Our second week without Doug was a little more difficult than the first. The kids are becoming more clingy and I find that I am short tempered. Robyn actually cried on two out of four nights of vacation school (her 2nd VBS of the summer) and Garrett kept asking to be a baby again and for me to cuddle and carry him. Right now they both have fevers for the second time in a month so of course I'm a little concerned.
When I first found out that Doug had to travel I felt like this was just another punishment from God for poor decisions and sin in my life. Now I am feeling like this is a time to reflect on my life as an individual, to look at where I've been and figure out where I'm going. The amount of information that I have found out about myself in the last month is incomprehensible.
It seems hard to believe that you could be 30 years old and not know who you are. I think you get so caught up in life and family that you forget about the things that make you happy and events that made you who you are. I look back now at things I liked in high school and wonder why I wasn't smart enough to realize that I could have made something I enjoy, my career. Is this why depression is on the rise? I don't think I'm the only one that feels this way. I think my generation really struggles with making career decisions. Its just a hunch, but I bet the statistics for my generation show that there was the highest rate of undeclared majors up to that point. What are high school guidance counselors even there for? Was anyone even talked to or guided by one of them?
I picked my career because I knew I could make a lot of money without a degree. It wasn't because I especially liked being a computer consultant for pharmaceutical and energy companies. I didn't enjoy being around computer geeks that didn't know how to interact with humans. When you are in a career that is wrong for you it is draining and miserable. You race to get there so you can leave sooner. I know what its like and have no desire to go back there. Now I am only 28 credits away from a degree in business management. You know what, I don't have what it takes to be a manager nor do I want to be one! I don't like to delegate and always feel like I'm putting people out. I am too soft spoken and get walked on too easily. What I do have is a desire to work with people, an empathetic heart and the drive to make a difference. I want to pick something I enjoyed from my earlier days and turn it into my career. I have so many ideas of what I should have done.
What can we learn from this? I think we need to re-evaluate and re-visit the things we enjoyed when we were younger. I never saw a point in looking back before so I had a hard time learning this lesson. I started indulging myself in books and movies that looked interesting and I started learning a lot about myself. I can see why I am the way that I am. The most important part of this process is to share what we have learned with our children. Wouldn't it be great if they didn't have to learn some of the hard lessons we had to learn?
Is it too late for me? My husband doesn't think so. He is always telling me to go for it, but lets be practical, how many families with young children can afford to have one parent working and the other one going to school? Do you just suck it up, get through life and help your kids see what they excel at?
