Sometimes life throws you a curve and you are initially devastated, and sometimes you are elated. ...and sometimes you are "a little from column A...and a little from column B."

This is one of those times. I was laid off from my position of 4½ years and I feel... I feel mostly free and strangely happy. but also a little afraid of the unknown future.

The job I had was not in the art field even though that is what I went to college for. I was an IT Manager and although my last job did have some rewarding moments, and paid reasonably well, the stress level was off the chart at times, (it put me in the hospital on one occasion), and the drama was something else.

I like to think of this event as a great birthday present as I turned a year older on Friday.

I now have a moment to breathe, reflect and plan.. Ahhhhhhhhhhh...but what's next?

I am a tinkerer and an artist. I get equal amounts of joy: building and working on gadgets, making art in different mediums, learning new wonders, teaching others...

So many avenues... But what to do?

Pursue my art career like a rabid wolf?

Go back to school?

Restart my Information Technology career?

When I was in the hospital I made a kind of "bucket list" (if you don't know, it is a list of things you want to do before you "kick the bucket", or die, and I highly recommend the movie "The Bucket List"). Do I focus in on those?

...Or do something else entirely different?