When I Grow Up, I Want to Be…

Unemployed while holding a Master’s Degree in Education sure isn’t where I thought I would be at 41. Similar to my purple hairdo (I’m so happy that pic to the right isn’t recent), this situation has caused me to stop and consider (once again), “Now how in the Hell did I get here?” But, I can’t blame my hair stylist for encouraging me to ‘Rock This Shit’ on this go-round. I’m going to go ahead and take full on credit for getting myself here. My mindless taking of the next expected step in each career decision I have made over the course of my life got me here. I haven’t deliberately planned my jobs around my passions. Instead, I’ve chosen uncomplicated and safe.

I could say I was forced into this situation, but somewhere around 8 am on March 26^th, I uttered out loud, “Please help me be done with this job soon ‘cause I can’t keep being the one to bite my tongue.” I received the email that I was terminated that evening at 5:17 pm. I’m pretty sure the old adage of being careful of what you ask for applies here. I had been writing down my desires for a new job and reading over them daily. Full-on Law of Attraction practices were in place; I knew to write my wants as if they already existed:

• I enjoy working with nice people who appreciate me.
• I appreciate my increased income.
• I love that I get to travel and work when it fits my schedule, as well as my kids’ lives.
• I am so happy that I get to use my strengths of organization and writing.

In Costa Rica, I spoke with a lady who communicated with a shaman. He had given her instructions on how to write the universe a request for your desires. He gave six directives, and I was spot-on about speaking of my wants as if they were already manifested. However, one of the other directions said to be extremely specific about what you want because whatever you leave out, the universe will decide for you. Regrettably, I didn’t receive this wisdom until a month after being fired. In classic fashion, I had forgotten to add a P.S. for the universe that implied that this great, new job would exist before I lost my previous one.

In retrospect, if I hadn’t been fired, my ass wouldn’t have been kicked into gear to really hunt for a new career; I would have continued on in my safety-net of a job, despite its sub-par conditions. Even though I knew the company I worked for held no future for me, perusing jobs on LinkedIn was a side time activity. I don’t think this is too far from the norm of many others. Often, people (including myself) take a job thinking that it will at least provide income until what they really want comes along, but then a habit is formed that is easier to maintain than continuing to hunt for what would be a more perfect fit. Many people I know survive daily in a job that is mediocre at best, but safe. There are too many memes available about dreading Mondays, the grind, and work in general, to deny that a large percentage of individuals are working in a job that does not correlate with their passion.

As adults, many of us have strayed so far away from what sparks our soul and awakens our spirit. We grow up hearing “You can be anything you want to be,” yet, somewhere along the way, we settle for a job that gets our bills paid and possibly provides decent health insurance and a retirement plan. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most of us spend many of our waking hours earning money so that we can enjoy spending our earnings during our other non-working hours. Therefore, it would behoove us to not just enjoy, but really love the hell out of, our profession. I’ve been called “Moonbeam” before for my pie in the sky thinking, but I cannot believe for one second that spending a multitude of our waking hours working in a job that we don’t love the shit out of is anywhere near the master plan for human existence.

I mentioned that I got myself into my own career mess by blindly following the expected path set out before me. I literally think I made the decision (non-decision) to be a teacher because I had always been a good student. Simple as that. It surely wasn’t because I had a deep love of children and imparting knowledge. You couldn’t get me to babysit when I was a teenager and although I liked stickers, my favorite part of helping teachers was marking things wrong with a red pen. During high school, I mentioned that I had thought about being an elementary teacher, and a few scholarships later for choosing a major in Education, my future was basically streamlined. My first university course in Education scared me right into the counselor’s office to change that decision. Within the timeframe of about two weeks, I had changed my major to Criminal Justice, Veterinarian, Court Stenographer (how a university that costs $17,000 a year can offer this as a degree I haven’t a clue), Writing, and then back to Education, based on the advice of an upperclassman. His words were, “What are you going to do with a degree in Writing? At least get a teaching degree, maybe Middle School with Language Arts, and then you can have that as back up.” With that, a decade later I looked up and realized that my career was never quite the perfect fit.

To imagine me during my last few years of teaching, picture just a few notches above Cameron Diaz’s character in Bad Teacher-maybe the nicer, elementary-teacher version. When some of the final years got really bad, I would drive to school sucking on a grape-flavored cigar, find a parking spot, and inhale as many deep breaths that time allotted before I trudged into the building. I spent all of my free moments searching for a new job, which on one particular day was while my students were sitting cross-legged on the floor of the gymnasium for a school-wide program. On my phone, I came across a position at the city zoo that listed cleaning up elephant poop as part of the job description. I am not afraid to admit that I contemplated that job simply because I knew it would be quiet- because children do not stop talking. Like ever. While getting a divorce halfway through my teaching career, I saw the episode of Friends in which Phoebe changed her name to Princess Consuela Banana-Hammock. I truly considered changing my name to Ms. Gorgeous. I figured since I would hear my name whined at least fifty times a day, along with a waving hand, I should at least get some kind of positive out of the torture.

