Choices or Change

"Choices?  There seem to be none.  The only impacts I could make on my life at the moment seem to be ones which would be harmful - suddenly quitting my job for example, or randomly deciding to break relationships."  I wrote that yesterday, scarcely thinking it was a terribly significant thought as I penned it - but it haunted me through the rest of the day.

I would like to say the reality is true: the only choices I feel can make are harmful ones.  But why is that?  Surely if I give it a moment's thought it cannot be true.

One point is that the choices listed above are "easy":  there is no work really involved, just the process of making a decision and executing it.  A "positive" decision, such as starting a business or looking for a new job or going back to school, is much more than just a decision:  it is weeks, months, years of working towards something.  In the short term, nothing would most likely change.

Another point is that such choices are very self centered:  the immediate impact is on me.  That cleverly fails to recognize that there are other people involved (my family might have one or two things to say about suddenly quitting).  The "positive" choices involve the realities of human relationships:  how will we pay for things while you are unemployed or not making a salary, this sort of thing.

But if this is so - if the harder and more difficult choices are the ones which are ultimately the more positive - how do I realistically begin to make those?   I can randomly speak of doing different things, but every time I actually try and execute on one of them real life gets in the way.  A simple example might simply be going back to school to get a new degree:  for me that would be either a 4-6 year run or I would need to drop out and focus.  Either option, in my current environment of employment and family needs, seems very difficult to contemplate:  What do we not eat and what do we not do to fund an education?  What part of time do I steal from my family to make the classes work?

Perhaps maybe it is not choices I am so desperate for as for change:  a change in circumstances, a change in life.  By my definition changes are quite easy to make - and looking at my job history, fairly frequent.  But has every change been for the better?  Almost all change has some aspect of positive associated with it, but in fact not all changes are positive.

Which I suppose gives me something else to ponder: If it is change I want and not necessarily a choice, how do I move towards that change?