The First Half of Things

Hard to believe half the year is gone already, but there is goes. Six months ago I was planning a trip to Iceland and thinking that would be the highlight of my year (not to say it wasn't). But things move on, of course, particularly in my life.

And this year has brought changes, in only the first half of it. I'm now self-employed, starting up yet another blog, am much more focused on doing the things I enjoy in life, am querying a novel, am planning more travel (camping! I've never camped!), have taken up golf (again), spend more time enjoying life and less time fretting about it, have officially reached what I would call 'being fit', and have made a few decisions about the future that I am A-OK with.

I'm sure many others have accomplished more in six months. But though I planned for this year to be about 'CAREER', I decided fairly early on it actually needed to be about 'ME'. Last year was supposed to be about me. About learning about who I am now, about figuring out what I want from life, about adjusting to being post-PhD. But I wasn't able to start doing any of that until the end of the year, so instead of rushing through it (which one should never rush through discovering oneself), I decided to spend 2016 doing it instead. And I'm glad I made that choice. It's already taken longer than I would have thought, but at the same time, I'm already discovering more than I thought. I didn't think I was that different now, but I've realised I most certainly am. And I'm still changing. And that's okay.

The next six months are going to be ever more career oriented, but I feel like I am in a much better place to start those things. I feel like I know who I am now and what I want, and therefore I can  now figure out where to go to get it. And how to get there.

It's hard to take the time to figure your life out. We're told that's what high school or undergrad are for. But the truth of the matter is that no one I know actually figured their life out until after undergrad, and some people are still figuring their lives out. And that's okay. There's no magic age by which you need to have done this. Some people spend their lives changing and evolving constantly, and end up figuring their life out again and again. We change, as humans. We evolve. And that's how it should be. We are never quite the same as we were 10 years ago. Or even a year ago. But that is what makes being human so amazing, and why life is so exciting.

I'm not the same as I was a year ago (thankfully) and hopefully in another year I will be different too. Until then, I'm trying to do the best I can at figuring myself and things out as I go along.