Turning Point
Writing hasn’t been at the forefront of my mind this past month, loosing my job has made me think seriously about what I want to do with my life. I have mixed emotions about it all to be honest, a huge part of me is angry and bitter that they couldn’t see the person in front of them, just the fact that I had been ill and therefore not at work. I couldn’t begin to explain to them that I had been dealing with all the abuse I had suffered over the past thirteen years. It just feels as though after seven years of working for them they finally managed to push me out in such a petty way, while other people, whether genuine or not are still there and still continue to take the Michael. I’m now unemployed during a world financial nightmare just before Christmas, great.
On the flip side I was never happy there, the job was something I took while I was still married just because we needed the money at the time, in the end it did bring me more stress than it was worth. Maybe it’s the push that was needed to make me actually look to the future. I have done a lot of reflecting of late and come to few not so shocking conclusions.
Life just seems to be stacking up behind me with no clear direction. Since leaving school and home in 1995 I have spent all my time and effort on surviving the hear and now, moving in with my then boyfriend got me out of the parental feud scenario that we seemed to be stuck in, working those crappy jobs just to earn some money. Then i fell pregnant and priorities shifted to making sure my son had what he needed. I guess what I needed didn’t really get the chance to surface. After we split up I met somebody else, unfortunately there was no time to consider my personal future then either. I fell pregnant after about two weeks of us seeing each other and so the cycle continued, I do what is needed not what is wanted. People always ask me if I regret having the children, and the answer is simple. No. I don’t know many parents who would say they did. The only regret I have is having them so early on in my life and the circumstances they were born into, I wouldn’t change them for the world.
So, now the Children are not around 24/7 I don’t have to be doing a job I hate just to keep the family floating. Doors aren’t open, but they are now slightly ajar. What do I want to do with my life? I have never had something that i knew I could and should do unlike my partner who has always known he was destined to be a geek in the world of computer science. Looking back at the school days I never really got into a particular subject. I enjoyed Art, but I’m not very good at it. I enjoyed IT, but I can’t see me doing it as a career. I enjoyed geography but got thrown out of the class after a miss-understanding about smoking in the toilets…it wasn’t me! (I went outside to do all my smoking!) Outside of school I had a lot of interest in the outdoors. I did the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme with cadets, and I loved walking around with a map and taking the sights in. I also did a course in meteorology with the cadets, which led to work experience in Meteorology (although there wasn’t a great deal of meteorology involved it was mostly planting trees and moving rocks!). I quite like science, but I’m the sort of person who needs to see things to believe them, I can’t be doing with all these physics theories that can’t be proven unless you can get a rabbit and a monkey in space simultaneously doing the hokey cokey.
Having spent a good month thinking about all this and trying to get the image of the monkey out of my head I have come up with what i think is a viable career choice for me. Physical Geography and Geology. It combines a lot of the things I have been interested in in the past, with a few new areas that I think I could get into. Understanding how it all works together and how we can improve the world we live in without destroying it is important to me. It’s also a field that is greatly needed for the survival of the human race, with the current climate change issues and the diminishing resources there is a future for a geologist. I could do that! Maybe it’s the optimists turn to be in charge at the moment but I really do feel that this could hold a very bright future for me, heck I can even combine the art and photography with it as a hobby with all those landscapes. I haven’t completely made my mind up yet, I don’t want to just jump into something like I usually do and give up on it because I never really gave it enough thought, but after reading a few articles and an introduction to Physical Geography that little seed is starting to grow and I’m rather excited. If we can cope financially and the University will have me with the little qualifications I have it might be the career I have missed for all these years. Could this be the turning point my life has needed for so long?
Other than that life is pretty poor at the moment, trying to afford Christmas gifts without my wage coming in is a nightmare. I stopped taking my Citalopram tablets quite some time ago now. I didn’t mention it mainly because everybody always tells you to never just stop taking them, and I didn’t want to hear it. Well, I did and quite frankly there’s been little change, I just have less chemicals in my body than I did before. Just the fact that coming off them didn’t cause any adverse affects makes me wonder whether they actually did anything useful in the first place. I guess I’ll have that conversation with my Psychiatrist this week if I remember, haven’t seen her for months.
Oddly it feels like life (as it is expected to unfold) is being done in a bit of backwards fashion. Family, home, failed marriage are all those things you expect people to do after their career. I’m not saying it’s wrong to break from the norm, on the contrary. Being a sheep in the flock is no fun, but if your not happy then how can it have been the right choice?
