it really is time

Maybe I sound like a big baby or complainer. Maybe I just seem like a huge pessimist. But my main reasons for deciding to leave the military is: I'm just plain tired. I'm exhausted. I'm sure it could be thought that I'm just one big quitter because I can't deal with 10 more years of it and I truly don't care. I've already gave 10 years of my life to this job and its taken a toll on everything in my life.

And I'll be completely honest, if I wasn't forced to get a new job and I could have stayed in graphics for my 20, I think I would've been all over it. But they decided they didn't want to keep the job around, so everyone had to find a new source of employment opportunity in place of that job. I just happened to end up in a job I truly hate. Not everyone does and I'm glad for them, but most of the time I feel like there's no real purpose. That I'm forced to give up all of me and my family, for nothing. Basically as long as I'm another warm body filling the seat, me and mine don't really matter.

Everyone I work with tells me this job isn't that bad at every base, just this one. And yes, they're probably right and I should just wait to move somewhere else before I make a rash decision. And I probably should. But this place has left a bad taste in my mouth. It's left me feeling drained. I also feel that a job that tells me that my family is less important than my job (which my boss has recently explained) isn't a place I belong in. Maybe he can turn that switch and feels that dedicated, but I don't share those views. My family is the only reason I'm still where I am. I do my job, but that's it. I don't have some deep seeded need to go above and beyond that. Which really isn't like me at all.

I keep thinking maybee this is the big neon sign I need to do something without always playing it safe. The last 10 years have been interesting to say the least and I'm grateful for the learning experience, but I really feel this is my time to step away from this life and finally do something I'd wake every morning wanting to do.

I wonder if that will ever happen or will I fail in the process? I fear failure as much as I hate liars. It leaves an awful feeling in my gut, especially when you're working for someone who is probably one of the biggest I've ever met. If you can't trust the person in charge, who can you trust?

My Life So Far

There's three things in the world I truly love doing, but I rarely ever have any time to do either of them: Writing, reading, and baking. When I was a kid my dream was to become a world famous pastry chef. I tried, oh, how I tried when I was 12 to help make the Christmas cookies. I begged my mom for days to make them so I could try my hand at baking. I got bored with the cookies before they hit the oven. There were more interesting things to do, like watching "Holiday on Ice" starring Nancy Kerrigan. Which was more important, of course, because when would I ever get to see that again?

So baking took a back burner in my life until I was about 20. But I still loved it, I still thought about it a lot. Even now, I try to bake as often as I can, but life and grown up responsibilities get in the way. I'd still like to try my hand at going to a culinary school. Maybe one day opening my own bakery or even working as a pastry chef somewhere awesome in the world. That dream is never going to die and one day I plan on making that dream happen.

My second love (I should mention that baking is my third) is writing. When I was 10 I wrote my first short story, one that wasn't mandatory for school and I still remember it. It was set during the WWII era and it was about a Jewish girl named Hannah, her 2 best friends and their families as they dealt with the outcomes of war. Of course, every character was based on someone I knew or someone I wished I knew. Hey, I was 10. As much as I loved writing it, I dealt with it in true Michelle fashion: I stopped working on it when it got too tough to finish which lead to ultimate boredom in the story. But I was determined to be a professional writer when I grew up.

I kept writing and stopping, writing and stopping. I started high school with notebooks full of stories, all half-finished, of course (to this day I have shelves of these notebooks in my closet). I spent most of my time writing in them instead of paying attention in school. I have a knack for words on paper, but my two biggest problems are confidence and the follow-thru. I have no confidence my writing is good and I have yet to finish any of the books I've started. I can say it's the normal issues of time, but it's not like I can't write when I'm working a weekend shift. No, I find there are more important things to take up my time so I can avoid my issues with becoming a failure. I feel like I won't finish a book because then I'd send it in. and someone would read it. Someone other than my mom and best friends (who, lets face it, are a little biased because they love me) and they might say it's complete crap. And then where would my confidence in my writing be? In a drain somewhere next to old salami. Lately, I've gotten a little better. I keep writing and going even though it's one of the hardest things I've done. I realize I'm not that bad of writer and I've even managed to write 123 pages. That's a major first.

Which of course leads me to my first love: reading (which actually goes hand in hand with writing, so I think it should just be a tie). Everyone in my family reads. It's like some kind of fluke gene that's guaranteed to be passed down from generation to generation. Our biggest thing is reading in the bathroom because it's the one place you can find some actual solitude. Let's face it: no one wants to know what's going on behind the closed door and they're not about to check (scratch that: everyone over the age of 10. Your kids will burst right in regardless).

What was the point of this blog? Not really sure. More a venting session, I guess, about the 3 things I love (outside of my family and friends, of course) that I rarely get to do often anymore.