Maybe It’s Time to Reassess

We’ve reached that time of year when everyone’s favorite topic is New Year’s Resolutions. This isn’t about that. Not exactly. It is time to reassess my priorities, and I’m thinking this will take much more than a year’s worth of resolve.

I had a good Christmas, and I hope everyone else did too. It’s actually been the best Christmas day I’ve had in quite a while. I’d mostly grown to dislike Christmases, but this one wasn’t killer. It was, however, surrounded by a broad spectrum of mishaps and unfortunate happenings.

I’ve been worried for almost a week about one of my best friends who has been ill and just barely made it back to the US for his family to care for. Then, on Christmas Eve, I had to take my father to the hospital for an infection with an unknown cause. He was able to be home for Christmas but we don’t yet know what’s wrong with him, and I’ll be spending Monday in the hospital with him as he gets a slew of labs and tests done. This morning, the day after Christmas, my younger sister had some sort of diabetic incident whose cause we have yet to figure out. She blacked out in the dining room and had to have an ambulance called for her.

She’s been in the hospital all day, and as I sit here beside her as she sleeps, I can’t help but to look back on the past few years. I haven’t gone a solid six months without sitting beside some family member or friend in the hospital. Not in over 6 years. That’s a lot of time spent in these god-forsaken places. I know I’ve written before about how much I abhor hospitals, but that isn’t even what this post is about.

I’ve spent the past year hell bent on getting out of dodge. For the most part, that’s just generally involved a persistent desire to travel and work abroad. I’ve had several, huge, mind blowingly amazing, opportunities come up, that I could not be more grateful for. Everything I have done has been geared towards these opportunities, this life I want to have.

Maybe it’s time for me to accept that between family needing me to be around for their several-times-per-year hospital excursions, and the fact that each time I’ve saved money for these endeavors it flies out the window in these emergencies, it just isn’t the right time. Maybe instead of trying to scramble for money for my visa and flight to China in February, I should find a better job here at home. Maybe instead of trying to relocate to the other side of the world, I should realize I can’t go anywhere with empty pockets and re-prioritize. Maybe I’ll be able to have my life of travel and adventure later on, in ten years maybe, when my family is cared for and I’m less of a financial mess. Maybe.

So instead of living with my head in the clouds as I’ve done in 2015, maybe in 2016 I should learn to keep my feet firmly planted where I am, and appreciate what I’ve already got. That’s one resolution that will take me the whole year to adjust to, and probably longer even than that. I think I’ll spend the last few days of this year allowing myself to adjust to this notion – the possibility of digging in where I am, the possibility of going nowhere for now. That way I’ll be able to start 2016 strong and resolved. That’s what it’s all about, right?