The past year and a half have been steadily leading me to feel like I'm leaving myself behind. I can't say I've been living to work, but I have absolutely been surviving to work, and the feeling of burnout has been apparent even through much of this year. When I turned 30 earlier this year, I promised myself that I would change that.

One of the promises I made myself was that I would start to travel more. I wanted to get a passport, and to break the habit of "being spontaneous" that has been a hallmark of my personality for much of my life, thanks in large part to being a student and/or employed by a university or school. I have, to this point, been terrible about finding time to take a break.

Over the summer, I finally put my nose to the grind and made some changes. I submitted for my passport. I requested time off in the fall for a real vacation. I picked a destination, someplace I'd never before been.

And then I met New York City.

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Short of a family trip there when I was somewhere around 18 months old, I've never before been to New York. I had heard stories, and seen movies. And I decided it seemed as good a place as any to start exploring the world more.

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There's something liberating about New York City. I always love cities where I can travel and then get around nearly anywhere without having to drive on my own. But more than that, I fell in love with the sheer sense of life surrounding me. I found my mind wandering and thinking of a world of new and interesting possibility.

I loved this city that seemed like it would lose itself without its wealth of diversity. I loved how much culture, life, and food could be found just a few steps out the door. I love that this city, a stranger to me, wrapped me in its embrace and made feel more at peace than I have all year.

Thank you, New York. We'll meet again soon.

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how much I've allowed myself to fall behind. To think so much about things that I don't leave any time to actually do anything I've been thinking about.

I have a knack for picturing something a certain way and then steadily molding that image in my head into something great. Trouble is, I jump so far ahead in my mind that by the time it occurs to me to give it a try, I've worked things so far ahead that the thought of actually taking all the necessary steps to get there is too daunting. It overwhelms quickly, the thought of newness and adventure dissipates, and the end result is that nothing ends up happening.

The not doing leads to a fear of doing, and before I know it, I've fallen into a spiral of discontent. I'm tired of having the best of intentions. I crave action, steps in a forward direction, any semblance of progress.

I want to take the frustration, the confusion, the questioning, and do something useful with it.

New years have not historically been something that leave me too excited, but 2013 was less than friendly to me on a number of levels. Hence, where normally I welcome the new year as a relatively symbolic marker of time, this year it's meant a good deal more than that to me. In addition to 2014 offering a much-desired "clean slate" (or, more accurately, an excuse for a fresh new perspective), I'll also be turning 30 in a mere week's time.

The combination of these two milestones, a new year and a significant birthday, has left me thinking a lot about what I really want out of life. While 2013 taught me a great deal about conflict, and how to handle it, it also made it apparent to me how much I can stew on things. I realized, far too late after the fact, that my desire for harmony can come at a considerable personal cost. I forgot what it was like to look forward to going to work, and I let the things that bother me overshadow the things that brought me joy. Since this new year, I have been focusing on reclaiming that joy. We're a mere five days into the new year, but I'm feeling optimistic.

I've not been one for resolutions in the past, and while this year is no exception, I did decide that my habit of always taking things a day at a time has lead me to not take chances when I can. I'm speaking specifically about traveling right now. For the last two weeks, I've been thinking about how I want to ring in my 30th year on this planet, and after considerable thought, I've decided I want it to be the first year I really start traveling and exploring the world around me. I have my sights set on New York, where I hope to go meet some of the Instagrammers who have lately been inspiring me. My partner also wants to take me for my first-ever show on Broadway. I'm very excited about all this possibility, and cannot wait to go see the world. Naturally, I want to photograph everything along the way.

This brings me, incidentally, to the photo above. We escaped to Flagstaff for a weekend in October, and ventured the extra way to one of those days in Sedona, where I promptly fell in love with the red rocks. I have always loved Native culture and history, and the sense of history in Sedona is palpable. Those rocks have seen a lot of history, and when you look at them long enough, you can almost feel the sense of time as it both stands still and reels onward.