mid life crisis

Immediately following my high school graduation, I began to pursue a path toward my future which I believed I was supposed to follow based on my family's expectations. I floundered briefly in community college as well as a hospital based nursing program. Within a year, I dropped out to get married and start a family. I put my education and my career aspirations on hold as many life issues presented obstacles to my attainment of those goals. Years passed more quickly than expected. More babies were born. Marriages crumbled. Finances too. Eventually I found my way back to the road I had imagined in my dreams.

I enrolled in nursing school as a 30 year old mother of a toddler and was working full time as a paralegal to make ends meet. I immersed myself into the vision of a better life for myself and my child and became a deans list student while pursuing my nursing degree. I have been one of the lucky ones. I have been able to live my dream and be paid while doing so. I have reached the highest peak in my career both literally and figuratively. I clamored my way up from a bedside nurse to working on the flight team for the past 10 years. The years have taken a toll on my body. The schedule has been grueling. As I watch my children pursue their dreams and encourage them to do what they love instead of what they feel obligated to do, I find myself feeling insincere and hypocritical. All these years, while I have loved having the opportunity to impact so many people's lives, I have suppressed my own creative soul, my artistic heart.

I feel I have reached a point in my life where my family life is such to allow me to finally let go of the practical side of my professional career and finally let that inner artist free. Call it a midlife crisis if you'd like, I prefer to see it as a new chapter in my life. A new beginning in which I have become comfortable in the person I truly am and no longer feel as though I have to do or be something because others expect that from me. I have raised my babies into wonderful adults (or almost adults). I have been the responsible one, the capable one. It's time now for me to explore and develop the beauty that resides inside me and cries desperately to be released in some form of creativity.

I have chosen Interior Design as my new career simply for the obvious creative reasons, but also for the freedom it offers to the designer. Freedom to design, freedom to live, freedom to dream. It's time for me to let loose of the restraints and expectations of others and fly with my own dreams into a world that I can envision and create for myself.