Dreaming Paris

Okay, so to those of you reading, this may look like I'm having an identity crisis, or midlife crisis, or something, but I think it's actually the culmination of a decade long midlife/identity crisis. I've written about some of this stuff before, and it's no secret that I've been tugged in the past to make more of an effort to develop my artistic side. It's because of this inner struggle that I first joined MW, so some of you have been along for the ride the whole time. As a result, you've seen me change in some ways, stay the same in others, and you've probably read some of the same whines over and over. Bless you! So I come home today from a strained tutoring session in which my student tries to gleefully upset me by telling me what his dad and grandmother thought of me calling and cancelling our session yesterday and asking to change it to tomorrow (I have been experiencing some serious tennis elbow and lack of sleep, which only aggravated the elbow worse to the point that sleeplessness and pain killers were making it impossible for me to keep my eyes open yesterday, so not only did I cancel my tutoring, I cut short my class). Anyway, whatever dad and grandma thought, I didn't understand because neither did the kid. It had something to do with resting and money, but made no sense. All I knew for sure is that the kid understood that dad and grandma weren't happy with me, and he relished the telling of it. Oh, well. So I get home feeling out of sorts, which is sad because when I left my class today, I was feeling great. In spite of my elbow, it was my last class with that group, and they were my favorite group. They gave their visual presentations today, and I was blown away by the excellence of their work! It restored my faith in students wanting to do well, and it also boosted my flagging ego because they said such nice things to me. It had been a wonderful class, and I'll miss the dynamics of it. ANYWAY, as I was saying, I get home feeling out of sorts, which happens a lot at the end of tutoring this kid, and all of a sudden the thought comes to me I really hate being on display. And that's when it hits me! There's my problem. It's not just needing new challenges, it's the daily necessity of being on, of trying not to do things that might reflect badly on you, always being conscious of what others could be thinking about you, especially if you misstep, the every day, day after day necessity of being with people. I am a true introvert. I love people, but they drain the life out of me. I was not made to be social on a daily basis. I do not get energized the more I'm with people like some do. I MUST get away. I have to have down time so that I can recharge. I literally wilt after being with people for an extended period of time. So that just gives me one more reason why I must arrange my career to suit the person that I am. You know, having to lead college students into discovering what they want out of life and creating plans to manage how to get there has probably had a drastic effect on me right now, as well. Here's some advice for anyone who might end up where I am, don't teach a College Success course when you're in the middle of a midlife crisis. Then again, maybe it's the best thing to do. There you are, standing in front of 20 or more young people telling them to verbalize who they are and what they want, and encouraging them to follow that inner leading, while knowing you haven't done the same.

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Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird? - Pablo Picasso

