I’m chasing my dreams full speed until I run smack into a solid wall.
I feel like I’ve been here before.
I have.
I envy those kids who knew what they wanted in high school and had a straight path. That hasn’t been my story.
Let’s not even talk about the lost years, they’re called the lost years for a reason. They took their toll and when they were over, I knew I was supposed to be a hand in the dark for some other lost kid to come. I went back to school to become an elementary school teacher and spent a month in Spain, just a month of immersion, to help me learn Spanish. I cried every day. Lonely. Isolated.
I had to go to Spain to discover I was a homebody,
that I needed my peeps to be close enough to touch.
I’d planned to gypsy my ass around the world, teaching ESL in Africa and Asia before settling into a teaching job here. Yeah, no. Cancel that gypsy caravan.
I came home and threw myself full force into my Education classes. I was Up the Down Staircase. I was To Sir with Love. I’d be Mr. Chips. In the first week of student teaching I realized that when the battle for control is between me and twenty-eight tweens, they can pretty much have their way with me. The school system already has enough crappy teachers.
Another dream crossed off.
The last few years I’ve been flapping my gums about small towns and veterinary offices. Then someone offered me a job working in a small veterinary office upstate.
I thought it through.
I don’t want to be there when animals are being cut open for surgery, I don’t want to see what their insides look like, don’t want to be part of euthanizing them. Sure, I’m the girl you want when you’ve been hit by a car, shot, cut, fallen down, any emergency. Emergencies happen and I snap into survival mode, things get taken care of. I can’t operate at that level daily, don’t want to.
I said I wanted to move. And then I remember the loneliness of Spain. Sure, I want to move. But, I want you all to move with me.
I feel like a dilettante, a quitter, a loser,
like my mouth is writing checks my ass can’t cash.
A friend told me her story. She’d traveled, paid and studied to be an exotic animal trainer. It wasn’t until she was offered a job doing just that that she realized it wasn’t for her. So, I’m not the only one.
It’s all more carving to get the angel free.
carve–verb (used with object)
1. to cut (a solid material) so as to form something: to carve a piece of pine 2. to form a sold material by cutting: to carve a statue out of stone
No wonder it hurts so much.
I have long wanted to be a practicing craftsperson. Despite realizing that dream and then realizing I was wrong, I have still packed up and moved the many tools of my multiple trades more times than I want to admit. Then I found Ttouch and realized that I didn’t have to be the best at something to be good enough to help animals–animals being my true love and passion.
For years I’ve talked about clearing out all those tools. For years I’ve put it off. I even have a reasonable solution that lets me share the tools but they’re still here, unused yet un-shared. Just this week I realized that the sum total of cubic space of my animal-related-stuff is probably 1/10th that of the other stuff. Another indicator that I need to shift a lot of stuff.
Just this week, I also took another look at my desire for a short bus I could turn into a gypsy wagon and become a semi-itinerant Ttouch practitioner. It actually is beginning to look like it could maybe make sense. I could even become a re-enactor and follow the Ren Faires around and be burned at the stake as a witch as the faire finale’. Maybe not that road! Better to visit the myriad of music events we have in North Carolina, especially as my husband will be doing that as a sound engineer. Also easy to take to any sort of place where a Ttouch event would be appropriate-solar panels on the roof, bio-diesel in the tank and off we go.
Jodi, thank you for another wonderful snippet. After tomorrow, you might have no choice but to be a famous writer.
Mrs. Howell
Hey Jodi,
Once again, you say it so well AND make me choke up. You’re not just talking. You’re walking too. And finding out where you do and don’t want go. I too always envied those straight path people. Guess we’re just not wired that way.
xoxoxo
E.
How many of those straight path people do you know who are still on that path? And are happy there?
Actually, I know a LOT of those straight path peeps. One entire side of my family followed a generally straight trajectory from childhood to college to grad school to marriage, children and homes. And I know some less traditional peeps that have always known what they wanted, don’t necessarily make the best living at it, but it’s what they want and they stick with it…all of them are pretty happy.
I’m getting there. With a little help from my friends. 😉
Cool! It’s rare in my generation peeps that I still know. I do see a lot of the 20-30 somethings that get there and I think it’s pretty great.
stop trying to cash checks with your ass
Ah, but Lisa, there was a time, that my ass was my best asset! Today I think it’s my humor.