If I do any less here at The Shopper, you won't be reading this column. This is my one regular assignment, along with advising a handful of clients who are also close friends. Yet I still manage to spin my wheels.

Thanks to White and Associates, our CPAs, I have learned to work on my business 90% of the time and in my business just 10% of the time. So I work on a different level, but I skip from one focus to another. I need to remember what the word focus really means.

Having moved recently and coped with 28 years of accumulated 'stuff,' I wonder, who bought all that? Who made that mess? Me? What was I thinking? Is there something else I can be doing?

When was the last time I sat down with extended family for a meal when it was not someone's birthday or a holiday? Even more important is whether or not I really know what is going on with each of my kids and grandkids.

You probably ask yourself similar questions from time to time about what you are doing with your own time. Do you also question where the hours-become-years go? And how do we slow down the fleeting moments that spend our very lives?

What is the right balance between home and family and work and charity and just plain having fun? The answer probably does, and even should, vary from person to person. Asking it is just the beginning.

Finding the answer to what's important may
be the only test question we really need to pass in life.

Finding the answer to what's important may be the only test question we really need to pass in life. What is your score? What is mine? Finally, how long do we have to find out?

Ahhh, something else to do-

Jean Loxley-Barnard has been a writer all her life and studied both sociology and psychology at George Washington University where she earned a B.A. Her company, The Shopper, Inc., encompasses all the Loxley-Barnard family publications - The Shopper Magazines and Doctor to Doctor Magazine. She has been in the advertising, consulting and publishing business for 39 years.