Okay, so I've been thinking, my entire approach to this job thing has been all wrong, and I've known it for years. I know what I like, I know what I want, and I've been dabbling in it on and off since forever, and it wasn't until I took the plunge with tutoring that I finally put it all on the line to have my own business, but the problem was, it was the wrong business. I'm tired of tutoring. I don't mind doing it here or there for some extra money, but not as a regular business. I don't care if that's what I ended up knowing so much about, the fact is, I used my tutoring job to learn other skills, creative skills, skills that made me happy, and now it's time for me to follow my heart totally. It's the only thing that's going to work for me. Instead of sitting around day after day looking through ads and applying for jobs that I'll never get, and wouldn't like even if I did, playing at life the way the rest of the world does it, yet actually just wasting my time working cruddy jobs while waiting around for that perfect job to come along and throwing away what precious time I have left on this planet, I am going to use that energy to pursue what I want, never mind if I make any money at it. It's when you pursue what you're meant to pursue that things fall into place, and let's face it, nothing has ever really fallen into place for me while I've attempted to "do the right thing," which was never, and could never, be the right thing for me. I've fallen into a couple of good opportunities when I needed them, which seems to be the way life works, at least for me (rarely do I ever get what I really go after when I've been all about the financial aspect of things), and I've used them to my advantage, but they were temporary detours on what should have been a more straight forward path if I weren't such a wimp. Okay, so I'm a late bloomer, a little dim on the uptake, but by golly I'm going to pursue my artistic talents. Remember when I was posting those drawings and paintings for awhile? I was so happy then. I loved going to the figure drawing class. I loved spending time mixing my colors and experimenting. I simply CANNOT continue my life as I have been. I just CANNOT. I have a good side gig going with teaching and tutoring, which leaves me with time to work at my art. I have a studio now, one I haven't even used as a studio since it was put up. It's been my study while going to school, and then my office while developing the tutoring business. It's time to turn it into what it was meant to be, dadgummit! An artist's studio. But what am I going to do with my desk now? Ha! I know exactly what I can do. Oh, yes, this is going to work. You see, over the years I have gathered together supplies that will keep me going for months, so there won't be much outlay in replacement materials for a little while, at least. No real overhead. I have canvases, paints, brushes, drawing pencils of all kinds. I also have art and graphic software. And I've kept up my AJArtworks business license. So this is very, very doable. But what about your bills, you say? Well, the creditors are willing to work with me to make payments affordable until I'm making more money. They have to be these days if they want any of their money back. This might actually be a pretty good time for me to pursue this, when the credit people are willing to be somewhat lenient. And don't they say, "Do what you love and the money will come?" Well, it never has come for me while doing things I didn't really love, just liked or tolerated fairly well, so what do I really have to lose? But what about the economy? Art isn't something people are likely to want to spend money on right now. True. And yet, my daughter just attended a 3 day anime convention at which people threw their money away on things that they loved, so if I just create things that people can love, it could work. It will take some doing, but I don't mind that, not when in pursuit of a new project and doing something that brings me joy. But what about your husband, you say, and having to work full-time while going to school? Well, nothing was different when he was first offered this opportunity, and it didn't look any more doable then than it does now, but he's going with it. It will work because that's what he wants, and it's his time. If it means my daughter and I don't see him for the next 2 years because he's working and going to school, well, that's what it means, and he'll have to do what he needs to do to succeed. Between the two of us, my daughter and I can keep him fed and clothed in clean clothes. We can share the duties of the house, and if it means sometimes the house is a bit...disorganized, well, what else is new? I lived like that for years while rearing children. Still live like that when C and I are both having bad days. But the bad days would be considerably less on my part if I didn't have unhappy things to dwell upon because I'd be too busy doing things that make me happy, yes? Eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, I will be successful as a painter of pictures, a mural artist, whatever, with my educational sidelines to fill in any gaps if necessary, and my husband will be able to quit work and be a full-time student. Should I give myself a time limit, though? What if I'm right here in the same place a year from now, getting further and further behind the financial curve? That would be very, very bad. You see, it's those kinds of thoughts that make me not do what my heart tells me to do, and then I make very bad decisions, like settling for jobs that pay crap and don't allow me to fulfill my potential, which just leads me right back here to this very same place of soul-searching and unhappiness. You know they say you need an education to get anywhere today, but it doesn't guarantee that you'll get anywhere, especially since degrees now are a dime a dozen. All I can say is that the best my degrees have given me is a slight increase in pay from clerking and food service work, but not much. My son, the pizza delivery driver, was making almost as much as I was as a supervisor (okay, I also had insurance, which is a biggie, but still). On my own, I didn't even make a living wage. So why should I work so hard doing something I only like sometimes for pittance, when I can do something I love for pittance...and maybe, because I love it and infuse it with my passion for it, more than pittance? Okay. I'm really scared about this, you know. And it feels as though I'm sacrificing my family for myself yet again, and if I bomb, I've only made yet another bad decision. But I can't back down now. I'm here. I know what I want to do. I want to succeed. I have everything that I need, including time, which used to be my excuse for not pursuing it before. I was too busy making a living and too pooped when I came home to do more. If not now, when?

How could you reach the pearl by only looking at the sea? If you seek the pearl, be a diver: the diver needs several qualities: he must trust his rope and his life to the Friend's hand, he must stop breathing, and he must jump. - Jelalludin Rumi

