Over the past year, I have spent a fair amount of time try­ing to decide on what to do next. I think I am finally star­ing to for­mu­late some­thing of a plan.

I have a per­fectly good job and I like what I do so I am not sure why I am so rest­less. This feel­ing of mal­con­tent is actu­ally wor­ry­ing me. In the past year, I have received a pro­mo­tion at work, started a small busi­ness and the land­lord gig is def­i­nitely prof­itable. I have noth­ing to com­plain about.

For a while now, I have hoped I would some­how come to real­ize exactly what to do with my life. I have not come up with any­thing def­i­nite so far. This is extremely frus­trat­ing. I believe I func­tion best when I have a sin­gle, clearly defined goal that I can work towards. I’m not con­tent drift­ing from one inter­est to the next.

Dur­ing all this reflec­tion, I have come up with the fol­low­ing obser­va­tions:
First — I can no longer wait for the answers to just come to me. My goal is to be focused on two or three basic areas of self improve­ment.
Sec­ond — There is no need for me to decide my exact job or career path right now.
Third — There is a strong cor­re­la­tion between my gen­eral level of con­tent­ment, self esteem, etc. and my phys­i­cal fit­ness.
Fourth — I need to sim­plify and focus and limit my inter­ests to my edu­ca­tion, my job and my busi­ness.
Finally, and most impor­tantly — I need to stop pro­cras­ti­nat­ing and con­tinue my education.

So this is step one — I have stated the obvi­ous. Until I have a def­i­nite career goal to work towards, my goal will be self improve­ment and to do my best to advance the web devel­op­ment business.

The plan

The plan is to go back for my mas­ters next fall but con­tinue work­ing the full time job and try­ing to expand my web devel­op­ment busi­ness. The busi­ness is show­ing real promise as a viable career option so I want to feed it more of my time and energy.

On the per­sonal well­be­ing front, I have signed up for a per­sonal trainer to help me get the work­out back on track for the first time in six years. In an effort to sim­plify and focus, I have started a list of all of my ongo­ing projects. I plan to knock out the last of my per­sonal pet projects and hob­bies, and not start any­thing new so I can devote my free time to web devel­op­ment and to con­tin­u­ing my education.