I've taken a moment in life today to sit and compose my own thoughts on the world I live in. Yes that's a mighty big thing to dwell on in a relatively short amount of time. My second daughter was born last month and it reenergized me a bit. It made me reevaluate where I was in my life, whether what I was doing was properly contributing to a better future for both her and her older sister.  It made me consider whether the things that are in my life are effectively supporting what's most important to me: family. It turns out I have some opportunities for improvement.

First step: health.  Like many people, I have been saying for some time that I need to lose weight, eat better, all of that rhetoric.  And like many, I have talked a good game but haven't executed.  Not long after she was born, I started working out again.  It's been a little slow going (it turns out that your body at 37 needs little more time to recover than when you were 22) but I have worked out at least once a week since she was born.  I haven't really seen much in the way of slimming down but my energy is better.

Second step: career. This one is a tougher cookie. I can't go and do just anything on a whim because I want to see what it's like. Familial responsibilities require a level of stability that certain career paths don't provide.  Therefore, I have begun to work on things that could differentiate myself in my current workplace: available certifications, networking conversations and skip-level meetings with my Director.  Looking through the family lens, though, I am presented with a bit of a bump in this path.

Being where we are currently does not afford easy access to neither my nor my wife's immediate family.  Staying with my current employer would not help that issue as they have concentrations in Georgia and Texas - our families are in Florida and Washington. And while there are some opportunities in those areas with my current employer, the opportunities for advancement long-term become significantly fewer. 

The alternate path this dilemma creates necessitates looking at another employer. The most difficult part of this option is not knowing where I can jump to next.  When you're with the same employer for almost a decade, it's hard to let go of the familiar. Moving to a new place, in itself, is jarring and stressful. Throwing in a new employer with the uncertainty of being the lowest person on the totem pole exacerbates that stress. 

If family is important, and I know that long-term opportunities with my current employer aren't located where I want to be, something has to give. Therefore, I'm starting to network a little with groups in the areas we are interested in living. It's the first step of many to go down this path. And while it is not the safe path and does inherently present some risk, maintaining the path simultaneously with my current employer mitigates some of that risk.  At some point, these two paths running in parallel will diverge and I will have to decide on which one to continue.

Third step: maintain an individual sense of identity. This one hasn't been fleshed out yet.  I know that I should so some things for myself and have a path established for it. I continue to struggle with identifying what that looks like.  My obligations as a husband and father override this step right now and I don't think that many if any people would disagree with that choice.  Still, as time goes on, I don't want to regret taking some time for myself. This is something that I have to work on with my wife as I want her to do the same for herself.

I don't know where I want this blog to go right now.  Maybe it's just my own little journal of life events. For now, at least, it's my little space to process online what's going through my head.  Cheers.