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I'm terrible at it. I seem to make the wrong ones. I think they're good at the time because they're practical, they make sense, and for anyone else, they WOULD be good decisions. Problem is, I am not, at heart, a practical person. Well, no, I guess that's not true. How should I describe what I'm like? I like to be practical in the sense that I'm good at coming up with solutions when things are broken around the house, or I'm trying to make physical things work. I have a great deal of common sense in anything that has to do with my hands, making things, that sort of thing. But when it comes to making decisions about living, I follow my heart, even after I've taken all the steps to be a practical person and do things that ought to make me a success in my chosen career-education. But I'm just not happy with those decisions over the long haul. I always find a new challenge exciting and exhilarating, and I'll love whatever my job is when it's new, because I'm having to test myself and come up with ways to make what I'm doing better. I love doing that. But eventually I reach a point of saturation, a point where I feel, "Okay, I know how to do this, and I know I can do it well, what's next?" This is a HORRIBLE way to feel when you have to pay for a daughter who needs health care (not to mention myself now that I'm getting older and more creaky) and a lifetime of student loans because you end up very unhappy. I just don't have what it takes to stick it out after a certain point. My job as tutoring center supervisor lasted two months shy of 8 years, the longest I've held any job, and the only reason it did is because my crew kept changing, so I was meeting these wonderful people from all over the world, and I kept developing creative challenges for myself in order to build my skills in multimedia, but eventually I was simply bored out of my mind silly with tutoring. I am now on the Board of Directors for the National Tutoring Association. It's an organization that I believe in, and I feel honored to have been chosen. It also looks good on my resume. But I'm tired of tutoring, folks. I accepted being on the board because it was the practical thing to do to continue to advance in the field of education, and I was flattered. I like the sound of it, "I'm on the Board of Directors, blah, blah, blah." As long as I'm on it, I'll do what's necessary, and I'll continue to create things and be a presenter at the conventions, etc., but frankly I resent any of the time it takes away from other things that are in my heart to do. I say I want to revise the book I wrote, and I know how to make it better, but I keep putting it off and putting it off because...I ALREADY DID IT! I've written TWO tutoring books (and I actually like the first one I wrote for my center better) and to do it again is a waste of my time (or so my heart says). I've proven I can do it. I've learned what goes into it. I have no desire to be a tutoring expert and write book after book on the subject, I just had fun testing myself. Capice? I know now that the reason I entered education is because it was safe. I'm a shy person at heart, someone who has to exert herself and push through barriers to connect with the world. You know why I do it? Because I love people and hate being afraid. But I'm afraid. I was never afraid in school. I excelled in school. It was my comfort zone. It continues to be my comfort zone. But I'm not happy staying there! Yes, right now I love teaching. Every 2-4 months I experience a completely new class, and right now, I'm still in the tweaking phase, I'm still creating new ways to do what I do. But going into my fourth class of teaching the same subject, I'm feeling those pangs of boredom again. I've proven to myself I can do it, and I can do it well. I will always love getting up in front of people in order to help them learn something new. Teaching is in me. That's weird when you consider my shyness, but I guess it's because I've been given permission to lead. It's an agreement between me and the audience, and as long as I'm in that role, it's okay. It was the same when I was in plays in school. As long as the role was defined, I was okay. But please don't make me push myself forward on behalf of myself. I suck at it. I really do. It was a real effort to develop my online tutoring business, but because I put myself into a role that others accepted, I was able to do  it, though I'm sure I could have done it better had I been someone other than me. Money was a factor in closing down, but it was also that part of me that was tired of tutoring and relieved that I had an excuse to close it down. Anyway, I was saying that teaching is in me, but just as everything else I do, I can't do these things over the long haul. I need breaks, I need times of doing something totally new and different, and then, if I come back to teaching, if it's a new topic, I'll love it again. Do you know what I never tire of? Planning things out and working with my hands. But even there, I always need a new project to do. I've done all kinds of artsy, craftsy things over my lifetime, but once I learned how to do it well enough to understand what went into it, I moved on to something else. I can crochet, knit, sew, decorate cakes, cane chairs, build/repair small pieces of furniture, paint walls decoratively, throw pots on a wheel, do ceramics, fill a home with decorative touches, and so on, but always, I've moved on to something else. Sewing is a chore for me now unless I were to come across a beatiful piece of fabric that moved my imagination to find the perfect pattern to create a new dress for myself, but I'm so fat I wouldn't enjoy it. I look at my walls and think I want some brighter, happier colors in the house, but the thought of painting them makes me tired. I don't have small children to make fun birthday cakes for any more. I do love the thought of getting out and working in my yard except that it's just too, too hot. I wilt after ten minutes when I try and get horrible, blinding headaches. None of this is here nor there, what I'm leading up to is the fact that something I never get tired of doing, maybe because the subject matter always changes, is drawing and painting, yet those two things are always left to last to do because my practical side tells me I should be doing all those other practical things that ought to be bringing a decent living wage into our coffers, even though they're not and never have because I just don't have the drive and follow through to climb the ladder of an educational career. I'll think about moving forward and maybe eventually becoming a dean or even a campus president because that's the way my mind works. I do like challenges, I do like testing myself. But I know that once I got there and could say, "I did it!" I'd be ready to quit. I'd actually hate the day to day of those kinds of jobs because it doesn't feed my soul the way art does. See, we're back to the way I'm led by my heart, even when I try so hard to be practical. It's my heart that doesn't allow me to remain content in any job I've had. It's my heart that pulls at me with such force that even when I determine to keep on keeping on for the sake of the people I love in my life, I end up falling on my face. I wish that I could be someone who could find peace and contentment in the knowledge that I'm taking care of my loved ones, making life good for them, but I'm not. I'm selfish. I need what I need, and when I don't get it, I'm a mess. A wreck of a human being. And here I am, 50 years old and $50.000 in debt with student loans, not to mention a whole lot of other debt, and I'm contemplating spending the rest of my life in the field of education with horror (now that I've once again come against that wall of boredom when I thought that perhaps this time, finally, I'd found something I could continue to love), wondering what on earth I've done to myself, and by extension my family, by deciding to do something that sounded practical at the time. Lifehacker had an article about websites that help you to make decisions, and I decided to try one of them just for fun. Heh. Like I didn't already know the result of the query before I asked it, namely, which career path should I choose, art or education? Anyway, the site is Let Simon Decide, and here are the final screenshots.

