, but I know that I am spend a lot of time worrying about my job, my business, my dreams and my life and how the all are meant to coexist. I work like somehow it will make them snap together.

I find it hard to step away from the work and take time for myself, particularly since my husband is pretty non-committal about leisure time. If my mother calls me up and says "Work can wait, come swimming with me" I’ll do it as long as its possible because there is a perfectly good suggestion given to me in a forceful way. When my husband non-committally shrugs that we could play a game, or not, I cannot justify stopping working for doing nothing.

Don’t get me wrong, I love nothing. In small doses.

I cannot just "watch TV." I don’t understand the fun in it. I don’t mind to sit down to watch a movie, a DVD of an old TV show or a specific show that we watch every week or an award show but I cannot just flip channels all night like the rest of my family can. I can, however, waste an astonishing amount of time on the Internet.  Some of it is kind of useful and work related, but some is just stupid.

I am much happier when I am busy, but there comes a point where I get too busy and I am on the verge of a breakdown. My life goes in waves of this. I have yet to find that happy balance but I made some choices this past week that, while terrifying, should hopefully help with that. The analogy I like to use all the time is that I like life to be like running on a treadmill. It should be just the right speed so that you are getting a bit of a sweat but not killing yourself. 80% of the time, everything is like that and its fine. It’s that other 20% when I feel like someone has cranked the treadmill all the way up and I am just running and running and never getting caught up that messes me up.

I think the last two paragraphs together sum together my problem. I have too much "time bleed." It’s when Perez  Hilton mentions some celebrity who reminds me of some movie that I then research info about only to find that the director is dead and then I spend time reading all the news I can about how he/she died only to find that the way that person died reminds me of a book and what was the title of that? and then before I know it an hour has passed. I consider that time that is bleeding out of my day and I do not know how to stop the hemorrhaging. The problem is that I don’t even notice I am doing it until too late.

Today, for example, I was working while on the phone with my mom and getting a lot done. Her computer was down and she asked me to look something up for her quickly on mine. I did and then something lead to something else and I wasted a good 15 minutes before I caught myself. And that was with me right in my working stride! Sometimes I will waste 3 hours doing god knows what before I manage to pull myself back in.

I think also that this is why I will stay up late and work like a maniac sometimes. Its like, when I do have the momentum and I am not wasting time, I want to take as much advantage of it as I can.

Tomorrow, I will be making the 4 hour drive from good old New Jersey to Boston for eBay Live! This is the first year that I have been able to make it to eBay Live and I am very excited.

Apparently, as a PowerSeller, we get our very own private lounge! Fancy!

I feel a bit self-concious that I do not own an eBay shirt. I hope they will have them for sale there so I can wear one like the eBay dweeb I am! Or perhaps wearing an eBay shirt to eBay Live is like being “that guy” who wears the shirt of the band to the concert. Hmm. I’ll have to consult Ms. Manners.

I am excited about the timing of eBay Live this year because its early enough in the summer that I can add any new announcements or features into the upcoming The Trading Assistant’s Assistant: The contracts, invoices, tips and advice you need to start a part-time or full-time consignment drop off business on EBay and eBay Shipping Secrets (not up for pre-order yet). Priced Nostalgia Press originally wanted to release TAA (what I call The Trading Assistant’s Assistant when I am lazy) in the spring so it’s fortunate they decided to delay it because now I can make sure there is only the MOST up-to-date info in it.

I am also very pleased to finally get to meet some of those nutty (in a good way) eBay people I have had the pleasure of meeting and doing business with over the years.

On a random note, this is actually the second time I will have seen Kool and the Gang  (the band playing at the closing Gala) in concert in just about a year. You’ve heard of them, you just don’t realize you have. See how many of their songs on The Very Best of Kool & the Gang you recognize).

Oddly enough, they were the band at my campus’s alumni formal last spring as well!

I get a lot of questions about when additional books in the MLP Collector’s Series are coming out, so I am quite pleased to be able to tell you that one of them is out already.

This time around, the author isn’t me, but Summer Hayes. It’s available on Amazon (at the time of my posting, they have it for $11.22 off the cover price!).

The My Little Pony G3 Collector’s Inventory: an unofficial full color illustrated guide to the third generation of MLP including all ponies, playsets and accessories from 2003 to the present

Summer will also be penning the next two books in the series, I can tell you that much, and I am happy to hand the reins over to her able hands. As for when the release dates on those are, stay tuned and I will pass them on when I hear about them (from one MLP nut to another!)

I got to see an advanced copy of Summer’s book and it was fantastic! I was especially excited about it because I made the very difficult choice earlier this year to sell off all my G3 ponies. Very sad, I know! But I realized that I just did not realistically have room for all of them and since it was the G1 that are my favorites, something just had to go.

I was bummed about it for a while, but as soon as I got my hands on Summer’s book, I was so happy because now I can just look at all the pictures of the ponies and remember them without them taking up all that room. Sure, the real thing is better, but I think it might be the next best thing!

Until next time, happy ponying!