Which part did you like again?

I have been on a baby-step paced quest to improve my life lately. There have been little improvements that have already had a great impact on my life: the great no TV before daycare experiment has been a tremendous success, and the 9 PM internet cutoff time is making me more interactive with my DH. I feel more connected to him than I have in a long time, which is very nice. I still keep losing my cool with the kids too often, but as I said, this is a baby-step paced campaign. I know I cannot change everything overnight, because frankly I have far too many quirks to focus on at once. I am focusing on the things I know I can impact in short order. I went to the doctor last week to finally have a suspicious mole evaluated, so I could put the negativity and fear of skin cancer out of my mind. I arranged a trip to see my Mom because seeing her more often is important to me. You get the drift.

I feel like I need to preface this with the fact that my life is already pretty damn good. I am not trying to struggle through difficult circumstances at the moment. I am simply trying to make a life I am very happy with, a life that I am grateful for, a life that has been blessed in many ways just a little bit better. I have two tremendous kids, a husband I love dearly, supportive parents who are still living, a great network of friends, and enough money to live comfortably without worrying how bills will be paid. I’m just making little tweaks.

The one big area of my life I feel needs to change is my professional life. I was describing my job to a group of runner friends this weekend, and heard myself saying I like my job, but I don’t like X aspect, oh and I don’t like Y aspect, oh and I forgot about Z. One of the women asked me which part it was that I liked. I was silenced. I did come up with a few things I like, but it put my job, which I claim to enjoy, into focus. You’ve heard me complain about work travel before, so I think that topic has been covered. Truthfully there aren’t any terrible downsides to my job (well *ahem* travel is one), but there are some issues. Issues that I don’t really want to discuss here because I do want to keep the job for the foreseeable future. I think it comes down to the fact that I want to be excited about work. I don’t necessarily need to be in bliss all day at work, but I want work to give me a sense of accomplishment, a sense that I am good at what I do. I do not want to simply put in time to fill a quota of hours per week. Truthfully, that is what I am doing most of the time. What exactly is my ideal job? I might be able to keep my current position and achieve much of what I want, but I don’t know yet. I need to think about it for a while. I know if I put the right focus towards it, I’ll find my answers…I just need to give it some time and a lot of thought.