Wishin' & Hopin' & Thinkin' & Prayin'

The last thing I want is for people to roll eyes at what I write. (Click the link, read the post, and smirk about just how much you don't relate to a word of it.)

I mean, I get that the whole self-improvement thing can easily get happy clappy, and suddenly we can see the potential awesomeness in EVERY.SINGLE.THING around us.  We look at our lives and we know that there's got to be something better that can happen.  We seek so much.  We want to have less and still somehow manage to have more.  We work hard for the money (so you better treat us right) and sometimes we get frustrated by people who seem to work less and pass us by anyway.

I'm still at the very early stages of figuring out what this Get A Grip thing is going to be.  It's very easy to sit here and write a bunch of myopic tripe on how to be perfect or better or whatever.  I could focus very specifically on one topic (I just love this chick) or I could try to cover everything in the world (God help me, I love her too).  In determining the goals for this.... project, then, I'm going to work through creating my own goals.  What do I want my world to look like when I'm not sitting here writing about how to make the world better?

I want to wake up at Not 6:30AM.

I want to have more time with my daughter out of the car doing cool things 

than I do with her in the car on the way to stuff that sucks.

I want what I do for a living to have value.

I want the time spent away from my family to be worth being away from my family.

I want to love what I do.

There's more, I'm sure.  Interesting that 3 of the 5 things that came to mind first are about time.  My time is not my own right now, and I think that's a big part of why I'm seeking a change.  I've played the game for quite long enough.  It's scary to think about letting go of the security of a state paycheck and pension, but the status quo is making me wither away (oh, the drama of it all...) and I just want more.  I need more than this.  I need to give a damn and be surrounded by people who give a damn about me giving a damn, dammit!

I don't know what else to write.  I'm sitting in my sad cube at 3:10PM on a Friday, with work to do but no interest in doing it, and no real incentive other than the prospect of some vague personal satisfaction that might spark as a result of getting something done.  All I can think of is where I'd rather be.  Not geographically, although I'm always up for some discussion about fabulous vacations.  Not personally, because I can't imagine being happier with home and family than I am now.  Professionally, though, it's wide open.  I am more than a square on the bottom of some crappy org chart.