Happy New Year!

I hope you had a fun and safe weekend.  This year’s celebration was the smoothest we’ve seen at the bar in a long time.  No fights or accidents, and everyone left before close.  From the staff’s point of view, it was a great way to ring in the new year.

A big bit of news happened for me in early December – I got engaged!  After months of scheming, everything came together and my fiancé and I are busy with wedding plans.

The decision to pop the question also forced me to think more about my future, specifically the next 3-5 years.  While we are not planning to wed until late 2018, the added commitment of marriage raised some questions in my mind about what I need to focus on in terms of priorities.

When I started this blog, it was meant to help me focus on my learnings on my way to becoming a paramedic.  A lot has happened since then, and it would be bad if I ignored the contexts at play.  In the beginning, I was a bit down on myself, felt aimless, and I didn’t like work.  2016, while a crappy year for the world, was a good year for me in that I focused a lot on improving myself.  In that time, my conditions at work have markedly improved, and I feel better about myself and where I am in life.  The only thing that hadn’t shifted was my career – I was still running under the assumption that I would be applying off for a paramedic program and would restart my career in two year’s time.

Getting engaged, however, forced me to think critically about this.  With my fiancé just starting out on her own professional career, us moving in together in the near future, and planning for a wedding, it seems like a bad decision for me to drop the security I currently have and take several steps back for the sake of a new vocation.

Maybe if I were a few years younger (I turned 30 in December), I could have pulled this  gamble off.  But for the present, I will be putting my paramedic aspirations on the shelf to focus on building what I have in front of me.  Down the line, there is always a chance that I could make a pivot into medicine but for the interim, this is not a good choice for me.

Which now raises the question of what is happening to this blog?

Short answer: nothing.  I will keep the blog for the foreseeable future.

Long answer: a change in theme will need to be made.

Obviously this won’t be a medic blog anymore.  At the very least, this blog has been very broad, so I don’t see a lot changing in terms of content.  I’ll still post on topics that are relevant to me and my interests, such as personal development, teaching, etc.  I don’t know what the changes will amount to, but if you are enjoying my content now, then you can rest assured that things won’t change materially.  In time, you may see a new coat of paint and a some rearranging of the furniture.

However in the mean time, check back in each Monday for a new post.  Let’s keep this thing going!

Stay Awesome,

Ryan