Getting It Out

I feel like I've reached a weird place in life where I am actually about to graduate from college and I am faced with the ever awful, "what now?"

I feel obliged to take jobs near my husband, to learn Japanese because I am in Japan, and to keep to those "safe" routes of life. But I didn't go after this degree to be safe.

I spent the evening with K talking about our future and the things I am stressing out about. On one hand I want to pursue my dreams, but what does that mean? It means that no matter what, in 5 years K has to go back to the U.S. I, however, don't have to. If I land my dream job I can keep working there, sending him and my son to live back in the states without me for 2 years. And of course, I could land this job while we are overseas, still sending me into a career that takes me away from my family for extended periods of time.

It makes me feel like I am a bad mother. I want to pursue this job that leaves my son without his mother and despite technology, I don't know how often I will see him. It's a choice I have to make. I could get into a job, not like it, and quit. At least at the end of the day, I can say I pursued my dreams.

But what if I love my job?

What if it's everything I thought it would be and I don't want to quit. Am I still that bad mom?

K is the most supportive person in my life. He encourages me to do what I want to do, insisting he and B will be fine without me and we can just take things as they come. It doesn't make me feel any less guilty though.

Why do I have to feel guilty? Why do I have to feel like I'm choosing between my career and family and not making it work out so I can have both? I have a husband who is willing to let his wife live in another country for 2 years by herself if it means she's achieving her dreams. The person who is holding me back is me.

I just feel a bit lost. Do I take a break in learning Korean and concentrate on Japanese before getting back into Korean. Do I try both? Do I say screw Japanese and go hard at Korean? Because I can't do anything overseas if I can't hold a conversation with anyone in the industry.

These are the anxieties keeping me up at night, running over and over in my mind until I burst into tears in the middle of KFC when K makes a passing comment about eating dinner at home.

I just wish I didn't feel like I was neglecting one part of my life by going for another. My mind tells me to stop, and I don't even know if I will ever even end up in my dream jobs? But, I still want to try.

And after all of this, all of the encouragement and deciding "I can do this" once again. I feel scared.

I feel like I'm going after something that so many people think will never happen for me. I'm the kind of person who really digs in her heels and achieves what she wants, but it doesn't come without hard work and tears.

I can't find a job as it is, so I am going to spend the next 6 months studying another language like it's my duty in life and really give life my all. After tonight, I feel that empowerment again. Just a year ago I was scared of even applying to school again. But I'm doing it, I'm finishing my degree, I'm learning another language (possibly 2) and I'm going to go after my freaking dream job.

I'll probably just cry a lot in between. You know, anxiety and all.

What Makes You Happy?

For the past two days I have done nothing but write. Sure, I had to be a mom in between those times, but it's really easy to get a lot of writing done during nap time and as soon as the hubby is home. Why am I talking about this? Because writing is what I love! I've always dreamed of writing my own book, and I don't plan on giving up on that dream anytime soon. Lately, everything I've written has been good old fashioned "fan fiction". AKA me taking some original characters (or not so original characters) and living out my fantasies with some of my favorite characters from movies or television in a fiction-type setting. Fun fact: Fanfiction.net is amazing. If you don't want to write it, it's there to read it. Young people get on this site and show off some incredible writing skills. The first time I picked up 50 Shades of Grey I laughed out loud. You guys think that is good sex writing? Hah! You should see what the teenagers are throwing out online! Those books are horrific in comparison and I have never been able to read them because of that reason. Yeah, I said it. The smut sucks. Writing is the only thing I have ever been good at. It took me a long time to realize that, but one day in college while majoring in Social Sciences (my second major in a two year degree)I began writing some fun things on the side. Something, I soon realized, I had been doing since high school. You know how some people get bored in class and doodle on their notebooks? I had a notebook solely dedicated to writing. I would dabble in random stories I've made up, or had started with Ashley and fill notebooks with notes, blurbs, or flat out "chapters". And as I pulled out this notebook in college I realized, "Wow. What if I just wrote for the rest of my life?" Boom. English major. Unfortunately life happened. I got married, got pregnant, and now I stay at home with the best thing that has ever happened to me. But he's getting older, I'm getting older, and me and Ashley just reopened a can of awesome with an old story of ours. I started writing it to be funny, have something fun for her to read at work and me to work on at home. But now I have fallen in love. It's the first original character story I've been able to write for a long time. Besides one, that I am not ready to talk about (Ashley knows). And even though one of the characters is technically hers, it still feels great. I've pumped out so much in two days that I feel my writing cup has finally runneth over. It's times like these when I think to myself, "Yes. I am going to write a book one day." And I swear it will happen. There's a lot I need to do in between, but I know it's something that cannot be forced. One day the idea will come and boom; I'll finally be sitting in a crappy book store somewhere begging people to buy one of my mere 200 copies. It is going to be awesome.