Wishcasting Wednesday (and A Visit from Jungle Woman)

This week's Wishcasting Wednesday question is What do you wish to dare?

I wish to dare to create an almost entirely different life.  My husband stays.  The furkids stay.  My best friend stays.  Several online friends stay.  But an extraordinary number of people, activities, and objects are up for contract renegotiation.

I should create a new Witness Protection list.  A cousin and I used to play a "what if" game.  The object was to determine what is so essential to who we are that we couldn't imagine changing it -- not even for witness protection.  For example, I'm not sure I could ever change my hair color -- "redhead" is part of my self-definition.  She decided she would rather take her chances with the bad guys than face a closet full of clothing from a particular well-known store at the mall.

In other news, I planted my patio container garden and a raised bed of strawberries this afternoon.  The container garden includes a Cowhorn pepper, which was one of my grandfather's favorites.  I don't remember those peppers specifically (he died when I was in fourth grade, a bit young for hot peppers), but I do remember the big cluster of five gallon buckets in his backyard.  Each one held a pepper plant of some sort.  He liked his peppers!  He was also the grower of the world's best strawberries.  I don't know what he did to them, but they were soooooo sweet.  One of the best memories of my childhood is sitting at the kitchen table with my grandmother rolling strawberries in a little bowl of sugar and eating them.

The herbs are still on the to do list, and Drew wants a raised bed for watermelons.  We're hoping to get to that this weekend.

Brainstorm Party Blog Post #1

Greetings!  Welcome to my Brainstorm Party!

Big changes are afoot at Day Job.  The what-this-means-for-me of it all is this:  I need to transition to What's Next sooner rather than later.  If the current transition timetable holds, I can squeeze at least three more years out of my current situation.  Pursuing similar work elsewhere is above "flipping burgers" and "being a greeter at Wal-Mart" on my list of possibilities, but not a whole lot above them.

I need to figure out what What's Next looks like.  Ideally, I would like to have a fairly clear vision of my next destination by the end of summer and start working toward it in the fall.

Part of the strategy is to declutter and organize my home AND my office, implement some sort of system of organization (possibly GTD with Ann McGee-Cooper-inspired tweaks), and simplify my current job and other responsibilities as much as possible to allow maximum time and energy for working toward What's Next.

Book and/or website recommendations?
Things to consider?
Transition advice from your experience?
Anything else that might be of help?