Freedom and responsibility

I've been taking time off lately.  After finishing my PhD I wanted to spend some time thinking and looking around before jumping into my next big project or job or time commitment.  So, for the past few months, I've been pretty much doing whatever I want, whenever I want.  It's pretty awesome.

Today, it hit me that with this freedom comes responsibility.  It's great to be able to choose what to do each day but that means that I have to choose what to do each day.  There's no boss telling me what to do.  The responsibility of using my time wisely lies squarely on my shoulders.  I can't delegate it to someone else.

It's very easy to take the easy road and lose hours and hours to reading news commentary or watching YouTube.  But like that standing-on-a-hill analogy, although it's fun to run down the hill, it's not much fun afterwards, when you find yourself at the bottom.  I need to keep that empty, at-the-bottom-of-the-hill feeling in mind before I start down the slippery slope of YouTube or Huffington Post.

Freedom is wonderful.  But in and of itself, it's no key to happiness.  That key lies in the choices I make with the freedom I've been given