By Patty Jane Maher,

I was building empires in my mind at 7:05 a.m. this morning.

The good news is – I was speaking to my 12-step sponsor on the phone and she called me on it. I will crash and burn without the practical every-day support of people who are wiser than I am. I’m just such a handful. I WANT so much. Wanting would kill me if I didn’t have practical smart people in my life to save me from it.

To meet any goal in my life today, big or small, I need to stick to the basics and stay grounded in reality. For me, a recovering food addict, that means meticulously weighing and measuring my food according to a plan that’s been designed for me from a nutritionist. It means making phone calls to other people who share my problem. And it means reading and writing about my recovery every day. And it means avoiding fantasies. Reality is where it’s at for me today. I have slipped in these practices a bit in the past month and I really need to tighten up with them.

At 7:05 a.m. this morning I was talking to my sponsor on the phone and telling her about my hopes for achieving my financial goals this year and how I think I am writing a really interesting book and how I have received great feedback from people – including my wonderful friend from Virginia who is a medical doctor who thinks I am brilliant AND interesting! He and his wife and three children are following my stories – reading them from their darling home on Serenity Lane (Seriously, these wonderful people actually do LIVE on Serenity Lane; can you imagine that?). I said my doctor friend and his family really must know a good story when they read one because he went to William and Mary AND some other equally wonderful school for medical school (I can’t remember which one) and because he said he can imagine me being interviewed on NPR and this series is SO GREAT and it’s all about THE NEW ECONOMY and he can even IMAGINE ME being interviewed on television by somebody named John Stewart (?). I think he said John Stewart. I don’t watch TV. Somebody Stewart -- John or Joe or something like that.  It wasn’t Stuart Smalley. I would have remembered that.

Wisdom saves the day  My sponsor is a sage. She is a cancer survivor. She’s been in 12-step recovery for food addiction for 18 years. She has had back-to-back abstinence from compulsive overeating one-day-at-a-time for five and a half years. She knows a train wreck about to happen when she hears one. She has saved my butt a bunch of times. (Incidentally, for those of you who have been following this story for the past few weeks – this is my old sponsor. I got her back. She’s just too useful to me. I made a few other adjustments in my life to accommodate the early-morning time when she is available. I rely on her daily wisdom.)

My sponsor listened to me talk about all of my goals for selling stuff and my book-in-progress and how much people love me (it’s amazing how fast I can talk and how much information I can cram into about five minutes on the phone). She said with a level and somber tone:

“That’s all good. I’m glad you’re excited about your future and it’s wonderful you’re getting back on track. You deserve to be doing something that uses your skills and will pay you enough to live on. But you didn’t write about the question you were supposed to write on for today. You were supposed to write about obsession. You were supposed to write about how obsessing about anything will lead back to the food.”

My sponsor isn’t a bully. She didn’t put the questions in the order they are in. It’s her job to point out inconsistencies to me. She is aware of my food plan and I tell her what I am going to eat every day. If I accidentally tell her I am going to have eight ounces of oatmeal, she knows I am supposed to half a cup of dry oatmeal. She points it out to me. It’s incredibly useful to me.

The minute she said that, I knew I had been obsessing about the outcome of this project. It’s OK to work hard. It’s OK to want to win. It’s OK to do what I can to put myself in the best position to win. But I can’t live in fantasy land. I can’t live in what might be. I need to stay in the here and now and leave the outcome up to God.  And for today it’s really important for me to keep my life simple and manageable and focused on health and finances. Health and Finances are the goal. If a book or something comes out of it, that’s icing on the cake.

Getting to the bottom line I met with Mark Sistek, my new boss for Aflac yesterday. He was great. I set some clear goals with him. They are really big goals but I think they are attainable. The first goal is to pass my online training tests by our sales meeting Monday morning. I had wanted to be certified this week so that we could start selling on Monday but I had computer issues that thwarted my progress. Mark loaned me a laptop so that won’t be a problem anymore. I want to be certified by Wednesday. And I have a goal of getting my “Super Fast Start” for the first quarter by April 2. This means I have to write 22 insurance policies worth $500 between Thursday of next week and April 2. We were just going to go for the “Fast Start.” That would mean I would write 11 policies by April 2. But I told Mark I would really like to try for the “Super Fast Start.”

