It's Personal: Goodbye Outsource, Hello Resource

I know what I am good at, and I know what I am not good at. For example, when I found out I was pregnant (in 2010, I'm not breaking any news here today, sorry mom) I knew that I would not be good at providing a calm, sane haven for a newborn while trying to learn the ropes of caring for a helpless human being, sooooo…we booked a baby nurse. Like, 10 minutes after I peed on the stick. Then kept said baby nurse way longer than planned- and ended up having to push back my return to work by one week just to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do to keep our small, screechy new roommate alive and well, three months in to motherhood. I took the easy way out and it bit me in the butt.

However, I was able to quiet the self-doubt about my reliance on an "expert" so that this personality trait of mine would bother me only mildly (We can’t all do everything, right?!) until recently, when it started to bother me significantly. I realized I was hiding behind this "given" mentality to stay in my comfort zone and, in all honestly, give myself a license to be a little but lazy.  I would tell myself that my time was worth x number of dollars an hour, and if something cost less than that to outsource, well, wasn’t the smart fiscal choice to do so? Confession: The monetary value of my time was decided in my own head so as to justify the cost of whatever it was I wanted to hire someone else to do.  So the whole thing was kind of a cowardly charade anyway, no?

So here it goes- the year where I say goodbye to outsourcing, and hello to online Photoshop tutorials, appliance service manuals, video editing webinars, trips with my 3 year old to places where I wouldn’t know how to find a babysitter even if I really needed one, and rainy day activities inspired by Pinterest crafts instead of Netflix queues.

Wish me luck.

And even though self-sufficiency is theoretically reward enough, I also may  treat myself to one of the below current obsessions to celebrate a task well-completed.  Which would you splurge on first?