Therapeutic Blog Dribble

I feel that I have made my decision.

I will return to school.

Hopefully this coming September… I am now taking some time to weigh my choices and options and what the BEST choice and option is for ME to take.

I feel that this is a step in the right direction.  I need routine and reason back in my life and school would give me both of those things.  I need goals to work towards and I need to stay somewhat busy or [I find] I get bored and then begin to overthink everything and anything until I make myself crazy.  Though I am excited about the prospect of continuing my education I am trying not to overthink it.  I had to remind myself repeated times today that I CAN DO WHATEVER I WANT, it’s up to me to provide the life that I want for myself and my family.  I need to stop worrying if I can and just try.  I am fearful of being the oldest person in my classes, lucky for me I look younger then my 33 years but still, I will know that I am older then most of my peers.

I want to be busy again and to feel that I have a purpose, that I am working towards something.  I want to take no more then 3 years to obtain a [new] College Diploma and I wish to find gainful employment before I am 40.  That gives me a little less then 10 years to put myself there.  I miss having control over my life and I wish to gain it back ten fold. I want control over my house, my car, my life, my bank account, my FUTURE.

I can almost pin point now where I fell off the happy wagon and onto the depressed train to breakdown town.  It was a year and a half into my first College Program, I want to say it was 2004.  My interest in my courses – and life for that matter- began to fizzle.  It all fizzled away to a point where I did not care.  By the Fall of ’04 I just quit.  I stopped going to school.  I stopped caring about myself.  I became very depressed.  I stopped socializing and started isolating.

I tried to bust out of it in 2007, going back to school for Dental Administration. Again, I craved the routine of school and the hope of a new and better career.  It worked well in the sense of getting me back out in the world and back to a positive routine.  It backfired in the end though because I really hated that Program and I knew I hated it from the first month.  Instead of choosing something else I was determined to finish what I started.  After I finished I felt very deflated and disappointed.  School had failed me and I had failed myself.  I became very discouraged with education after this time.  I was also discouraged and distrusting of myself.  I felt as though I had made a bad decision and wasted time and money on a Program that I have no use for.  I loathed Dental Administration so much.  I thought it would help me be less terrified of the Dentist.  It did not.  Now I know too much.

So now, another decade later and I have not stopped thinking about going back and I have decided it would be a good idea to try.  I feel I have nothing to lose, I just need to choose wisely.  I need to be smart in which program I decide to give my time and money to because I want to come out of it happy to search for a job in my field.  I realize I may not find a job right away and that is ok too, at least I will have upgraded my education and will be ready or more equipped to work.

In hindsight I wish I would have just started up another Program the September following my completion of Dental Admin.  I wish I would have just kept going until I found something that I could do/liked more then Dental.  I spent many years skeptical of College and now I feel like it is my only answer.  Without it I am destined to work another slew of low-skill level jobs that I will never be happy in. I know “they” say “people are never happy in their job” but I still REFUSE to let that allow me to be miserable in my job.  I don’t want to panic anymore about work.  I don’t want to throw up before every shift.  I don’t want to be stuck in another toxic job.  There is more to life then a horribly toxic job that sucks your soul out and never pays enough.

So, hopefully, here is to the new chapter of my life.  May the force be with me and may I make the right call in my Program selection.