The corner office has been the target of many of us in the business world. That hallmark pinnacle of success where we are afforded a place among the stars in our select profession.

I have sat in such an office a few times metaphorically if not practically in my line of business.

However, today (Christmas Eve 2016) I sit in a different corner office. One many people who know me ascribe to the things I do more than anything I have done in my business life.

To be quite honest, it is a corner office I far more happily occupy.

As I sit here in the “corner office (table)”at my local coffee house reading a motorcycling magazine, sipping coffee and writing I am far more in my element. This is not to say that I am not comfortable and adept in my business element, but this is where I find great personal significance at this point in my life. I am still striving in my professional life but as the timeline of my life slides toward the far end my focus has to shift a bit.

As I get older I realize that I have given so much to my professional and far too little to my vocational life (vocational being writing and ministry). I can add to this having dedicated too little to my personal life as well when it comes to my family. I was raised with a very strong work ethic, more often than not, put work first in my life.

While I never truly strove for the proverbial corner office, I did end up in a few cases with the equivalent in my field. As such what I have forever explained to others was manifest in my life; A job and a company will take everything you are willing to give.

Now, please do not take this to be a commentary on the evils of the professional life. My professional life has given me much both personally and financially. It has funded and fueled my vocational life. It is the tent-making that we all must do to survive in this life. Would that my passions have funded my life? Of course, but that has not been the case. I am bi-vocational and most likely will always be.

However, striving for a balance is something at which I need to do a better job . I am not getting younger, as they say, and if I do not begin to create a better balance between the professional/occupational, vocational and personal, I will continue to miss out on the significance remaining in the waining years of my life.

This too is a time when if I do not allocate time to making the motorcycle trips I have always dreamed of, there will be no time left. Also, as our children leave the nest for lands both far and abroad, I need to change my focus on how my wife and I are able to travel to see them.

To be quite honest with myself, the same could be said for my life around my “hobbies”. With the motorcycles I have put much of time, money and energy into modifying bikes and far less time riding them.

I have continually planned for the great trips but done little toward actually taking them. If I get one 3-4 day trip a year in I am doing good.

Same could be said for my writing, I spend a lot of time thinking about a book and little time actually working toward writing it. I blog when I can and do little else in between.

Thus, as I sit in my preferred corner office today I am pondering all of this and considering the things I need to do to change my typical modus operandi. To properly allow for the transition between where I am and where I expect to be in the coming years. Where I want to be in the coming years.

I suspect that, at this time of the year, it is appropriate to have these thoughts spring to mind. A new year approaches which will see my second child getting married and finalizing plans to live abroad.

Now is the time to consider what this next phase of life will bring my wife and I. To which corner office my life leads me. Find my voice as a writer. Find new horizons on the bikes. Reach out to the significance of my vocational life while keeping a diligent focus on my professional life. See if there is a way that I might blend them better and see my own horizons expand in front of me.

This is not a time to look back, but to strive ahead.