Scrap Girls Digital Scrapbooking Forum: Ro Made Me Do It - Scrap Girls Digital Scrapbooking Forum

I read Ro's blog this morning and she encouraged everyone to search what their goals were for 2009. At least I think that's what she was doing, but she shared hers so I guess I felt compelled to do the same.
I am a fearful person. I am afraid to take chances and if its the least bit risky I usually don't even try. I hate to admit that about myself, but I think of myself that way. I just remember my mother always cautioning me not to do things because I would just end up getting hurt. I wasn't allowed to learn to roller skate because I might fall and break my arm. I never learned to swim because I might drown. At some point, I must have taken charge and decided a lot of that was ridiculous because I've definitely taken some risks and chances in my life. I learned to ride a horse, I married a farmer and learned how to take care of animals, I moved from where I had to lived all of my life to a state that is almost like a foreign country, moved to another and back again.. all of those things involved risk and I managed.
But I am still a fearful person in my head. I hesitate to try new things until I've exhausted every single aspect of its results on my life.
So, I'm facing retirement in the next few years. I could retire now, but it doesn't seem prudent, however it is inevitable that I will have to in a while. It seems far in the future because it always has been, but in reality its probably as little as 5 years or less. That is just one or two blinks of an eye. But what will I do then? What happens when I don't get up every single morning at 6:30 and shower and dress and drive to work and enter into a structured world of banking? Wow, talk about feeling risky. I've been doing the same job for 17 years, and I can't imagine life without that structure, that security, that insurance and that paycheck.
So as I face 2009 I know that I am drawing closer to those scary years when social security will not be enough to live on. And I keep thinking I will need some kind of income to supplement it. So I'm investigating ways to manage without that structure. One of the things I am investigating is the possibility of being able to take photos and get paid for it. So I'm looking at getting a new professional style camera that I found a good deal on, getting a couple of good lenses, and armed with all the books on the subject that I can find plus some videos, plus Mary Elizabeth's class and Dinny's Ebook I'm self educating myself on how to take great pictures. Hopefully over the next two to three years I will become good enough that maybe a few people will want me to take some photos for them. Or maybe I can take something worthy of being published in a magazine, or.. or .. or.. whatever else you can do to bring in a few dollars every so often. I don't even know what possibilities are out there at this point, but that's part of the plan.
So, that is my goal for 2009.
I'd like to make lofty goals about changing how I think about things etc. but I'm probably pretty set in my ways at this point. I'm probably as nice as I'm ever going to be and I'm probably as faithful to giving God the glory as I'm ever going to be. Not that I've achieved it all, but I just don't think a lot will change at this point in my life. That's reality.