5

Time for a quick review of my 6 Changes undertaking for 2010:

1. Jan/Feb: Focus daily on creative writing (hurray, still doing it!)
2. Mar/Apr: Establish and maintain a budget (also refinanced debt)
3. May/Jun: Exercise daily (didn't happen)
4. Jul/Aug: Learn to weave (hurray, that was fun!)
5. Sep/Aug: Research and make plans for further employment
6. Nov/Dec: Plan and prepare healthy meals

Today is the first day of the fifth challenge. This one terrifies me most of all, but I'm ready to address it, remembering how much the financial challenge scared me at the beginning of March, and how much good came out of those two months. I learned to trust (just a little bit more) my ability to solve problems.

Oddly, this morning I discover the wording for this challenge has morphed slightly as I've mulled it over the past few weeks. The list above shows my original wording, but I remembered it as, "Research and choose a career path." That's significant, because it indicates what I'm afraid of.

Researching isn’t so bad. The hard part is making a choice, because for years I have waffled on the idea of what I’m going to do with the rest of my life. As long as I waffle, I evade taking decisive action, setting anything in motion, committing myself. Once you commit yourself to anything, you cut out certain possibilities, which is not to say you can't change course further down the road, it just makes certain choices harder. I have only one life to live, and it can't be everything.

In the weeks ahead, I need to make decisions about what I want versus what is practical, what costs I'm willing or able to pay in the short term, and what kind of faith I have in my ability to change my life. My career has been in limbo for 15 years. Now is the time to develop a vision. The alternative is to accept living in poverty the rest of my life.