In Five Years...

In five years:

- I will live a balanced, active, fulfilling, meaningful life

- I will be maintaining my goal weight

- I will be employed at a career type job that challenges me and I am passionate about

- Financially I will have:

o Paid off student loans

o Paid off car

o Healthy savings

o Healthy and diversified investment portfolio

o Healthy retirement plan

o House/condo or be saving up for 20% down payment

- I will live in urban area with stuff to do

- I will be involved in things outside of work (including volunteering)

- I will have around 10 close friends that I will visit and communicate with regularly and many acquaintances

- I will be in grad school (or have already finished) in a rewarding field for me personally as well as professionally

- I will have a cat

- I will travel often or as part of my job, possibly already have spent some time abroad

- I will be in a healthy committed relationship and possibly be considering having children

The Difference between Men's and Women's Emotions

Navigating through women's emotions are like walking through a pit filled with quicksand patches. You can kind of tell that the ground where the patches are is murky and different, but you might go through it anyways because there's no grass. Also, the quicksand forms after a heavy rainstorm (event) so you might have an indication to look for quicksand patches. If you get caught in one, the more you struggle, the deeper down it will suck you. there is a long, laborious process to get out of the quicksand.

Navigating through men's emotions is like walking through a mine field. There aren't as many mines as quicksand patches though. It looks perfectly harmless, the grass is growing and pretty, you're happily skipping along, and then all of a sudden out of the complete blue, you step on a landmine set up 25 years ago (possibly before you even lived in the area) and it explodes.

Life Fufilled

Wow! Suddenly my life is completely full! I made the decision to make my life more fulfilling and meaningful, and then here a month or so later, it is!

I have a surplus of weekend plans! Several people invited me to do various things; three people have offered trips in the past week; I literally have had something outside the norm to do every day this week! This is crazy! I love it.

I finally feel settled into where I live. I have a good social life going, my financial situation is improving drastically, and work is good. It makes it difficult to face the decisions I'm going to have to make in the coming months. Especially when I know moving will take me another at least 6 months to adjust. I don't want to ever feel stuck though. Things are coming together for me in my life, and I caused that. Woot.