By Betty Van Volkenburg
Publisher

"A very dear friend, whom I haven’t seen for a couple of weeks, dropped by my home office to visit recently. She wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew with my new businesses and whether I was taking time out to "find someone." Being happily involved in a new relationship, she’d like all her single friends to find similar happiness.

When it comes to handling the challenge of finding happiness as a single, I’m reminded of a quote from a quality trainer friend, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." To me, being single doesn’t mean you put your life on hold while you try to find someone to help you solve all your problems and fill all the voids in your life. It means you have an opportunity to focus on your own dreams and find out what you can do to make yourself happy instead of waiting for someone else to entertain you, to give you security or control of your life.

This is not a challenge to be solved in a day, or even as a weekend project. Self-discovery and appreciation is a lifelong, continuous process for bringing happiness whether we are in a relationship or not. This may sound like a simple truth that everyone should know. However, it took me years of bad experiences, self-help and professional counseling, before I could modify my childhood training of focusing on the other person instead of myself. Selfish behavior was discouraged and denounced at home, in church and in school. Self-effacement became a habit that was very hard to change. Recognition of the need to change was the first step to making changes. I’ve learned that to facilitate change, it’s better to establish new healthy habits so there’s no room for old habits, instead of concentrating on giving up the old habits. Besides, sometimes there may be some good aspects of the old behavior that you’d like to retain in a more reasonable way. For instance, I like being domestic and pampering the man in my life. Instead of committing to being his domestic slave, I can be content with cooking an occasional meal for him, and allowing him to do the same for me.

Part of my self-discovery process was to use my creative talents for myself in developing my own business at home after many years of secure employment in a major corporation. After only two months of working at home I found I had more difficulty limiting my hours of work than finding ways to fill the hours, and the working environment was unparalleled. "

In preparing for today’s column, I remember thinking back then "How sweet it is! to be absorbing the warm sunshine in my front yard while working on my next column" and now I think "How sweet it is!" to be inside my cozy warm house as the snow and slush buries the last of the fallen leaves, and my neighbors are slipping and sliding their way to work on messy streets.

Some things have changed though. My research is done via the Internet instead of at the Library, meetings are held via phone conferences, my "Staff" is a group of freelance writers that I haven’t even met in person. And that’s just my part time home based business activity. My occasional daytime jobs are actually contracts to do the same work I did at a large corporation, for twice what they paid me, using the skills they trained me to acquire and then didn’t want to use. On the other hand, the contract work is always in another state, interferes with my being able to have long term relationships, and has kept me from developing The Singles Center as quickly as I would like. So, I recently made a decision to stay home, for good, to work on developing my various home based businesses into profitable ventures, and to help found a new Singles Ministry at my church.

As to my friend, who had been in a happy relationship – she too is totally single again without a relationship, and still looking for that perfect one who will make her happy.

For me – you can keep your air conditioned offices, ringing phones, office chatter and paper crunching office equipment. I’ll take the freedom of my own "flex time", the happiness I get from achieving the tasks I have set on my way to higher goals in my various business ventures, and the love from new friends I am making in our Singles Ministry.

Until next time...

'with gladness and singleness of heart'

Betty Van Volkenburg