Tough Decisions

It's hard when you are faced with tough decisions in life. Some people have advised us to make Pro/Con lists...but what happens when the columns are even? We have evaluated our current lives and where we want to be in five years and have found that we have three main goals we would like to accomplish.

1 - Adopt some kids
2 - Stabilize our finances (pay off debt, build our savings)
3 - Get my degree

We have looked at and analyzed (ad nauseum according to Nathan...but hey, that's the OCD in me) our choices for the next step in our lives with these goals in mind. While I admit it is wildly optimistic for me to hope that one choice would yield positive results in all three goals, I had hoped for that very outcome...I thought if I got three check marks next to a choice it would make the decision a little easier.
Now we are stuck, because no option allows for all three goals to be realized. We must weigh each goal and decide which is the most important and make our decision accordingly... while also considering the Pro/Con list and adding the weight those Cons and Pros...

The hard thing for me is deciding which Con I could live with. Some are heftier than others - but all are still Cons. I could choose one path that would help us financially, but would leave me alone for months at a time, thousands of miles away from any family in a country where I do not speak the language. Another would enable us to adopt, but I would have to deal with SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) which is scary when I have a history of depression. Yet another choice would place us close to a small amount of family, in a beautiful climate, but would limit my school options and I'd find myself co-habitating with rather large multi-legged creatures...

I wish I could peek into the future and see just a sliver of my life in 2-3 years...to know which choice to make, which path to take, which Cons to choose.