Mid Career Crisis?

As teachers, we keep getting 21st century teaching techniques crammed down our throats. One of my favorite statistics mentioned many times over, is the one that our students will have an average of five different career fields in their lifetimes. It is not just jobs within a field say, such as medical or automotive; it is actually five different career fields. Then of course they compare this to our parents or grandparents who usually only had one or two different careers, usually within a certain field. What I'm beginning to notice is that is that those who are currently working are left out of this story. 

What about us? Will I be like those who are only 20 years my younger and have five different careers, even though I have spent 12 years in my first one? Or will it be that of one or two or maybe even three since that may be in the middle of the two age sub groups? I can't imagine being a teacher and only a teacher my whole life. Hard to even imagine having only two career fields. Does anyone else want to have this variable career paths theory involved in their one and only life? Will I be happy? Will you be happy?

Habitat for Humanity

I just finished volunteering for a few days for Habitat for Humanity and found it to be a most satisfying experience. It is nice to go from a job where you are constantly in charge of people, preparing and making sure everyone is doing what they are suppose to be doing. Whether it be children, adults, or something in between there is a constant mental stress about it. At the end of the day, you are not sure if there was any real difference that mental and physical energy meant anything.
Looking at the dry wall covering the entire ceiling and throughout most of the rooms, there was a great air of accomplishment. A little more than if was my own house, or if I was doing it simply to get paid. It was helping a great cause where a grand combination of people come together and create a house that a family can buy and own. One more slice of the American Dream created by all walks of life focusing on one great creation.
My favorite quote of today was, "When you work here you'll notice no one ever gets mad at one another." It struck me as so odd that when people no matter where they come from have one truly genuine good goal the potential for emotional conflict is completely non-existent.
I wonder what else we all could do. Let's go explore this. What good can we all do?

California Dreamin'

As I have started to explore my true purpose in this lifetime, I have looked somewhat toward religion to help find some sort of meaning to all of this. I have lived true with the mantra that everything happens for a reason and it is our jobs to interpret those reasons as best we can and try to find the pathway that will lead us toward great destinies.

This morning, I woke up to my first great dream in many years. It was almost like God or the universe was sending me some sort of message of what to do next, more importantly where to go next and what to do. I was visiting my parents during the summer time, but not in their home in the muggy depths of the south in Atlanta, Georgia. Instead it was in this house that I was unfamiliar with in terms of my adult memories. It was this house that they told me was the first house I was born, in California.

 My parents were much younger in my dream, as if this place was some sort of portal to an earlier time. However, me and my brothers were all the ages we are now, all grown up. The house as a whole didn’t seem too big, but it did have many winding corridors and many rooms. The backyard wrapped around the house in a squared U formation and the white stucco walls had big, ripe and beautiful strawberries, mangos as large as soccer balls, and scattered colorful stones. It seems that dreaming in color is possible.

As those with positive attitude throughout their lives, my parents appeared before me with ecstatic joy on their faces. My dad was definitely different all of a sudden with long black hair and an almost dread-like tumble of hair of a beard. These hairs intertwined with silver streaks. They wanted to take me swimming. We walked barefoot down a slightly crowded beach front street. Down this steep hill we went till we got to an outlet to the beach. We actually had to swim across this strip of water to get to a piece of sandy land to make it to the actual ocean. I’ve never seen such blue water before. Crystal blue with the sun shimmering and sparkling into my eye, and at first I couldn’t even enter it for fear of disturbing this image that is only produced by slick advertising photographers of places far away and far out of budget for travel.

Making it through the band of water was slightly difficult, as it seems there was some sort of current pushing me back from the other edge. But, when I did make it, I saw my parents beckoning me from a wading position in the water. They told me how they have swum this water with much joy when I was just a baby and everything in the world was fresh, new, and full of vibrant opportunity. The water began to transform itself into a type of waterway that went between buildings and around street corners until we arrived back at our home.

As we dried off, we went inside toweling ourselves off and met a friend with children of my parents. She admired how well I had grown up and stated quite clearly that of course I would grow up to be thin. I replied, “And recently I lost 10 pounds as well.” This friend of my parents then sighed at me in a wishful weight goal of her own. At this moment of my dream I realized I was dreaming, as the tragedies of my real life that have stumped my appetite with stress, anxiety, and depression became quite clear that this was not part of my dreaming fantasy. I woke up.

My eyes fluttered and I looked around my bedroom for a second as I acclimated back to the waking world. It was strange, but I wasn’t sad that I had to leave my dream, I didn’t feel a need to return to that blissful slumber to experience more of this perfect world. It was a calling. Be it God, the universe, karma, the general flow of our particular dimension, I knew this was something important. I’ve always wanted to return to California. This state is where I remember many fond memories and have experienced incredible times just simply visiting there again as an adult. I knew I could never return full time on a teacher’s salary with the soul crushing ratio of income to living expenses.

This is a goal though. An urge deep within my soul and subconscious that now drives and pulls me to this vividly colorful paradise. To figure out the path will take some time, it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but I know it will happen. I will make it my quest, my destiny, and my drive until then.