Ever feel like nothing you do, or have done has gotten you anywhere? Like everything you've attempted was a dead-end?
Since December 2012 when my steady job closed, I have started 8 different jobs and left 8 (including my seasonal Disney job that I've been holding onto since January 2010). I have had debt over 10k circling my head since grad school.
I am now back in California and teaching at my parents' very small private Christian school as an Elementary school teacher teaching 10 kids ranging K-6th in all subjects. I am the one-room school marm. And while it presents its challenges and rewards, this shoe doesn't fit right.
I feel my debt hanging over me as my own personal rain cloud. And in these last several years it has turned into a typhoon that I can't escape. I was starting to see the storm abate with the steady job and if it had lasted a mere 6months more, I would have escaped the storm and had smooth seas. Alas, that was not to be.
It has grown fiercer and more wild these last two years of job-seeking. When I was in grad school I always thought that if I failed at everything else in life, I could always move home and teach for my parents.
Well, here I am. I have moved back into my old room. I am now teaching at my parents school. I am cleaning the house to pay for my food allowance. I am able use their cars since I sold my car in Florida.
And I feel like an absolute failure.
I won't be debt free for another year and a half (at least). I am single. So very single. Teaching has become a job I'm not very good at and that I feel like I'm failing in.
At least my debt can be conquered (though I've been fighting this storm for years). I have found a great church in California that can use my singleness. I still like working with kids.
But I want to do something more with my life. I feel a lot like Belle right now in that "I want adventure in the great wide somewhere. I want it more than I can tell." I want to be able to actually use my singleness and help missionaries out who are overseas and need help. I can't do that though as long as I have this debt hanging over my head.
And with this debt cloud over me, this Christmas, as I was opening my presents, all I wanted was money. I got a little something from my grandparents, but all the rest was only somewhat useful and mostly not useful at all.
I do love having this time with my parents after living on the East Coast for 12 years. But there's this itch under my skin to get away; to be my own person and not a slave to debt. I want to go and I want to go now.
But I've failed, remember.