4. I'm breaking up and I'm scared!

As I enter my sixth month of unemployment, and ten months into looking for another job, I take each day as it comes. Each day is full of doubts, blimps of motivation, fear, and hope. I had taught for two years at the middle and high school levels, and now I am going back to school to pursue ultrasonography. Some may see this as failing and giving up.

Regardless, I am writing out the reasons for my career change, so I can look back and know exactly what is at stake for myself. It is quite easy to get lost in day-to-day living and forget why I want growth. I'll wake up one morning and feel ready to take on sonography. Forget teaching. Whereas, other days, I want to crawl back into my skin and safe place, to things that I have tried, done, and know. Y'know...maybe teaching isn't so bad after all. I mean, I did do it for two years.

It is simple to go back to what we know because at least we are aware of the results, we have experience from that past, and it makes us feel comfortable with ourselves. My degrees in teaching and boxes of old school supplies definitely remind me of that. However, if you are like me, wanting to see a change in your life and how far you can go, we must come face to face with the truth -- why we want and must change, and why it abso-freaking-lutely terrifies the fuck out of us.

I do not have the right answers for myself or anyone, but all I can assure you is that our goals can alter, the best thing we can do is what makes us happy, and sometimes the winding path will lead you right back to where you started, or it won't. I hope my reasons help you find your own reasons, but also know that you are not alone. I once thought teaching was my path and the only path. I am now finding that we can all have more than one direction, and that is the neatest part of life. We get to choose our life each day, to choose our fears, to choose what makes us feel most alive.

Here are the reasons why I want and must change my career as 2020 ends:

• I do not want to wake up feeling dread or anxiety on most days about going to work, especially on Saturday nights, knowing Sunday is coming, which means Monday is arriving soon thereafter.
• I do not want to wake up years from now, just to think that I worked all my life, ate, slept, and repeated.
• I do not want to play on the sidelines, even though teaching is a very professional career, and I do not want to wait around for someone to recognize my own economical value when I know I bring the entire table. And chairs included.
• I want to know how far my mind, knowledge, and abilities go.
• I want to get paid for overtime, rightfully.
• I want to have weekends or days off, with actual time off, for hobbies like playing my ukulele and piano, reading, dancing, and learning kungfu and boxing, or things I have yet to try. I want to have energy after work to be able to sing, listen to podcasts, and actually muster enough left in me to have meaningful, present-minded, conversations with my friends and family. I do not want to be so tired to my bones that I do not even want to shower. That I collapse on the couch or bed for the few hours I have "after" work, feeling fried out of my mind, and do not get up unless it is to go to bed for sleep and repeat.
• I do not want to be disrespected by students.
• I want to have a longer lunch break, or at least a real lunch break. 
• I want to be able to have time to take care of my future kids and enjoy them.
• I want to stick to my skincare routine as well as a workout regime. I cannot continue neglecting myself and eating the way I did when I taught. I will eventually die if I disregard my physical and mental health. I really want to have time to cook, explore food, and meal prep for the next day(s).
• I want to have a small business(es) and keep up with a blog, do a podcast, paint, draw, create.
• I'm learning not to care or worry as much about what others think of me, only what I think of myself.

And here lies the reasons why I am scared to change my career:

• I'm scared that I am walking away from teaching, a path I've already made. Maybe all the anxiety from the job is simply due to me being a novice teacher.
• I put years of time, money, and effort to earn my teaching degree. It feels like I'm breaking up with all of it.
• Teaching was and is my identity. It was my narrative, and now I have to come up with a new narrative. Who am I if I am not a teacher?
• I felt and still feel forced out of teaching.
• I am scared of failing. That, years from now, after investing in this new sonography path, I do not make it whether it is not passing the classes, not getting a more stable sonography job as with teaching, or mainly, that I will not enjoy sonography. Who will I be then? What will I do three or four years from now if the outcome is uncertain?
• I am afraid that people will see me as a failure at teaching or sonography, which could be rationalized as to why I quit the former and chose to escape with the latter. I also do not want to let my family down.
• I have no more excuses as to why I am not putting all of my energy into myself -- to learn to be healthier mentally and physically and to push myself to do all the goals I have.
• I'm scared that I cannot afford the life I want.

Upon embarking on unfamiliar roads, it shakes me to the core, but I also feel freer than I had in a long time as I face my fears. 2020 is the year I break up with myself, and I'm finding a renewed self. Like an alternate version, you can say. And that's okay. Maybe one day, I'll find myself scanning patients, or teaching the young ones again, or doing something completely different! Let's go find ourselves and be afraid together.