Sometimes my life in Virginia seems a little unreal. I go from being the person who cleans the place, to creating a FB page so that Edith’s vision for this place can be promoted, to doing the yard work, to cooking dinner, to being a grad student and working on class assignments. I kind of love the variety even if the number of things that could be done stresses me out sometimes.
Before I knew that I wanted to be a counselor, my counselor used to ask me “if you could quit math and do anything in the whole world what would it be?” She would tell me to put aside my rational brain and just dream for a second. Weirdly enough, my response was run a nonprofit.
I feel like most people have a passion for a certain cause and then kind of fall into running a nonprofit in order to make change on their particular cause. However, my dream comes backwards (and maybe cheats and uses both my rational and creative side). You see, my math brain is good at problem solving and I’m super organized. I like to be creative and compassionate. Running a nonprofit, particularly from the ground up would require one to wear many hats, be organized, creative problem solving, detail oriented, but also super passionate about a cause. Also, as a recovering quiet/shy person (I have a soap box about calling people quiet), I’ve always felt like my leadership skills have been underrated and I’d love the opportunity to flex them. Honestly, running a nonprofit is my perfect dream job.
So why am I currently pursuing a Master’s in Clinical Psychology to be a counselor? And how does this tangent relate to my first paragraph about Virginia? Basically, I quit math to pursue counseling because I do think I will really enjoy it and be able to help lots of people. It is the new passion that finally gave me courage to let go of the old one that wasn’t a good fit.
Secondly, as mentioned before I do not currently have a cause in mind for which to start a nonprofit. Instead, I have this vague dream about running one, coupled with the sense that maybe just maybe my weird life path is actually the best preparation for such a dream. I mean I have math to teach me problem solving, organization, and sifting through challenging material, counseling to teach me compassion and about social justice work, L’Abri to teach me about community and life in Virginia to teach me how to wear many hats. That sounds like pretty cool preparation to me, and if I’m right about this I can look back at this blog post and say I told you world!
Therefore, maybe the moral of this post is if you don’t love where you at can you instead think of it as cool preparation for your dream? Although, perhaps a better moral is don’t pray for a interesting life because there might be more twists and turns than you bargained for (actually, I kind of love it, so pray away.)
Well that’s all for now, love you bye!
My Life in A Variety of Places 