Trigger: Pulled

So. There's been plenty of indecision happening on this blog over the past few years. And I'm not saying it's stopped forever. But I think my hand has been forced, finally, and I have actually made a real, tangible move.

I am officially signed up for General Chemistry for the fall semester.

I felt like a robot when I did it. I recently acquired the greatest advantage and blessing a professional can ask for: a current, professional mentor. I spoke with her yesterday about my career goals, what I'm doing currently, and what moves I should make. So far, I've hesitated to move at all in my career, because you know what? I love what I'm doing. I get paid nothing (no really. My payment is the newspaper that lands on my doorstep every morning. Effectively, I get paid in clips.), but I figured it's a start, right? I can always self-syndicate this winter, after a years' worth of columns. I'd have to hope that somehow wherever I syndicate, that newspaper would somehow be more capable of paying me well and for the long-term. After our conversation, what I already knew deep down and had tried to deny became brutally clear. Newspapers are dying. This is not a destination with any security whatsoever. I need to have somewhere else to turn for when the you-know-what hits the fan.

Which brings me to where I've always landed before--not really competitive with my contemporaries for anything else other than my current have-fun-and-work-for-free path. Bottom line: if I want to keep doing what I'm doing, I have to find another medium. And if I want another medium, I have to become qualified for that medium.

How to do that? I brought up to her my old Masters' in Nutrition Science/becoming an RD idea. She said, there you go. That's the perfect marriage. Here's what I've realized: the economy, right now, completely sucks. It's hard enough to land the job I want without the market being saturated with thousands of candidates having twice my experience. The only way to be able to freelance the way I want to--even the only way for me to have the flexibility I want to work from home--is to make myself uniquely qualified. To get that freaking masters'.

It's not even that this is my dream, per se. It's this: I want to be an involved parent. I want to be able to write something of meaningful importance and get paid. I want both those things. If I don't want to have to choose, I need to put myself in a position to balance them. I'm going to have to get a secondary Masters' in juggling, but the tradeoff is a much uglier picture. If we hit hard times and I have to work for us to survive (what if G loses his job? Gets injured or sick? Dies, God forbid?), if I don't make a move now, my options are work that takes me away from the kids at all the wrong hours and offers insurance that ranges from zero to bad. If nothing ever happens to my husband, and he retires old and happy, I'm still left floundering for the next 30 years, batting away depression because I can't find enough time to work on a project big enough to help us at all financially. And if I've learned anything over the past three years, it's that I can't be only a mother or only a professional. I have to balance the two, or I'm a mess.

So I had talked with her in the parking lot at the Ivy Tech library, where I do most of my work. We ended our conversation and I promptly walked across campus and got myself signed up for Chemistry. I always thought pulling the trigger would feel better. Or feel like...something. It didn't. I was a robot, just doing what I knew I needed to do. Like, Nora scrapes up her knee, I get my stuff out, clean her up, and put on a band aid because I don't want it infected. It's 4:30; I start dinner because I don't want to go hungry tonight. I find out that my current path as a mother/writer has an expiration date; I sign up for a class.

It isn't pretty or ideal. It isn't even necessarily fun. In fact, I see a lot of anxiety and frustration and struggle with balance happening in the next 5 years. But it's the band aid. It's dinner. It's insurance for the future.

Yep.