It's 4 AM and Im sitting on the side of the road.
Car = totaled.
I see the flashing lights from the AAA tow truck after sitting in the dark for about twenty minutes, just thinking about what is next.
I fell asleep at the wheel and ended up running over a fire hydrant while I was headed home one night. Btw, who knew fire hydrant tickets were so expensive?! Thank God for insurance. To get to the point, I decided to start February a little early this year, because I needed a fresh start, and because who's gonna tell me I can't?!
No, It's not a leap year, but let me introduce you to something that we hate, but set for ourselves..... deadlines. We all have our own methods to meeting a deadline, whether we write it down, use our smartphones, or keep it bottled up in our head; maybe even all three. Either way it goes, if you are not organized, you probably hate deadlines, or fail to meet them. Ill leave that to you to decide which one applies to you.
So here I am, thinking of everything all at once: grad school, work, moving, traveling, my finances, and of course, a new damn car. My mind just kept wandering in circles about each goal that I have set for myself to accomplish this year, because the deadline was not closer. I felt like God kept sending me signs all week and I kept making excuses as to why the consequences would not effect me. Well, as you can see, I woke up to a reality check, and it opened my eyes that everything can be gone within the blink of an eye.
Literally three days before, I'm sitting at my desk laughing with a few coworkers as we each receive meeting invitations via email from our supervisor. We all thought it was a regular meeting until one of my coworkers had her meeting one hour after getting the email. She returned to her desk with a letter with bold letters showing her effective termination date. The irony of working in the Human Resources department, where we deal with hiring and firing people all day, and you receive a letter giving you 14 days to "pack your shit + turn in your badge...oh, and thanks for working for us." My first instinct was finding a reason how they selected people to fire, it was never that I could be next. Let's just face it, one of these days, that letter will have my name at the top, so I need to know my next step, before they even get the chance to type the first three letters of my name on a letter.
I've been telling myself that February would be my fresh start to update my resume, my LinkedIn page, to start seeking my next career opportunity, and to update my blog more frequently. I knew that once February got here, I'd find some excuse to push my deadlines until March, and so on, and so on. I've become waaaaay too complacent, and it honestly bothers me because I know my goals, but never took the time to develop a strategy to reach the goals. So here I am, on January 30th, which begins my first day of "February": the first day of productivity to develop my strategy.