My impossible goal for this year is to find a job where I (i) work 5% of my time abroad, (ii) work in total 80% and (iii) keep on living in the town I am in. I have been trying at my current job to change things to reach this goal, but I have also been applying for other jobs. Both internal as well as external approaches turned out to be difficult (surprise). What I have been now doing is in order to keep on moving, apply to jobs where I am genuinely interested in, however, do not fulfill the component of my impossible goal of working 5% abroad. I am not sure whether by doing that I am not being focused enough on my impossible goal or whether it is a good thing to be applying and moving in a direction at least (as opposed to not applying at all). I have now submitted an application for a job where I would at the same time be very happy to be invited to an interview but also scared to be failing to create my dream job where I am working 5% abroad. I feel that I would need to focus on creating this job where I work abroad now (as long as I don’t have a family) since it will be too late to postpone this goal to later. That thought obviously does not help since it puts even more pressure on me. I am not sure whether I am manipulating myself to only see the negative aspect of a job I actually find incredible interesting or whether I am finding here excuses not to follow my actual impossible goal. I am scared of accepting a new job and finding out that actually I enjoyed my current job even more.

Thank you for your thoughts!