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you'd think I'd have written more about French things, wouldn't you? I love France and the French language, and I can't live without some artistic creativity in my life, yet my blog never really seems to reflect these two very important things about me other than in a rather shallow way. In fact, if you followed my life, you'd probably be hard pressed to discover that these two things have meaning for me other than in the bric a brac I surround myself with. I have French calendars and pictures and a studio full of art supplies, but just try to find a minute when I'm actually spending time learning more about France or its language. When was the last time I drew or painted? Oh, but wait! Just a couple of days ago I got onto a Google Earth/Flickr smashup and explored the city of Paris. It took me forever to find the Eiffel Tower. I was so close, but didn't realize it was on the OTHER side of the river, and when I did manage to land on top of it, I still didn't know it! I was saying, I know this is where it has to be, but where IS IT, DADGUMMIT! And then suddenly I could see it. It doesn't say on that particular map that that's what it is. If you go directly to Google Earth it's a no brainer. The problem is, all things French and all things art are not what pull in the money in this household. They are the things that I dwell on when I have oodles of free time and I'm IN THE MOOD. That's a very big determinant there, that IN THE MOOD thing. You would think that the two things that I love so very much would be things that I'm always in the mood for. What's up with that, anyway? My coffee and end tables have shelves underneath. Most of the space on those shelves is taken up with art and travel magazines. Do I ever read them? But I MIGHT. Some day. When I have time. And I'm IN THE MOOD. Otherwise my time is taken up with figuring out how to make my blogging and content management systems work. Or finishing another degree. Or rearranging my house. That last has been a long time in happening because I've just been too tired the last couple of years. I can feel a major house improvement coming on, though, as soon as my current job is over. I will go through my magazines eventually. I always do. I can't seem to do things in small increments. It's all or nothing with me. So if my current interest is my business, then most of the things you'll find me doing have to do with that. When I have free time, I'm not going to paint because once I start, I'm going to want to spend all of my time doing that, but I can't because I have business related things to do. Do you see? Do not distract me from whatever mood I'm in or absolutely nothing will get done at all. I'll feel lost. When I was learning French, almost all my waking moments were taken up by it. I was taking a class, reading books, surfing the web for new resources, practicing it with my tutors. THAT was my focus. And then it ended. When I was determined to take more time for art, I went to drawing classes, took lessons in the Golden whatsit that master painters used to design their paintings. I spent whatever time I could on it. It didn't last as long as the French thing because it's so much easier to bring books around with you and practice than it is art supplies. Art takes a lot of time and space and it just hasn't fit into my life the way I would have liked it to. So I settle for graphic design things. Playing with photos and logos and creating advertising brochures and flyers for my job at work. Because I must be able to create things. I'd go nuts if I didn't. What do I do for fun? I watch TVs and movies. I read romance novels. I go out to eat. Everything else is work. Even when I do it because I enjoy it. Learning about France and its language, painting, it's all work. And work takes focus. I can't focus if I'm not IN THE MOOD.

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