This insurance is really good stuff and Mark knows all about it. He’s teaching me. We will be calling on businesses together. If you have a business in Michigan or Northern Ohio or if you know of someone who does, please contact me! I would love so much for your business to be part of my Super Fast Start.

I will list every business who signs on with me in my blog with contact information and a brief description. If you have a friend who is a mayor or a public official who has lots of business contacts, please let me know. I would really appreciate your help getting my “Super Fast Start.” I think it means a cruise for me in November. And as I said a few days ago, if I meet this goal of earning $57 K selling stuff in Michigan during the recession, I promise to host a delightful tour in February 2011 of the Ann Arbor Fairy Doors. So, please send me a personal message or e-mail me at maherpjm2004@yahoo.com if you have a business lead.

This goal is attainable though steep. Michigan was Aflac’s top state for sales in 2009. Maybe people who are the most in danger of foreclosure and bankruptcy feel the need for adequate health insurance more than other people do. That’s my guess. I understand it. I went through a bankruptcy in January 2009 because I had steep medical bills when I wasn’t adequately insured. Most of Aflacs policies are supplemental but people can also purchase it as their main insurance. Aflac has great long-term disability policies and cancer policies. Mark and I will come and speak to any business or group about Aflac. We will make visits to families and individuals also. Mark is a walking example about why Aflac’s policies are a great idea. He’s recovering from injuries he sustained in a recent car accident and Aflac is paying for his physical therapy. His wife was diagnosed with breast cancer last fall and she going through chemo therapy now.  They had an Aflac cancer policy. Aflac paid them $90,000 when his wife got cancer. It’s up to them to use that money for their bills as they see fit. Aflac pays the people who have the policies – not the health care providers. I really like that. It’s customer friendly.

Good News – Engagement on St. Patrick’s Day I want to announce a good news tidbit from St. Patrick’s Day. Congratulations to Kelley Popielarz and James Keller who became engaged at 5:10 p.m. Wednesday, March 17 in the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research Survey Services Lab where I work part time. Kelley, 31, a team leader for the Survey of Consumers was just about to stand up to go to a meeting when she noticed her boyfriend James Keller, 26, at her desk. She looked at him and said: “What are you doing here?” He got on his knees and asked her to be his wife. Kelley cried. The ring is darling – a silver band with an antique setting of diamonds. Kelley was glowing all evening. There was an alcohol-free champagne toast in the lab.

Become a Facebook Fan and make my day  When I checked this morning I had 83 Facebook Fans of this series. I think that’s a pretty good start. My goal is to have 150 Facebook Fans by 5 p.m. Friday. So please consider becoming a fan and if you do want to be a fan yourself, consider “sharing” the fan club with your Friends. This is really easy to do. You just click on the “share” button at the bottom right when you are in the fan group and it will post it to your Live News Feed. You can write a comment with it such as: “Check out this cool Fan Page! I just became a fan and you can, too.”

Yes – this is where I start to feel a bit like Salvadore Dali with his limousine of cauliflower, shamelessly self promoting my endeavors. Hey, it’s what a girl has to do to stay alive in this day in age. Seriously, I have found this to be true. The good news is – I wouldn’t promote something I didn’t believe in. And just for today, I believe in myself and I believe selling Aflac is a good idea and can help many people including myself.

So, to get the Facebook Fan Page, go to:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/pages/Poor-Journalist-Gets-To-Business/364775722055

For an Index of other “Poor Journalist Gets To Business stories,” go to:

http://open.salon.com/blog/pattyjane/2010/03/17/index_poor_journalist_gets_to_business