I used to be a really good sleeper. Sleeping nights and days away in contentment.

I don't sleep well anymore. A couple of years ago, I started becoming restless in the middle of the night. It was a sporadic thing, mostly waking up with a start, thinking and sometimes panicking about work.

It's not that I'm not tired, because I am tired. It's that my mind is spinning about 1000 thoughts a minute covering a mess of terrain.

More often then not, when I wake up like this, it's related to my life. What I am doing with it doesn't feel right.

This is the main reason why I am leaving in September.

I used to say, it'll all work out and continue on, plodding through the routine day after day. Paying the bills.

I don't think it'll all work out for me in this way anymore. My life needs a jumpstart.

That's why I am changing everything.

This isn't a change sparked by Sept. 11th, although that may have catalyzed my movement, without a doubt. It's a desire to find my path in life, to set goals and achieve them, to make things happen for me that fullfill my measure of success and ultimately bring me happiness.

For me, this plan involves struggle. It requires me to give up the security of my job and the comfort of my apartment to start over with nothing.

I've never done things the easy way and this tends to aggravate people in my life. They don't really understand my motivation or the struggle.

My roommate tells me that I have set this impossible bar defining what I think will bring happiness and I forget to celebrate my achievements this far. She's right.

All I know is that there is something missing from my life and that something is the key to sleeping again.

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