While the family time away had the most impact, there are a couple of other things that I’ve been doing that have helped as well. Nearing the end of 2010, I decided that I wanted to make a few changes in my life, or tick off a few of the things that I keep saying I want to do and yet haven’t done. The first was to apply to put in two pieces of art into an art competition – I didn’t really care whether I would win or not, it is more that I have wanted to do something of this kind for a while. The other big decision I made was to enroll back into Uni. Which I have done – into a graduate course in applied statistics. I have wanted to move out of the IT field for a while. My interest in it becomes less and less as the years move on, so this is one step towards moving out of the field. I’m pretty excited.

I also have a number of other plans for the year which I hope will work out, but I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

I have a rough idea of what I want to do this year, but I’m waiting on some responses and hoping it will all work out but there are no real guarantees, so I’m still waiting. Waiting, I’ve found, requires a lot of patience. Waiting, I’ve found, gives me an opportunity to start to doubt. Doubting usually leads me to thinking things will never work out, so patience for me is hard, I have to wait in hope rather than doubt else what I have been waiting for will never come to be…

I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

Not only do we need to tread carefully when someone is sharing their deep desires – the true desires of the heart, but I believe we also must take part in nurturing those desires as well. Affirming that those desires are worthwhile. The progression of fulfilment of desires is a journey that I believe we should be travelling with our close friends. Over time, ensuring that your friend is still aware that you remember this desire, and that this desire is important to them, through gentle enquires and, to put heavy emotional words to it, grieving at the failures, and joyously celebrating at the successes with them! It is through such support that we can all journey towards the goals we have in mind…

I think that most of what is going through my head sort of interrelates. I’m reading some pretty heavy books at the moment which I feel are important to get through, and work through in my head/life, so that I am facing the next steps in my life with my priorities and reasons figured out. I’m still tossing up going back to university to study another degree and change my vocational direction, but there are a large number of positives and negatives with this option – including large risk.

Added to that, I’m not 100% sure whether I want to change careers for the right reasons. I’ve definitely got good reasons, but are they good enough? Who will ever know really? I’m still trying to figure these things out, and I know the answer won’t come to me easily after all many of the choices we make in life have to be made ‘in the agony of not knowing’ (Scott Peck). I know this to be true in this case!

1. Zen Habits (Life Skills)
2. The Sartorialist (Fashion & Photography)
3. Ma.tt (WP)

They are in no particular order.

Which leads me to my plan that I set up about a year ago to build up another blog with book reviews on it…and it was going pretty well – until I lost momentum. I’m not really sure what happened now, which means it might be a bit hard to learn from my mistakes. Maybe it was just a gave up too easily, and I should have kept going, building momentum as I go rather than losing it. Maybe it was a matter of thinking it didn’t really matter – the only person the outcome really affects is myself after all – maybe that was my illusion (or delusion?). Either way, I gave it a go and got so far, and then stopped without really putting the hard efforts in – the set up is the easiest part of a blog after all. Reading and writing the reviews continuously would have been work – and that is truly the, most probable, reason I stopped. I should plaster that reason all over my laptop – and hopefully then I might be able to get past it. Learn from it, and push through that wall next time, and there will be a next time. It will happen every day or every month in different ways – and I can’t  give up.

It’s one of those things that while at school and possibly uni that you can take for granted – long holidays where you have time to go to the beach everyday, meet up with friends and chill out – and generally have fun to that degree – and when you start full-time work your 2-3 months worth of holidays each year is reduced to a measly 1 month! Which I find it’s really easy to use in little dribs and drabs in order to make the most of  long weekends and short – 1 week – trips away here and there.  But do you ever truly relax like you used to in those early years? I think not – I recommend the disconnect (electronic & work-wise) for a full month to really reconnect with you family and friends – and perhaps one of the most useful reasons – to reconsider why you are where you are. So many people get sucked into the vortex called work that they forget how to put work into a life perspective. Taking a full month (fully disconnected) from work means that you get pulled away from the vortex, and can re-evaluate your life, and your goals.

For me the last month on leave has been a fantastic time – I spent 10 days with family over Christmas, just chilling out and enjoying sharing time and company – reconnecting a lives for those 10 days at least – and it has made me reconsider why I moved away and whether I still want to be away. I haven’t come to a decision but I certainly didn’t feel or think this way before I took the break. In addition, as my last post states, I hadn’t considered fully going back to university, sort of but not really. I feel more certain now about going back to university in 2011. I had considered doing a Masters this year but the Masters I was looking at was not as in depth or detailed as I wanted to go, so I have considered and 99% decided that I will go back next year to do another Bachelor degree (God willing). This was definitely not something I was considering in any detail 4 weeks ago, but here I am, one step closer to changing careers.

1a) Financial Responsibility – I’m still learning it, there is no way that a year attempting to save money got me into habits for the rest of my life, but I have saved money, and while it’s a small start

1b) Health-wise Responsibility – This was one of the areas that didn’t see much progression. While I did buy an exercise bike, I have not gotten into a rhythm of riding it. I haven’t improved my eating habits, in fact I think I’ve regressed. But I have no problems going to the doctor, dentist and optometrist to get some assistance. I even got contacts at the beginning of the year – I now realise that contacts are more fiddly than they are worth (e.g. a lens popping out of your eye while you’re sitting down is not going to increase your confidence in them).

2) Energy/Positivity – I feel like I’ve been pretty positive this year, for the most part, maybe a little, sometimes. LOL. Maybe not the greatest of endorsements for success in this area, but I guess learning to laugh at life’s little foibles is just as good as feeling buoyant, and maybe a better long term skill.

3) Relaxing – This is pretty important to me, I find I need to take the time to relax for a part of the day in order to appropriately regroup before coming back  the next day – especially when I’m locked into something – that might be work (Mon-Fri) or locked into organising music for a Sunday morning at Church.

4) Gardening – I have no idea if I would want to pursue this as a career. But, I have had heaps of fun setting up a garden and growing different herbs and vegies. I’m currently growing pumpkins, spring onions, tomatoes, chilli, basil, parsley (curly & flat leaf), lavender, mint, oregano, and rosemary. I also keep a compost – and am attempting to get the grass to grow during our lovely drought conditions. It’s fun, uses some energy, and gets me outside in the warmth and sun! So I’m loving it (and I’m really loving the rain we’ve been having lately – it has been awesome!),

5) Art – I had decided to discard this item from my list earlier in the year, but recently I have gotten out the paints and have done one and a half paintings (the Face painting I mentioned in a previous post, is getting there but not yet complete). So its not yet dead – it probably helped going to an art gallery or two, they tend to inspire me to paint better than anything else.

6) Reading Non-Fiction – LOL – To be honest I have been fairly successfully in this endeavour to read a number of non-fiction books. I have started reading 5 or 6 books, the problem is that I haven’t finished any of them! But I plan to during my holidays so it should be alright still.

7) Go away/Explore Victoria – I should have, I haven’t, but I still hope to. It’s not a lost endeavour, I am taking a nice chunk of leave soon and most will be spent at home, so I should have plenty of time to go away for a couple of nights here and there.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post some photos of all of the above soon.