A New Year, A New Beginning ...

So now it's the New Year. Holidays are over, people are back to work, the tree has been taken down ... this is always a depressing time of year for me. There always needs to be something to look forward to, and right now I'm not sure what it is.

I left my job of 7+ years last December, and started a new job last January. After three months, we parted ways (pretty amicably) because it just wasn't the right fit - it wasn't really a full-time position for me, and while I loved the agency I was working for (an AIDS advocacy group), the job itself wasn't enough to keep my interest, and they knew it. That was the first time I've ever been let go from a position. My ego is still bruised, to be honest.

I've mentioned before that my Dad passed away in October of 2005. A chunk of my inheritance came through before the end of last year ... and I can't begin to describe the freedom that gave me. After many, many years of struggling just to keep my head above water, I was solvent. All of our debt was paid off, I bought a new computer and a new car, we travelled a little ... it was a completely different reality. I decided that taking some time off from working was the perfect thing to do, and probably the only time in my life that it would be possible. So I talked to some friends about changing careers, started thinking of possibilities, and enjoyed the fact that I didn't HAVE to scamper for a job. I took a long, long vacation.

But it never really seemed like such a great vacation. I was bored - everyone I knew was still working full-time, and there's only so much time and so many things that can be spent/done by yourself before you realize that everything is hollow when it's all done in solitude. Of course I had Scott, but he's always worked at least 50 hours a week, so we still only saw each other one or two full days a week. I was hoping that this time off would give me more insight into myself, more self-reflection and self-evolving and that BAM! something would suddenly throw itself in front of me and I'd know exactly what my life was going to be about. I was expecting too much.

It hasn't happened that way. I still don't have the opportunity to go back to school. No career epiphanies have come along. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. (Well, I STILL want to be a musician, but that's a long story and won't be my life path in this lifetime ... )

So now, it's a New Year. New opportunities. New goals. New things that need to happen in my life. I'm looking again at accounting jobs, which I was sure I wouldn't go back to - but, it's what I can do, and pretty well, too. I got a call back from a recruiting firm this afternoon, so we'll see where that will go. They're excited about my resume and my experience ... and I should be ecstatic. Maybe I will be. Maybe I expect too much, maybe too much to just be handed to me, maybe I'm just not enough of a "go-getter" and that's why my music career stalled way back when. I want to be excited about what I'm getting up to go do each morning, to be happy and fulfilled and bring THAT home with me, not just stress and exhaustion and dealing with day after day after day.

So, even though this sounds like a whining, complaining, not-exactly-what-one-is-supposed-to-post-in-the-New-Year entry ... I need to believe that something good is about to happen. That a new page is about to be written in my life, and that I am strong enough to make it a good story. I do want to feel good about what I'm doing in my life, and soon.