The Calm After the Storm.

Inbetween this post and my last one, there exists another. You can't read it, at least not yet. I think if anyone at w**k found it I would be liable to be sacked.

It is a lengthy diatribe about my w**k and the pointlessness thereof. I was (and am) sick of being put upon, and, well, it's time to move on. It's time that I found myself some purpose in life, and did something I am proud of.

It's time I grew up.

I'm going to start looking for something to make me fulfilled, not just a "I think I can do that" type of job, but something I really want to do. More than that though I need to decide what I want to do first. I need to decide who I am.

So I looked down my list on 43Things and made a few choices.

• Do I really want to be an editor? I don't know... so off the list it comes (for now at least).



• Do I really want to make a kite camera? Hell yes! It won't give me an annual wage, but it'll be cool! I left that one on there.



• Do I really want to watch the Lord of the Rings extended versions in one sitting? I wouldn't mind, but it's not something to aspire to. Off that one came too.

And then I added a few. Things I really want to see myself doing over the course of my lifetime, and perhaps more importantly, things I would like to do now. I'm going to take each goal in babysteps, and see where it takes me. These aren't career-making decisions, but steps towards being me.

First off is Never Eating at Macdonalds Again. Chosen because it seems simple enough, it's really a biggie. I'm not a huge MaccieD fan, but every once in a while I get a hankering for it, and then feel sick after I've eaten it. It goes against everything I believe in regarding food - badly sourced, badly prepared, badly served, bad food.

It represents everything that is wrong with my life at the moment - petty things that I carry on doing even though I hate them usually because it's the easy way out in the short term.

I haven't had a MacDonalds for some weeks now, and I've not really thought about it in the interim. Now I write this though, I really want a Cheeseburger. Or perhaps two.

Can I go without for the rest of my life? Because that's what this challenge means: Never eating there again. I half want to say probably not, but that's being overly pessimistic. I half want to say Yes! but I know that if I do have one I'll feel that I have failed. And if I fail at this effectively basic task that reflects a feeling I hold true anyway, how can I succeed at turning my life around?

I guess all I can go with is We'll See. This is a baby step decision that I can make from the comfort of my study, but the real challenges are going to come about when I step out into the real world... if I can face a little challenge each week maybe I can make it add up to something amazing.

Just maybe.