Happy new year!

The end of the year always makes me reflective, much like everyone else I think. I'm letting it happen but not overindulging it. I'm also working on looking forward but not putting too many resolutions on my new year. I have many hopes and thoughts and goals and they'll all come about via baby steps. 

So here's to baby steps and looking forward and looking back and just being here in the moment. Happy end of 2018. XO

I'm in that "you want me please want me" phase of job hunting that feels like a cross between prostitution and begging, Very fortunately, I'm not suffering in any way during this phase. I have a short job starting in January and I have plans and travel and housing for the next month so by the rules of Maslow's hierarchy, I'm set.

But what I'm hunting/searching/begging for is a career shift. I want out of my current department and to get a job in the same business but on a different side of the table. Essentially, I want to move from my current middle management job to an upper management job. And while I think my previous job is much more difficult in many ways, it seems that titles are important and not everyone agrees that my experience would translate into competence in a different department. So I have to convince them.

Fortunately, I've been in this position a lot. I've gotten a lot of jobs in my life so I know that perseverance and persistence wins the game while simultaneously my long memory wonders exactly how long this phase will last and exactly how persistent I'll have to be before something comes up.

In this context, the only way I would amend the above quote is to say that it's not always necessary to be strong but to project strength, And that's the career shifting game, a constant effort of projected strength until someone gives me a foot in the door to prove that it's not just a projection.

It's winding down to a quiet end of the year for me, especially compared to the hustle of several months ago. I expect that December will continue to be calm and everything will roar to a start in January of 2019 so I'm relishing these last bits of quiet.

And of course I'm writing this post and realizing that it's the first Sunday of December and that means it's a prompt week for Sinful Sunday. True to form, I've not checked in on that prompt at all and I'm completely unprepared. It's far too late to do something about that now and as Molly points out, this prompt is hard to do with a camera phone tho I would have enjoyed trying.

The monthly Sunday prompts are a really fascinating way to push photography skills and I think I'll make it a 2019 resolution to follow all of them. My camera skills could use a work out and I'm sure they would only improve from the exercises Molly creates, much like my writing skills benefitted from the smut marathon. 

But despite my absent careless ways, Molly published her list of top 100 sex blogs of 2018 this week and I'm on it! I can hardly believe it. I'm in the extraordinary company of so many incredible writers and photographers, several of whom were in the final round of the smut marathon this week! Go read their stories and check out their blogs and marvel, as I always do, at the breadth and richness of human sexuality.

I wish everyone a glorious December and I hope you all find ways to celebrate the end of 2018.
​XO