illegitimi non carborundum

Peeps, I gotta say it: I miss academia. I miss being challenged on a regular basis, and learning new things, and the smell of musty classrooms and old bunsen burners. I enjoy doing massage, but it doesn't satisfy my school-nerd-side, and it's just so hard to make it a full-time gig. And my other part time job is boring me to tears (though at least it pays OK and gives me benefits with so little time working). Problem is, I have NO FUCKING CLUE what to do about it. I will do MT for a little while, but it's certainly not something I want to do forever. I like that I'll be able to do it on the side at any point, or part time when we have kids. But I'm still looking for that major career that is proving to be completely elusive. It always feels like most of my friends and cohort have it all figured out. People my own age are doctors, engineers, social workers, teachers, IT professionals... honest-to-god careers. And they seem happy doing them! I think the closest thing I've come to liking my job is doing massage and painting houses (which I did for one summer in college). For some reason I always end up choosing the thing that is not very challenging because as soon as things get challenging I get anxious, panicky and stressed. So I avoid those things like the plague, and end up being bored but less stressed. Not sure why that happy medium of stimulated but not overwhelming is so absent in my life. I've thought about all kinds of health-related careers focusing on patient care (like PA, NP, MD, DO, RN, etc), but what always gets me is that I'm not so sure I want to interact with patients all day long. Yet the idea of doing research is so isolating and formal, I don't know that I'm cut out for it. There are aspects about both of those paths that I really love, though. That's the part I like about massage -- see clients on a 'regular' basis, but there's a lot of physical work involved and less talking. What I dislike is that it's unregulated, isn't academic, and is hard to make a living doing.

I apologize to those of you who hear me rant about this on a semi-regular basis... it does help to write it out sometimes. I always hope for a nugget of wisdom to emerge from my brain... like, "Oh, I totally never thought about this one job that would perfectly meld all my favorite things without being overwhelming!" I have a feeling like I'll be waiting for that moment for-evah.

On a happier note, things are not nearly so grim as they were up in VT. At the very least, L and I are in the black (still owe a crapload of debt to pay off, but we're able to chip away at it instead of coming up in the negative every month.) My MT gig is a good one, albeit still an arduous process to get going. I think L will be happy being back at his old job instead of where he's been for the past few months. So that's good.

Maybe I'll just try to enjoy the summer weather. It's beautiful outside, and that always does wonders for my mood. There's a tasty-sounding recipe for Papaya, Jicama and Avocado salad that I'm going to try tonight. Mmmmmmmm.