2015 was my last year as a teacher. I was still updating my resume’ and sending out applications any chance I had. I recall hearing a comedian say that when adults ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, it is because they are looking for ideas. I found this funny as hell but, mid-chuckle, I realized I was just given a writing lesson for the next day for my class of first graders. One day later, I eagerly scanned my 6-year-old students’ ideas to find some glimpse of motivation to pursue a direction (any direction) to find an exit out of the business of teaching.

I have established a pattern (that I’m hoping to change btw) of holding on too long to crap in my life. This forces the universe to literally SHOVE me out of my habit. As was the case, I literally broke my way out of teaching by breaking my foot during a margarita-induced spring break celebration. My break was gnarly enough that I missed not only the rest of the remaining school year, but also couldn’t begin the next school year. During the time off, I aligned to the remote job that I was truly grateful for, yet, lost just a few months ago.

So, here I am, jobless as well as partner-less, so I’ve had ample time to reflect on not only what am I good at, but also to ponder: what do I want to be when I grow up? I’ve had a gamut of jobs throughout my lifetime:

• Dairy Queen
• 5 7 9 Clothes Store
• Fashions to Go
• The Shoe Works
• Lone Star Steak House
• The Indiana State Fair
• Creations Craft Store
• Camelot Music Store
• After Care Teacher
• Tutor
• Kroger
• Target
• Front Desk Operator
• Steak and Ale
• NBD, Bank One, Chase
• Work Study – Front Desk at College
• 1^st, 4^th, 2^nd Grade Teacher
• State Worker Office Temp
• Telephone Dispatcher
• Joe’s Crab Shack
• Oaken Barrel
• Pure Romance
• Office Manager/Accounting
• Computer/Data Entry
• Office Coordinator
• Front Office Partner / Accounts Payable

I’ve learned something at each one that guided me to where I am now, which is a time that I’ve been given the opportunity to figure out just what exactly a job that I love the shit out of would be. At not quite the mid-point of my life, I’ve developed many skills, so I’m good at a lot of things, but that’s just not good enough for me anymore. I’ve read books for help guiding me with this: Finding Your Own North Star by Martha Beck (it’s big as shit but I read it) and by Jen Sincero, one of my favorites, You are a Badass.  A tidbit of knowledge that continues to pop up is to take notice of any activity that you lose track of time while doing. I’ve also found that by looking back on my life, I can’t ignore a theme-something that continually popped up but seemed so natural to me that I didn’t notice it.

While in elementary school, there was a newspaper published for children titled, “The Peanut Butter Press.” Kids could send in poems, jokes, puzzles and stories to be published in this child-created newspaper. If your work was chosen, you were notified through mail. (Not email-this was the 1980s, people. You had to anticipate and wait on that shit for days upon days!)  I remember receiving the exciting letter that a poem I had submitted was chosen for publication. To this day, I remember how proud I was to see my words in print. This love for writing followed me into high school, where my favorite class was with Susan Avery, in which we would alternate between reading some slightly eclectic book, like The Martian Chronicles, to creatively writing towards some specific genre. I was also the Editor-in-Chief of the high school yearbook. Again, opening up that annual and seeing my name beneath stories and surveys felt so damn good, even if everyone else was just looking at the pictures.

In college, I took a creative writing course. One day, I was so involved in writing a story about my upcoming wedding that when the professor kept yelling a name, I only looked up on the 5^th time to find everyone in the class staring at me. I had heard her each time, but why stop my flow? And, I can now admit that my favorite part of teaching was creating the weekly newsletter. In my most recent position, I delighted in creating website and social media content about office furniture when I don’t even sit in a chair to write!

So, it has taken me some time, but I can see that my passion in life is writing. I certainly do not claim to have all of this figured out. I am literally paying for a domain name to be able to write, which is quite the opposite of getting paid to do so. I am currently living off of a nest egg that I would have preferred to dip into when I was okay with letting my hair go gray. And, I feel I need to make a disclaimer: please don’t quit your job or do things that get you fired because I got you all worked up about following your passion. I support self-strength for everyone and being broke sure as hell doesn’t exude a strong, bad ass vibe.

I am solid in my mental, though, that I will continue to write because I love connecting to others through written word. I love making people laugh with some random smart-ass words set in truth and to think that my thoughts are inspirational to another person literally fills my heart more than the combination of chocolate and peanut butter. I will not spend my free time creating website content for my employer so that he can live his dream. I might take a job to help me pay my bills and feed my children but not at the sake of staying vigilant towards my goal of getting paid to do what I love. The following Steve Jobs quote popped up on my feed today and it fit too perfectly with this blog to not to share it:

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.”

I’ve had a few interviews in the last month~all of which didn’t work out but also all of which inspired hope for a connection beyond that moment. Surprisingly, given my current circumstances, I find many times each day in which I feel peaceful. I have only worried like maybe once if this means I have lost all connection with reality. I more often than not feel like my soul is saying, “Game On Universe!” and I unequivocally expect to win.