What Do I Want To Be When I Grow Up?

I have recently reached a point in my life where I often ask myself, "What the hell am I doing with my life?" I'm not throwing a pity party or having an issue with self doubt. It's more of an empowering feeling. I take a step back and look at my life and see what I have accomplished and I don't see much. Yeah yeah yeah.... I know those of you that are reading this are going to scold me for questioning that and reassure me that I have a beautiful family, a great marriage and a wonderful little boy and those are great feats in itself. Yes, I do realize that and very fortunate, and for that is the very reason why I want to be better. I want to be someone. I want to allow my family's quality of life to improve in all areas not just financially.

I'm 26 and didn't take advantage of my opportunity to stay in college and get a degree when I was a "traditional college student." I traveled to the big metropolis of Abilene, Texas right out of high school to play basketball. During summer workouts in between my junior and senior year of high school, I developed 2 bulging discs in my back and just couldn't get through playing basketball without being in pain. I realized that if I wasn't getting a full ride to play, then it wasn't worth it to me to put my body through torture and spend an extreme amount of money to go to a private university. So I came back home and started working full time and went to Weatherford College and took a couple classes. I lost interest pretty fast in classes because I really didn't know what I was working towards so I took a short break. Haha! Well, that short break turned in to 8 years, a marriage and a child. Those life changes make it VERY hard to break out of your shell and go back to school or do something that you have always wanted or needed to do. Being secure in a job and having a monthly budget is such a warm and fuzzy thing to walk away from when you have family members that depend on you. To go from that to long nights of studying, working AND going to school sounds very stressful for me. But I have made a decision and I'm going to go for it.

I'm a huge believer in "everything happens for a reason". There is a purpose for everything we go through. I am not super religious but I do have my own relationship with God and I do believe he puts everything in my path to show me something. I had to go from working in doctor's offices making good money, to taking a chance and making awesome money at an oil field company and that company ceasing after a year, to taking any job that I could. I ended up at a vet clinic which I LOVED because I'm a huge animal lover and I got to take care of them, start IV's, draw blood and help out with surgery which piqued my interest in the more direct care for things. Working in the vet clinic was hard to walk away from but I eventually did because it just wasn't cutting the mustard and paying the bills. I ended back in a doctor's office and working for an Orthopedic Surgeron. I love everything about it and the people I work with. I have started helping out the nurse in the office when we get busy with cutting cast off, putting on splints, braces and drawing up injections.For the first time I feel like I know where I need to be in my professional career.

A patient came in the other day and she was in her 50's and she just got her RN degree and that inspired me. I can do this! I can work my butt off for a couple years to set my family up for our future. I can be a mother, a wife, an employee, a student and make it work. If I don't just go ahead and rip the band-aide off now, when will I? I will end up taking another "short break" and I will look up and we will be sending Blaze off to college and I will be standing in the same spot.

To put my plans in motion I have looked into financial aid, I have an appointment set up to chat with an advisor about my course of action, and I have all the support from friends and family. Hopefully I'm headed in the right direction to an RN degree.

What I'm getting down to in this post is that I want to hear your stories. If you were in my situation and you went for it, I want to hear about it. If you are thinking about it, I want to hear your story too! Feel free to comment on this post or send me an email to kacijohnson@live.com and make sure and let me know if it's ok to publish your story. I won't publish them all but any inspiration that I think will be beneficial for others to read, I just might post it on here. I can also leave you anonymous if you wish.

I hope to hear your stories!!

Until next time!!
-Kaci
"The Little Pioneer Girl"