Reader Poll Monday

Reflective this week. Fitting, as Friday will mark my 4-year blogiversary.

1. Comparing your life as it currently is to the way it was a year or two or five ago, are you more content? If so, why? If not, why? Oh, lordy, yes. Five years ago, I was just realizing how much I didn't like my cereal-making job and had no idea what to do about it. Two years ago I was only slightly less broke than I've ever been. I was bitter about my tablet monkey job and hadn't made any discernible (to me) progress in the year I'd been there. A year ago I'd just been promoted, and I had applied for an engineering job several months prior but hadn't heard anything about it. Things with Fly Girl were going as well as they ever had (or ever would).

At the moment I'm lamenting the fact that I can't seem to get everything going right all at once. Things are not where I'd like them to be socially, but overall things are as much in order as they have been otherwise. For the first time ever (excluding my sophomore year single dorm room), I have my own place. Financially things could be much better, but I'm far less stressed about it than I have been in years. That's huge. For once, I feel secure.

2. What do you hope the next year will bring? Do you expect things to more or less stay the same? Or do you see big changes? How do you feel about that? I hope to make significant progress towards reducing my debt. Job-wise, I expect things to be pretty much the same, but I'll be seriously evaluating whether I want to stay where I am. At that point I'll have some experience under my belt that I can leverage in a move. Don't have that at the moment, so here I stay.

I really need to get some new friends. I need to branch out. I've got friends in various groups, but nobody (local) that I'm close with, and no one that I feel I really connect with. A girl's gotta have that. And I suppose I ought to date someone, but the idea of "actively dating" is not appealing, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if I just don't. That's the way it's been for all but the last two years anyway. I kinda feel like I have enough to worry about with everything else to be fretting over this. Maybe that's part of my problem. It's that whole thing about feeling like I don't have enough to offer until I get my own stuff in order. Which is possibly unrealistic, because I think I'm pretty well-adjusted.

Although if there's one thing I got out of being with FG, it was that being happy in your relationship can make a lot of those other worries a lot less worrisome. For me, it seems to take a lot of "other" to balance the relationship part of life. So in the absence of a happy relationship, I have to have a whole lot of other stuff going right to feel half as content. Which, at the moment, I kind of do.

I'm not wild about the fact that I expect things to be much the same a year from now, but if all that means that I've made a dent in my debt, then it'll be okay.

I also expect to have nicer furniture a year from now.

3. What would your ideal life situation be? Do you feel that it's within your grasp, or merely a pipe dream? My ideal life situation involves me enjoying my job, being able to travel a fair bit, living somewhere on the west coast, having a girl who loves me as much as I love her, and having some awesome friends to hang out with. Can't define it any more than that. I feel like eventually I'll get enough of those things to be happy, but it won't ever be ideal, and it won't be anytime soon. So I wouldn't call it a pipe dream, but I'm certainly not close to it. Maybe once I get closer to Happy, i'll be more able to focus on ideal. For now I'd just be happy with, uh, Happy. Because as I said above, I'm content, but I sure wouldn't say I'm Happy.

4. Ask me something. What's keeping you from making your next move?