Forging My OWN Path

I trudged through the weeds and ended up with hives- literally!  Hives.  From head to toe.  I think that the anxiety and stress of forging my own path has lowered my immunity and so I’ve made the perfect breeding ground for the millions of microscopic pathogens my toddler brings into our home each day.  I’m like a magnet for disease.  That’s what I get for trying to live life on my own terms: itchy, scaly hives.

One thing that I’ve discovered about life outside of the rut is that, unlike the rat who runs endlessly on his trusty wheel, I have no idea where I’m going to begin or end each day.  Well, to be more accurate, I don’t know exactly what each day holds.  Lately it’s been a lot of looking for work that will fit my new school schedule- something that I’ve never been faced with before.  I’ve always worked, but my work has always been the number one priority.  Now, in this new approach to living my life, school is my first priority (after loving my family, of course).  But this means that whatever work I have doesn’t need to be the end all, be all of careers.  Nope, I don’t have to love the work.  I just have to remember that it’s simply a means to an end.  An end that I’ve chosen.

Up until now I’ve let my jobs shape the direction of my career.  When promotions were offered to me I took them because they involved good money, or excellent benefits, or more power.  Never because they were what I had always wanted in life.   As a child I didn’t sit around and dream about the day that I could be a senior widget trainer at Stuff Inc. (a Fortune 50 company, of course!).  I never dreamed about being a freelance writer, penning facinating articles about colon health or genital warts.  No, this was not the way that I had imagined that my life would pan out.

What did I dream about then?  Creativity and…. what?  More creativity!  Over time I realized that graphic design was my passion but, as my father was so quick to point out, artists don’t eat but CEOs do.  Hmmm.  I guess that’s why my kitchen cabinets are stocked with remnants of rice, soy sauce packets and California raisins.  And Joe’s Os, for the kid.  (We should be skinnier with the defecit of food in our house!)

So, I can wake up each morning knowing that I’m in charge (to the extent that anyone is really ever in charge of the future).  I can suffer the uncertainty, and the fear, and the panic because I know that I’m the one who chose this direction- that I made the decision to welcome this craziness into my life.  I just wish that I could pay my bills with determination and gumption and bravery.  I can’t imagine that T-Mobile is going to accept that my cell phone payment will be late this month because I’m forging a new path.  But if you call me and get a “temporarily out of service” message, you can know it’s because I’m my own woman!

Standing at this fork in the road, I look left and see one path, right and see another.  Do I go left or right?  Left or right?  Left or right? For the first time in my entire life, I think that I’m going to head right into the weeds and forge my own path.  How hard can it be?  Someone had to be the first one to go right and then someone else was the first person to go left.  So I’m going to be the person who goes where the path hasn’t yet been established.  I might get lost in the weeds, but I think that might be half of the adventure.