passion and direction

Maybe it's that time of year - with the end of the year and the new year on the horizon - when it seems like everyone is doing some soul searching, reevaluating and just trying to realign their goals with their passion.

For me, I think this is true. I've also been faced with a few personal situations that have frustrated me and have felt to add some struggle into accomplishing my goals. So when I read Greg's post about Dreaming and Dreaming Big, I found myself thinking - Is this kid reading my mind? I think it's so easy to get distracted in our daily lives. I sit and read Twitter and recent posts on all the RSS Feeds that we're subscribed to... and then I take a step back and wonder, ok so where am I headed by doing all this?

Am I doing this because I want to just advance in my company or industry, or am I doing this because I'm passionate about it? Or both? I don't think either is a bad intention but I think they have different implications and weights attached to each goal or task depending on what the desired outcome is.

I am a go-with-the-flow and roll-with-the-punches type person. Because of this I tend to get distracted. The good thing is that most the time all it takes to get out of the cloud of distraction is to stop, take a look around, and redirection myself to where I want to go.

The challenge for me right now is finding how to balance my work with my personal persona. A conversation I had last night got me started on this. Because I blog for my 9-5, I blog outside of work, I use Facebook personally and professionally. (And so on.) It's hard to know where my company ends and where I begin. While I am somewhat "the face" of my company online, how do I still distinguish myself from them. I am not my company. I am a part of it. (It's almost as if I have 2 'Personal Brands'. One is hard enough to manage.)

Even if right now there is no way to find balance in all of it, how am I still taking time for myself, how am I bettering myself or my company, how does what I do better the world in a bigger picture? It's a learning process that I think can only be achieved (if it can be achieved at all) by trial and error, practice and discipline. Learning to weed out the things that distract us in our careers, personal lives or whatever will help us direction ourselves to be not only who we are but who we want to be. Here's to staying true to ourselves.