Having spent roughly two months narrowing and revising a personal and professional goal for my time in New York City, I was not expecting the goals to intertwine, rely on one another and blossom as much as they did.  My professional goal was to learn the ins and outs necessary to become my own business, boss and entrepreneur to harness my skills, education and experiences to do what I love for the rest of my life by starting my own voice studio in the city I love, Eau Claire, WI.  From Logan Tracy, my personal interview and Claudia Catania, I have a renewed passion, drive, and confidence to achieve my goal.  I learned from them, not only some of the most helpful business and marketing tactics, but that we are all people capable to do what we want.  
Until New York, I had never done yoga in my life, and it was a life changing experience to participate in a yoga class with a professional singing teacher and yoga master.  He said that we all have the capabilities to do everything humans can do, the challenge is simply removing the obstacles that prevent us from obtaining what we can already do.  
It was much more difficult and still on-going to work on my personal goal.  I am a very thought oriented person, often analytical with a cut and dry way of living my life and approaching many new and old things.  In New York, I wanted to let go, learn when I could be carefree and go with the flow and enjoy the simpler small things that happened everyday as well as remember them and not take them for granted.  Many of the small things were captured with the help of social media, camera phones and the internet, so the small things were easy to keep track of.  More difficult was letting go. As a first time visitor in New York City, it is almost impossible to 'let go'; there are so many things going on all of the time.  Getting around especially made this difficult to do; one must always be aware of their location or face being lost.  Additionally, many instances if I would have decided to let go I would have missed some valuable information, from the classes we participated in, to the concerts and shows we saw every night.  Not letting go also helped me realize an extension to my original personal goal; could I ever see myself leaving Wisconsin or the Midwest for good; I have a wife and child so this question was particularly important to me.  I discovered that, no matter how much I loved the shows, how much I appreciated my networks, learning experiences and potential future in a big city, family is number one and I want and will make my dreams happen with my family in the area I know and love.  That's not to say I don't have any family vacations planned for the big apple.  
Luke Otto