Change is in the air

Change is a funny thing. Have you ever read the book "Who Moved my Cheese"? It's takes a very simple story about some mice and their cheese and applies the same principles to business. You have different characters and how they react differently to change and then takes those lessons and apply them to you. I always loved that book and the simpleness of it.

I always prided myself on my high tolerance to change. New reporting structures, new software, new policies, and just about anything else "management/administration" through at me I took in stride. No, actually I liked it. I embrace change. At the last school I worked at in KS I was responsible for helping our staff embrace the major change we were going through in a system software change. It went awesome. Yes it was a lot of work and yes at times it was over whelming but for the most part I really enjoyed it and I think the rest of the staff embraced it as well.

Change took on a whole new meaning to me when we found out we were going to be moving. We found out March 15th and Bret's first day was June 12th. That meant we put our house on the market, had a huge sale, flew to PA to look for a job for me and a new place to live twice, had graduations for Bret/my sister/BIL/and my brother, went on a week long cruise to celebrate with our entire family, packed up everything we owned, stuffed it all into 2 huge trailers and pickups, and moved across the country in the span of 3 months. Oh and did I mention that we had an almost 3 year old and a five month old baby, knew NO ONE, and ended up having to live in a hotel for 10 days because our apartment wasn't ready?

Let's just say that after the last 2 years of trying to figure out a new town, make new friends, etc, etc change doesn't intimidate me a bit. BRING. IT. ON.

I have been feeling restless in my status quo. I'm not unhappy at my job but I am starting to realize that I'm also not really HAPPY either. The million dollar question is then what will make me happy? How do you figure that out? I'm not sure either. For a lot of people that means going back to school....ugh. I have a BS in finance and an MBA. I can stay working here and get another bachelors or even just take some classes for free if I wanted to do that. The only masters program we have is in education (pretty sure I don't want to teach at less than a college level) and there are no Ph.d programs. The P word still kind of is floating out there. I know that if I do get a Ph.d then I want it to be at a large school and I want to do that full time not at night. There are no schools less than about an hour away for me to do that here. I think that until Bret is done with residency that it pretty much out for the time being. So that leaves another bachelors or just extra classes to strengthen some skills (ie English, writing, or web/computer technology)

Then I look at the opposite direction and think about staying home. So this idea is circulating around in my head mostly because we have been talking about having another baby. We pay a TON of money each month to have two small children in daycare all day. By the time you take out daycare and taxes there is "x" number of dollars left. What I need to figure out is how to a) cut our expenses or b) earn money working from home to make up that difference. Hmm that is an interesting thought.

Maybe it's just because spring is here but I know that I am not the only one thinking about change. What change are you thinking about?