Tag Archives: indecision

Stop Thinking, Just Jump

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I don’t know why I keep going back and forth between new career ventures. Every time I start the process for one, I hesitate, have a mini freakout, go into an unmotivated, want-to-fly-out-of-my-skin frenzy, and then the next morning I wake up and wonder if I’m completely crazy.

Hi, I’m twenty-three and I’m having some kind of not-quite-quarter-life* crisis.

This has been happening to me regularly for the past year, maybe a little longer. The thing is, the longer I sit still and can’t decide, the more anxious I become about it.

I need to decide, for my own sanity but also because I really need to change the direction my life is heading in right now. I keep telling myself that this isn’t forever, it’s just for now, but I’ve finally realized that telling myself that isn’t helping. (Of course, thinking in terms of forever doesn’t help, either, so…)

When it comes down to it, I don’t even know why this is so hard. I can go to school relatively easily. I have oodles of financial aid at my fingertips. I might have to pay back student loans after, but that’s after.

Maybe this is just one of those hurdles I have to get over, and once I do, life will start falling into place. Maybe I need to just stop thinking and jump.

Have you ever been in this position? What did you do?

*Of course, it might actually be a quarter-life crisis if I don’t live to be one-hundred.

Hesitation

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I printed a copy of the readmission form for my community college, dug out my old student ID number, clicked open my pen… and hesitated. Is this really what I want to do? Why is it that I can’t make a commitment lately, even when it’s only for now and not forever? I guess it’s the fear that I’ll spend time and money getting a degree to learn a new skill, only to find I don’t like it when all is said and done.

The reality of the situation is, you don’t know you’ll like or dislike anything until you try it. I didn’t know I’d like the job I’m working now. I just knew I needed a job and that retail would work best for me since I didn’t want to be a web designer anymore and wanted to go back to school. I went into it hoping that I wouldn’t hate it, but I had no idea what it would be like until I actually started working. So far, I like it. I’ve been there for over a month now.

In the same sense, I won’t know that I like ECE until I start taking classes. I might not even know until I’ve done some student teaching. Hell, it might take actually working in the field for a while before I know for sure. I just know that I like children in the 0-4 age group. They’re fun, and happy, and are little sponges that soak up everything you teach them. Their little faces light up when they finally recognize colors, or when they learn how to use the Play-Doh tool properly. They’re tough, hardwired for survival* and learning, and are open to the new, which in turn makes them great teachers to us. They know how to laugh and dance and play without worrying that someone is watching or judging them. They’re proud of each and every accomplishment, no matter how small.

These tiny humans are amazing.

And I guess, when it comes down to it, if I weren’t a little nervous or scared, it would mean that it doesn’t matter to me. It does. It matters so much. Going back to school feels like a second chance to me, a fresh start. When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just knew I had a job waiting if I got a degree in web design, so I did. I don’t want a job to be my sole reason for education this time around. Obviously, one of my reasons for going back to school is employment (because that’s pretty much the sole reason anyone goes to college), but I also can’t stop thinking about teaching. I can’t stop thinking about how much fun it would be to spend my days with children aged from a few months to a few years.

It won’t be easy. I know that. I have to take at least eighteen courses, so fifty-four credits. It will take me about two years to finish the degree. The program director told me that most preschool programs will hire you as a teacher’s aid as long as you’ve already taken some courses and are working on your degree, so I can probably get a part-time job as an aid after one semester and continue working at the store part-time. It’s not going to be easy. I think that scares me a little, too. I’m kind of just scared of life lately, I’ve noticed.

But, it will also be fun. It’ll be a new experience. It’ll be a new career that will enable me to have my own health insurance** and add Mike on, when we do get married, because his job only offers full-time employees health insurance and they refuse to make him full-time. It’ll be a new career that will enable me to work with an age group I love.

I’m nervous. And a little scared. That’s why I’m hesitating, but I won’t know until I try it.

*Yes, that’s a Grey’s quote. Kind of. I can’t find the actual quote, but I know Arizona told Alex that she was in Pediatrics because children are hardwired for survival. Please correct me if I’m wrong or comment with the full quote if you know it. It’s driving me crazy that I can’t find it, and Google is — gasp — no help.

**I can stay on my mom’s health insurance plan until I’m twenty-five, so I have another two years before I have to worry about it, but in all reality, two years isn’t a long time and I want to have my own plan before then so that I’m not taken by surprise. The store I work at now has health insurance, but I don’t make enough to be able to comfortably afford it.

So, what's next?

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The question isn’t, “What should I do for the rest of my life?” It’s, “What should I do next?” Neither are easy to answer. Even though I hated my job, I’m still going through some weird, mid-life crisis kind of depression. I’ve known for a long time that I don’t want “web designer” to be my job description anymore. The thing is, I can’t seem to figure out what’s next. I know nothing is forever, that we are in control of our lives and can change our paths at any time, but I don’t know what I want to commit to right now. I think what’s happened is, being a web designer was like a security blanket; I’ve built the last five years on being a web designer, and now that I know I don’t want to be a web designer anymore, I feel like I’ve lost myself. I’ve completely frozen.

While I’m happy to be rid of that horrible job, I can’t seem to make a decision. I can’t seem to move forward. I’ve been spending my days doing laundry, doing dishes, writing articles for Freaking Bookworm, watching episode after episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and playing Plants VS Zombies. While my goal for Freaking Bookworm is to make some kind of income, I have yet to bring in any income from my book review blog. (Hell, my Amazon store has only just gotten four clicks… and I set it up a couple of months ago.) Don’t get me wrong. I’m having a lot of fun writing over there, but it’s not a job. Not yet, anyway. Right now, I need a job. I’m twenty-two years old. I have a student loan to pay off. I also don’t want to live with my parents for too much longer. (Mike and I really, really miss the privilege of privacy.)

