Ever wake up one morning and say “Holy Shit – What have I been doing with my life?” I don’t know that my experience was quite like one exact moment, but a series of moments that finally caught up to me. I could feel the lightbulb go on and start to get brighter as I came to this realization that I wasn’t experiencing life.

Everyone that has made a choice to make a serious life change had a catalyst that prompted the need for a change. Whether it was a specific defining moment or a series of events that finally turned the lightbulb on, you can tie it back to a catalyst.

For me, a series of events impacted my life enough that I finally made a choice to figure out how to experience life. Come hell or high water.

To boil it down, I started a very challenging job, decided to get a divorce, in debt up to my eyeballs, raising a 3 year old daughter and letting life pass me by. I finally realized I was only going through the motions for the last 10 years and I’ve had enough. The stress of a new job that I was struggling with, trying to work through a divorce settlement with an addict that won’t cooperate with anything, cringing at the amount of debt we had accrued over the years, and the fact that my three-year old was caught in the middle of this was too much to handle. Something had to change.

Holiday break gave me some much needed down time and I started listening to podcasts and reading books that encouraged my spirit to make some much needed changes. And I mean actually make changes rather than just knowing that something was wrong and ignoring it. Listening to or reading about such inspiring stories caused me to take a look at my own life and I felt like I had missed out on so much! Here was my holy shit moment.

So all of this finally made my lightbulb come all the way on and I thought “Seriously? This is my life?”  Nice house, nice car, nice things. But who cares? There wasn’t any enjoyment in our lives.  Ask me what my hobbies are and my response is “Um…I don’t have one”. Ask me where my last vacation was and my response is “Vacation? What’s that?”  Vacation to me just means working from somewhere else.  Sound familiar to anyone?

As I float into my mid-forties I refuse to stand back and continue to let life pass me by.

“Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try” – Jack Canfield

I’m not looking for happiness and I’m not looking for meaning. I’m just looking for new experiences for pete sake. I’m looking to find exciting ways to become more physically fit, figure out how to kick ass at my job, ensure my mind is strong, and get my ass out of debt. And while I’m doing this, I want to enjoy my daughter and how awesome she is (although slightly evil). I want to have fun and get a taste of what life has to offer us. I’m not saying this is simple, but I should try right?