When you complete a big project there is always the long, slow, realization that it is complete.  There is a sadness that comes along with it for me.  Sometimes, the pursuit is better than the destination.  Well, Not this time.

This time is a little different.  It is like opening a door and looking to see what is behind it.  Like that moment before you put the last piece in the puzzle.  It is exciting.  It is full of anticipation.  I want to see what it looks like.  I want to get back to business.

Several years ago, I began listing my personal goals in an electronic notebook. I was inspired by a quote I heard about how writing down what you want to accomplish increases the probability of achieving that goal. The trick is to get it on paper and to periodically revisit what you wrote and check off your accomplishments and create new goals for yourself.

I haven’t revisited my goals sheet since this last spring.  Every six months or so, when I launched into an edit, I would flag the items that I completed with green highlight.  Where there were new tasks to tackle, I would include them.  It is time to do that again.  There are even things to add.  This time, though I’m going to resist the temptation to launch into another thing right away.  I’m just going to relax and enjoy the plateau and start writing.  I have enough content in my archives that I should be able to keep this going every day for a while.  It is my opportunity to stream online some of the things that I have encountered over the last few years.

That won’t be easy.

If it were easy as fishin’ you could be a musician
If you could make sounds loud or mellow
Get a second-hand guitar, chances are you’ll go far
If you get in with the right bunch of fellows

“Takin’ Care of Business”
-Randy Bachman, Bachman–Turner Overdrive

It is different from undergrad where I was on the hunt for a career after I graduated.  This time, the degree pursuit and the career happened in parallel.  The one enhanced the other and that was the most fulfilling part.  So that, coupled with the firm belief that you can always recreate yourself.  You can rise from the ashes.

There is this symbol called an Ouroboros.  It is an ancient  symbolic representation of coming full circle.  The Ouroboros depicts a serpent or dragon eating its own tail. The name originates from within Greek language; (oura) meaning “tail” and (boros) meaning “eating”, thus “he who eats the tail”.

At its best, that is what education is.  The rise up and learning through failure.  The coming full circle.

Back to thanksgiving planning, I guess.