I keep thinking about going back to school. The problem is, every time I think about going back to school, it’s something different. Last time I actually went back to school, I went for Elementary Education and Creative Writing. I ended up so stressed out and sick — as in, a horrible pain flareup — that I dropped out. The next time I started thinking about school again, I thought about just majoring in Creative Writing. When things started going badly with my aunt, I thought about just going for Early Childhood Education. After that, I thought about getting my ABA and becoming an aid for students with special needs. And, most recently, I’ve been thinking about getting my Bachelor’s in Journalism (probably because of the Millennium trilogy). On October 23rd, 2009, I promised myself that I would learn to not overload myself, that I wouldn’t jump into anything again without really thinking about it first. And yet, I seem to keep trying to jump into things. I restrain myself, yes, but I keep trying.

Almost two years later, I still don’t know why I’m sick. I know that stress makes my flareups and symptoms during “remissions” much, much worse. I know that I have to go easy on myself. Even though I fought hard to keep my (horrible) full-time job, I have to admit that working eight hours a day, five days a week was taking its toll on me. And that was a desk job. I wasn’t even doing physical labor! You could say that, okay, it was mental labor, but still. It should not have tired me out so badly that I went home almost every day and either laid in bed or stared at my laptop screen until it was time to pick Mike up from work. Even ignoring all of the bullshit in that job, it was still taking a toll on my health. I hate admitting it, and I certainly wasn’t going to admit it to them, but now I have to admit it. I have to admit it because I want to move forward, and in order to move forward, I have to be completely honest with myself.

So, no, going to school full-time and working part- or full-time is not at all an option — even if I did know that I really, really wanted to go to school for something. If I did know what I wanted, I’d have to work part-time and go to school part-time.

Unfortunately, I don’t know.

Another option I’ve been thinking about is getting a part-time job and spending the other part of my time writing novels and stories (as in, finishing Sade on the Wall and getting an agent for it), and writing for Freaking Bookworm. That kind of life really appeals to me. It’s incredibly, incredibly appealing.

The only problem with that plan is… I’d really, really like for Mike and me to have our own place. He moved in last August. We’d planned on moving out sometime around now. Maybe, if I work really hard, I could make a part-time job, my writing, and my book blog equal the income I would need for us to have our own place.

I could very, very easily get another job as a web designer, where I’d make at least the same amount of money I was making at my previous job. I just don’t want to.

So, I just don’t know.

It’s times like these that I miss being a kid and having a grownup tell me what to do. Now would be a really good time for the grownups to step in.

Oh, look, we're going down THIS path again!

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Confession: I’ve kind of been thinking about going back to school for a while. I’ve been thinking that, if I went back to NVCC — the community college I got my A.S. at — and got a degree in ECE (Early Childhood Education), it wouldn’t take long at all because I’ve already taken all of the regular required classes.

Confession: Things are really not working out working with my aunt. We keep butting heads over projects. She frequently treats me as if I’m not a real web designer, as if I’m some kid interning. She went on vacation for an entire month, leaving me broke. Even if one of the checks we’re owed came in while she’s away, I have no access to it. I don’t even really like web design anymore — at least, not as a career. It’s time for a change. I want to be a writer, but I’m broke now, and need to support myself while I build up that career.

BUT.

There are a lot of cons to going back to school:

  • I’d be back in school again. I’d have to juggle work with school. I’d have a heavy plate — though not as heavy as if I were working on a Bachelor’s like when I was going to Southern.
  • Being a preschool teacher would mean getting up really fucking early. I dealt with it when I was doing my field placement at Southern, but… I dunno. I guess I could suck it up if I wanted it bad enough, but… do I want it bad enough?
  • I’m still paying off about $3,700 in student loans. You know, for the entire half of a semester I went to Southern. It’s insane. I have no idea if I could get the Pell Grant again (free money to go to school), or if I’d have to add to my loan.

I don’t know. I just know that I need to do something different, and that I can’t stand the thought of working a retail job again. I want as stable a career as possible while I work on my writing career, something that I’ll enjoy.

I don’t know. I wish I did know.

I do know that:

  • I want a stable career while working toward my writing career.
  • I’m really sick of the businesswoman world. I am not a businesswoman.
  • I’ve lost interest in web design as a career.
  • I’m broke, and want a stable career that will help me build a life with Mike.
  • I love kids, and I love teaching them.
  • I keep thinking about ECE.
  • Getting a job in the education field is really not hard; teachers are always in demand.
  • Working with my aunt is not really working anymore.

I really need to make up my mind. I mean, it wouldn’t kill me to at least try it, would it?

I wish I could make a decision.

Because I'm somewhere in between

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I think I’m growing out of my “elizawhat” pseudonym. I bought elizabethkaylene.com a while back, and right now it’s redirecting to elizawhat.com… but I’m starting to think I want to move there. Permanently. After all, my name is Elizabeth Kaylene. And, if I moved there, it could also be my writing site (since elizabethbarone.com is taken and I’m not sure whether I want elizabethbarone.net). That being said, maybe I should just get elizabethbarone.net and use that for everything, or use elizabethkaylene.com for my personal blog, and elizabethbarone.net for my writing site.

I just know that I’m growing out of “elizawhat.” The thing that sucks is, my email, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are all “elizawhat.”

Ugh. I am so indecisive.

What are your thoughts?