I have a clear choice. Make school lunches or write on here. If I write on here, then I don't have to make lunches. When I finish writing on here, I will still have to make lunches. It is a pattern of mine that I need to address. Avoiding the things I have to do because I don't want to do them, even though I will still have to do them.

I feel much the same about going to the loo. I know I need to but I can't be bothered. It is after all, spectacularly boring. So I hold on, as long as possible. Fortunately I am still of an age where I can. In twenty years time, the consequences of my avoidance do not bear consideration.

I am not going to the gym tomorrow morning. A healthy gap is in order - so I will go in the evening. I am noticing a difference. My arms have more shape, I am toning up. My shoulders are starting to look as if I hang from bars and lift my knees to my chest. It is all very exciting.

However if I keep this up on a daily basis, in 6 months time I shall have to start wearing small yellow bikinis and coating myself in baby oil. Not an attractive thought.

I flexed my new baby muscles in the bathroom this evening to impress upon the young, the new and finely defined body of their Mother. They were impressed. They starting flexing to and before I knew it we looked like a family of embryonic muscle builders. the teenager declined, he is still aching from yesterday. He also thought we were all insane. Sometimes it is very odd being the only female in the house of trouser.

So it was coming out of the gym this morning that I realised with absolute clarity that unless I want to stay in the position of finance by fire, no holidays and totting up tax credits in the hope of affording the gas bill - then I was the only person that is going to do something about it. To do something about it means doing something.

I can carry on with hand to mouth type wages but frankly, there would appear little joy on the horizon for the boys lifestyle. So I need to work on a cash making idea. I have several. Problems are two fold. Firstly I have no money to start anything up. Secondly I spend my whole time avoiding things.

This is not because I think I cannot do it, I think I can. I can do ideas, I can do marketing. I have a keen eye for what sells and where it should be placed. I am not good at things I don't know. I am not good at business.

The thought of speaking to people about complicated things as distribution and drop ship fills me with fear. I have a pathological aversion to dealing with anything I do not understand inside out. I have to understand everything to feel in control and when I don't, I generally avoid it at all costs. I looked at a purchasing course for buyers earlier this year. You had to be a buyer to do it. I would have to do the course before I was a buyer. It seems the whole world works in a different way to me. Nothing new there then.

I did make a couple of calls today. Apparently the idea I have would costs hundreds of pound to produce, despite the fact you can buy it in the states for 29 dollars. Now I may not know much about manufacturing, but clearly something is amiss. One of the areas I am not weak in is proving something wrong. There are lateral and literal thinkers, I am definitely lateral. If there is a way around it - I will find it.

Fear is quite paralysing. It stops you achieving what you might achieve because you may not achieve it. The only thing it guarantees is that you will never achieve it. I have dealt with quite a few things this year that I once thought myself incapable of. I am learning that dealing with things is really far better than not dealing with things.

It is quite a slow journey but it is definitely a journey.

There is no self fulfilling desire in this. I do not need a business that is a funded hobby. I need to make money. Ironic that money represents control to me. People have it, they control you with it. So to be in control, I need to have my own. There will reach a point in the future that for the first time in my life, I can take my children into a clothes shop and pay full price, I will be able to book a holiday for us all that involves getting on a plane to somewhere hot. I will for the first time be able to take the children into a cafe and let them order what they want. Money will not be about controlling someone else, it will be about providing a life.

I am now going to make sandwiches and tomorrow night I shall go to the gym.

Small steps, big changes.