I don't talk much on here about my work or where my interests lie there. In fact, many people don't know I have a job. It's not something I talk much about, but it is what I do on the side to help keep the finances working while Bill is in grad school and help us have more of a semblance of normality though we are living on a graduate stipend. I stayed with the company I worked with between my two college degrees as a contract employee. I have always felt like it paid well enough and is just the right kind of flexible that it meets my needs right now when my primary focus is being a SAHM to my kids and supporting Bill in his educational pursuits. It has been a huge blessing to have that work all these years.
The thing is, I do have some professional interests. I haven't thought about them for quite a while because I was comfortable where I was, but an innocent request from a friend that caused me to connect two people I know got the gears going in my brain.
It's coming on four years since I graduated from BYU with an MPA. It is crazy to even type that, but it really has been that long. It was kind of interesting timing that I did that program. I started three years after I had finished my bachelor's degree. I had loved my undergrad degree but the job market after college wasn't what I had hoped and I didn't enjoy the career path I was in. Graduate school was a dream come true. It was an amazing experience and I really found some areas I was interested in pursuing professionally. It turned into a bit of a juggling act though because Bill was also working on his undergrad at the same time and we had plans to start our family. We ended up doing an internship for him instead of me and then Spencer came along and that became a much larger focus for me than what I wanted to do professionally. He was three months old when I graduated with my MPA.
It's funny because at that time I decided to forego some of the career things I was interested in to focus on full time parenting. That was a good decision. I was overwhelmed at the time and it was good to focus on only that. Four years later I have three kids and a husband doing a PhD and yet it seems like a great time to revisit some of those earlier interests. You'd think I'd be way more overwhelmed now, but not so much. It's funny how life changes. The more kids I have the better I become at using my time well, at getting done what needs to be done and maximizing the time I have when they're asleep. It's still a work in progress, but I appreciate the ways I've grown from those early days of parenting and just scraping by trying to keep up with all the needs.
So I'm circling back and looking at ways to use my degree. I gained some really fantastic skills through grad school and other experiences over the years and it's feeling like a really good idea to start using them more. I'm already working. Why not work doing things that are fulfilling professionally and not just things that pay the bills? And heck, if it turns into a more lucrative situation than I am currently in, all the better! I never get more time, so if I can use my time better, that's a win.
So I'm not quite ready to leap into things, but I'm one step closer. I'm not going to run out and quit my current stable job, but I am looking at possibilities of doing some editing work, some PowerPoint design work, and some decision analysis work to help people make more informed decisions. I have some sweet tools that go along with that. We'll see what comes of all of this. Suffice it to say I'm excited about the possibilities.
No comments:
Post a Comment