Beginning a new blog, particularly a personal blog, is an interesting thing.  I’ve written blogs in other places for other purposes, but they were usually about a specific subject, and generally part of a job I was doing.  I’ve written a lot of personal stuff as well but that was always in journals and for my eyes only.  It’s safe writing that way, because you know the only one who will see it is you.  The thing is, I’m not sure I want to be safe anymore.

There’s a reason this blog is called Settling for More.  Most of my life I’ve been told that I should settle for less.  No one is ever totally happy with their job, I was advised when I expressed the idea that, if you’re going to work for money, you should at least do something that challenges and interests you.  Everyone makes compromises in relationships, I was informed, when I asked why people stayed with partners that clearly made them unhappy.  Whoever said “Most people live lives of quiet desperation” appeared to have the right of it.  Everywhere I looked there seemed to be people who were settling for less, and being quietly unhappy about it.

I’m now 38.  Over the past years I’ve built a life of moderation, settling for something that was reasonably pleasant, certainly not unpleasant, but not what I’d dreamed or hoped my life would be.  Then one day the idea of settling for more popped into my head.  Was it possible, I wondered, to build a life based on going for every goal you had and refusing to settle for anything less than the best?  What would the benfits be of living such a life and what, if any, would be the drawbacks?  What would happen if one 38 year old woman, who had built a safe and reasonably pleasant life, resurrected all the dreams and ambitions she’d had in her younger days and went for every one of them? 

This blog is the place where I will chronicle my attempts to find out what settling for more entails.  It’s also the place where I’ll talk about why I settled for less for so long, and what made me finally realize that I wanted to settle for more.  I’m sure this will also be the place where I rant and rail about the things that upset and puzzle me, as well as the place where I crow over the things that make me happy and amuse me. 

I’m in the lead car at the top of the roller coaster, and the trip ahead is sure to have both peaks and valleys.  I’m guessing some of the time I’ll be screaming with my hands in the air, and probably, occasionally, I’ll be scared and wondering why I’m taking this ride at all.  The one thing I can guarantee is that whatever happens is sure to be interesting. 

In the end I know, whatever happens, that I’ll be glad I took the ride.