Happy New Year

New Year is the time for new goals, New Year's resolutions and all that kind of stuff. I usually don't take those things too seriously. Why come up with new goals at New Years? As a student and then as someone working in a college environment, it always seemed to make more sense for me to come up with my "New Year's resolutions" and my new goals at the beginning of an academic year.

This year, for some reason, I've spent a lot of time thinking about my goals and what I want to accomplish this year just around New Year's Eve. I've been thinking about these things - my job, my career, what I want my future to be like - for a while now. But before the new year, I felt like I could push those questions aside - wait until later to really think about them and come up with an answer. But now, on the "other side" I'm starting to feel the pressure to figure out what to do.

I've spent the last two days coming up with this "perfect" plan - it would basically outline the next four or five years of my life. But there are so many "if's" that as much as I love having a plan, it also scares me. What if one of those "if's" doesn't work out - then the whole beautiful plan comes crashing down.

One of the biggest challenges for me is always figuring out how to balance what's best for my career with what's most convenient/fun/comforting for my personal life (e.g. how many people do I know in the area I'd be moving to? how much would I enjoy living there?).

My head is starting to hurt from thinking about all these things...