Changes

This week­end, Red Chief turned 5 years old.  That’s a whole hand, you know.   We had all the hoopla that goes along with it.  We dined at Chuck E. Cheese’s and sub­mit­ted to the boy’s every whim.  I even made the requested rain­bow cake, exactly as ordered.  A rain­bow of col­ors on top, with sprin­kles of color on the inside.  Mak­ing six dif­fer­ent col­ors of icing was a huge mess, and I need to work on my frost­ing skills.  But­ter­cream tastes exactly like toothache, also.   All in all, it was a huge success.   

This is a pre­cur­sor to some big changes.  Life in my house­hold is in a tran­si­tion period. This youngling will be off to kinder­garten in the fall, and that means an empty nest for me. I’ve been very focused on the kids for the last few years, because we’ve always planned for one par­ent to be at home until school years.  Now I’m ready for the next phase and turn­ing a lit­tle more atten­tion back to my own growth.  I’ve been doing a lot of soul search­ing and think­ing about what that will mean over the years.  As I’m fac­ing the actual sit­u­a­tion, my thoughts have taken a sur­pris­ing turn.

Should I just go into the work­force?  Some extra money would be lovely, and a relief for the whole fam­ily.  There’s so much finan­cial stress on a one-income house­hold right now, and we’ve cer­tainly felt it.   I dou­ble majored in col­lege in Eng­lish and His­tory.  I really phoned it in while I was in col­lege, too.  I could have done so much bet­ter, and learned so much more.  The prac­ti­cal side of me wants me to put that edu­ca­tion to good use imme­di­ately, mak­ing money and mak­ing our home more com­fort­able.  But some­thing inside of me is scream­ing to go back and get the edu­ca­tion I really wanted all along.

I’m 33 years old and haven’t taken a math or sci­ence course in roughly 13 years.  But now, I’ve decided to go back to school with the even­tual goal of becom­ing an aero­space engi­neer.  Is that crazy?  If it does, maybe that just means it’s a good fit.  I haven’t ham­mered out the specifics just yet, and the other day I had a mini-freakout when I saw all the reg­is­tra­tion dead­lines I’d missed and the tests I’d have to take.  My awe­some Spousal Unit said the most incred­i­bly sup­port­ive sen­tence to calm me down, “Relax.  You didn’t make this deci­sion on a time line.  We’ll work all those details out.”

I know I’m going to be talk­ing about how I came to this deci­sion, and what it will mean and how it all is com­ing together in the time to come.  For now, I thought I’d just put the bare facts out there.  Part of the point of this blog is to have con­ver­sa­tions with peo­ple about the insane stuff I’m think­ing about and doing, right?  I’m try­ing hard to be a chicken about this, see how I’m using words that belit­tle my emo­tional sta­bil­ity?  But I refuse to give myself an out like that.  Let­ting peo­ple know truly I intend to go back to school for some­thing so dra­mat­i­cally dif­fer­ent actu­ally makes it real.  I need the chance to talk directly, instead of allud­ing to neb­u­lous upcom­ing changes.  So writ­ing is both a relief and a ter­ror to me.

The process of mak­ing this deci­sion was a tough one.  I’ve still got a lot of doubts and prac­ti­cal con­cerns to wig­gle out.  For exam­ple, money has been tight for a while now.  This isn’t directly address­ing that issue.  Even though I do have a cer­tain amount of tuition cov­ered, money issues may become even more press­ing.  Time man­age­ment issues are going to cer­tainly be tricky.  I don’t want my fam­ily to make huge sac­ri­fices for this, and I’m cer­tain I’m going to make some mis­takes.  I’ve got to fig­ure out how to bal­ance my exist­ing life with life as a stu­dent, and even­tu­ally, a career.

I’ll allow myself to be open-minded and change my mind about this, but I sin­cerely mean to give this an hon­est shot.  As long as I’m truly not allow­ing other peo­ple to make my deci­sions, I should not feel any shame in try­ing some­thing that was the wrong fit.  I’m sure I’ll ago­nize and talk about every lit­tle step of the way, and sec­ond guess myself all over the place on here.   But I’ve wanted to try this for as long as I remem­ber, and the only way I can see to deal with this desire is to work towards it.