It is now almost four months since I left my job. In that time, I have found myself busy with new endeavors, but also enjoying life in a way I had forgotten I could. The change has been a healthy one for me both professionally and personally.

As I have been making my way through this year, I have found myself letting go of things past and focusing more on what I want in my life now. I have been losing weight, and so have been downsizing my wardrobe, and wanting to downsize the amount of things in my life generally. My wonderful sister-in-law recently pointed me to a book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and I am now 60 pages in and completely riveted. A portion I read just now resonated with me intensely:

As someone who holds onto things, this a powerful idea. I have come to realize that not only do I hold on to physical things, but I also cling to experiences. I realize now that I harbored the difficulties I experienced in my work life to a greater degree than I had thought, and that there really is something good I took away from that experience. I learned where I worked well and where I didn't, and I learned how to be more honest with myself about what works for me and what doesn't. Learning that has lead me to where I am now, with a more balanced juxtaposition working in two fields I love equally.

It was by no means an ideal way to get here, but I feel all the more grateful to be here now, and to have more confidence in pursuing what makes me happy.

Time has this way of marching steadily by, whether we want it to or not. There's so much I've been wanting to do for the past couple of years, and kept putting it off. "Later," I would tell myself, "I have to focus on something else for now." It took me nearly two years of telling this myself to realize that "later" was simply a means to put off the inevitable. There are some things for which "later" is not an option.

In October, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. It felt like such a huge blow, and the concept of "later" for allowing time for things to sink in, or gain some perspective, was simply not there. The loss of control was quite possibly the biggest hurdle to tackle. There was only now. We have to address this now. We have to address this now. We have to address this now.

It's now January, a solid three months since the initial diagnosis. The first round of treatment for my mom ends tomorrow. It hasn't been an easy road, especially the last two weeks (and the next two, we're told), but there's something about having looked forward to this date, and now finally reaching it, that feels good. It's just one thing, but it feels right.

I have spent the past year and a half being heavily stressed at my job. The stress of starting over, doing something new, was enough to keep me trying to keep making things better. Things that were determined to not get better. It took me a year and a half to acknowledge just how stressed I was, and another few months to realize that carrying on like this just wasn't feasible for me anymore. So I put in my notice, a good seven weeks notice, and set to work making changes.

Time, unusual creature of wisdom that it is, graced me with something unexpected. I started to feel lighter. I started to think about new possibility. I started to look forward to the end of January because suddenly I had things I wanted to get done, new ideas I wanted to try. These aren't new things; I've wanted to try them for at least three years now. But this is the first time I've dared to open the door to possibility. And while I've allowed these new ideas to take flight in my mind, the stress of my day-to-day life has slowly been lifting. The fog I was operating in has slowly been lifting, and for the first time I can see the things that left me sad and stressed. When I turn around, I see the things that excite me and invigorate me.

Cancer leaves its mark on you even with the possibility of remission, and so too, it seems, does stress. I hope the year ahead has less of both. One I can't control, but hopefully, the other one I can.

2014 has left me feeling conflicted. 2013 ended on a difficult note, then the new year brought renewed feeling of vigor, only to progressively lead me to feeling off in pretty much every way. In the end, 2014 has earned itself the distinction of being the year I realized that what I thought I wanted in life was actually not what I needed. And life, strange creature that it is, has a way of making such things very apparent if given enough time.

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Of the few goals I allowed for myself this past year, the one I feel I actually succeeded at was starting to travel. Being away always changes me, and I love exploring new places and seeing the world in new ways. I also photographed my way through it all, though it's only really been in the past month or so that I've started to become more disciplined about really working on my photos. The ones accompanying this post were taken in August.

While this year has been frustrating in many ways, it's also been insightful. I had found myself too tired to spend much time on hobbies, and too tired even to work on improving professional skills I had hoped to. The day to day had left me so tired that I had no physical or mental energy for anything more. It turns out that that is a pretty scary place to be.

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Though the year has been a confusing one, It's ending on a new and interesting note. At the end of January, I will be leaving my job of the past three years to try out something new. It's something I've been giving much thought to over the past few months. I have been dreaming of "what if" scenarios nearly all year, and at the beginning of this month, I actually put the question out to the world. I contacted a company about the possibility of pursuing what I had before held only in my head, and they were interested.

All year I have feared this very change. I have worked to the point of exhaustion to avoid the very thing that now fills me with excitement. I was terrified of the very thing that now gives me hope and has sparked a new sense of excitement for a field I love, but had thought I was burning out from. I will miss many things, I am sure, but I am even more excited for new things to come.

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