Happiness

I feel I must share my happiness--I haven't felt truly happy in my life for years. I have had moments of happiness, joyous days and whatnot, but I don't think I've felt generally/regularly happy & contented since before I left for vet school. It feels so awesome (restful!). My decision not to go back to school right now, I think, has a lot to do with that. Not because I don't want to go to school, persay, but because when/if I go to school, I want it to be for the right reasons, all in good time. I kept putting things off that I desperately wanted to do, in order to 'get my life in order' first. Now, I've realized it's going to take a while to get my life in order (and in the meantime 'Now' is all we have, so I might as well make the best of it). It's been almost a year since I've been back home, and I don't feel like I've straightened out a single thing despite months of applying to jobs, thinking about school, etc. So, *aha!* perhaps by doing the things that I love, my life will straighten itself out--passion leading to what I need, and all that. In just a week, I've gone to a community meeting about a planned bike-trail in Lexington (yay! reminds me of Boulder!!), attended the Wednesday dance classes at Mecca that I've been aching to join in, kept my kitchen fairly clean, and continued to work at Worlds Apart, but in a happier frame of mind.
Several people have been a little bewildered by my decision not to go to physician assistant school, so here's a bit more explanation. Toward the end of the year, I was feeling very cramped in my current job--it's a job that I'm grateful to have, and I don't mind the work (I enjoy it well enough most of the time), but I never saw myself working in women's retail--ever, let alone for 6 years (on and off). I'll spare you the details of what I don't like about my job; suffice to say I'm definitely not passionate about it. I don't make enough $ to be sustainable in any way here, however, here it is a year later, and Ben and I are still alive, and haven't been evicted into the streets. Going to school would mean having NO income (Ben's been looking for work unsuccessfully since September, though his main thrust of energy is still toward FlowMingle, the dating site he's been working on) and spending $4000 on classes I've already taken (pre-reqs for PA school wouldn't count my vet school experience/credits for physiology, anatomy, medical terminology, or microbiology)--and then I still wouldn't know if I'd get into school or not...and if I did, it would mean 2.5 years (starting a year from now...so almost 4 years--which is what I've already spent on something I WAS passionate about, but which failed anyway) of schooling before making any income. I have lived so long in a state of sacrifice (not living with Ben, not dancing anywhere near as much as I'd like to, racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt), and I'm not willing to do it again until I'm passionate about my decision. Going to PA school offered me an answer out of crushing debt, but I felt like even though I would probably enjoy the job as much as I enjoy my current job (not terrible, not great either, but doable), I would be setting myself up to be a slave to my past. That is, the story of "I'm a PA because I couldn't hack it as a vet" instead of what I hope to be able to say one day, "I'm a Such-and-such because I'm passionate about this work. I go into work every day feeling really really good about what I'm doing in the world." Living a life devoid of passion or conviction, in my experience, is hardly worth living. Suicide has seemed like a viable option, living that way. And so, I've voted for my life, instead--keeping a job that is generally neutral (and, I say again, one that I'm grateful to have in this economy), and spending my free time engaging in things I'm passionate about with the hope that those passions will pull me out of this job in due time, without having to give up my measly (but neccessary) income in the meantime. I think that's a pretty good summation of how I've been feeling. I hope that makes sense to you. It's taken me some time to figure out, in the words of my head, what I've been feeling in my heart/gut. Translation is always something I've enjoyed. (o: