Evaluation Time

Over the last hour or so I took a little trip down memory lane and read through some of my previous posts. I didn't go all the way back to the beginning because I already was aware of how much I've changed since then, but I was again reminded of just how many changes there have been in the last 12-15 months alone.  I went from:
-single to married
-graduate student/assistant to unemployed to on-call/recently employed
-living w/ a housemate to living w/ my husband (plus 1 month w/ another couple w/ us)
-a long-distance-rose-glasses marriage to day-in-and-day-out reality & hard times (but luckily w/ love)
-daily interactions w/ like minded friends to bi/weekly interactions w/ others
-easy routine visits w/ family to monthly phone calls back home
-most things green & eco accessible to limited access
-fulfilling church services to lack of spiritual connection
-daily independence to routine compromise & dependency in various forms
-no pets to three furry companions
-west coast living to southern life (including 2 trips to the east coast)

Many changes in a relatively short period of time.  And I'm sure there are many that I'm not really listing today, albeit they might be more of the smaller things.

Somehow I'm hopeful that the positive growth that has been arriving in recent months in terms of employment, marriage, and personal outlook continues to head in the "right" direction.  So with all of these changes in mind, I took some time today to sort of reassess the goals and simple pleasures I have listed on the right hand sidebar.  Wording changed on some of life's pleasures, as my approach and thoughts on some of those have also changed.  And some of the goals that I have achieved were given completion dates, while other goals were slightly altered.  Two goals were also moved to the bottom as those two are some that I feel would be incredible to achieve but not necessarily at the top of my list.  Most of these small changes are based on the fact that we're all continually evolving people.  Hence our "reality" is different today than it was yesterday, and thus some of our perceptions of our lives past, present, and future will continue to change as well.

I also have had to laugh to myself as my photo month project and recent postings in 2010 have already produced about half the number of postings I did during the entirety of 2009.  It's definitely one way to get back "on the ball" of blogging.  And I also realize that divulging a bit more of my personal life here does allow me to write more freely, although for the time being I still try to keep many revealing facts and photos absent from this blog.  One thing that I did realize though in evaluating the previous year is that I spent too much time wondering if I was "green" enough or worrying about being too far from where I should be environmentally.  I also noticed that generally speaking, I seemed to be more spiritually connected to others and to engaging in awareness of my surroundings--something that obviously needs to be re-implemented.

So sometimes, at least sometimes, it's good to take a moment to sort of re-evaluate where we've been, who we've been, and how we & our surroundings have changed.  In doing so, we allow ourselves to re-evaluate the direction in which we want to continue to go.

Hope each of you is enjoying a beautiful day!