Hey, isn’t it funny how days of the week have a feeling? My sense of time is totally off lately, but I definitely know that this year has felt like 10 years. Tuesdays feel like some other day, depending on how sunny it is and most Thursdays feel like a Friday.
This year has both flown by and dragged cruelly on. 2020, I will not miss you one bit…
AND YET! I’m feeling the most excited I have felt in a quite a while. Maybe since the day of my wedding, when my hands were shaking as I got dressed and I was so jerky and jangled that I couldn’t hold the mascara wand steady, and it was a warm Maui afternoon and my makeup was already sweating off and the mascara was going everywhere but my eyelashes. Okay, nevermind. That was a stand alone moment. But it was one of those big-life moments and that’s where the similarity lies.
Because last week I got my official acceptance letter and I’m going back to school!
Those specks are digital confetti. It was a really cute touch.
As I talked about in a recent post, I’ve been questioning my purpose. That’s what 2020 has been all about after all, taking a big pause and finding out what’s important.
Going within, to go without. No, that’s not it.
As above, so below. Ummmm.
The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek! Okay. This is a quote by Joseph Campbell, and it’s a favorite of mine. Maybe it’s not exactly perfect here, but it doesn’t not work.
It turns out my treasure lies in going deeper- into my work as a creative and deeper in my ability to help others- which is how I arrived at the decision to go back to school. When thinking about how to parlay my skills and talents into another field, I arrived at ‘maybe I could become a therapist’, and that was in June. Because within interior design, there’s some definite overlap of the psychology of home. But the thought of all the schooling it would require totally overwhelmed me. Then some months later, when I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, I mentioned it to someone I didn’t know well, thinking it safer that way and if I change my mind, I’ll probably never see them again and I wouldn’t look dumb. “Just take one class and see if you like it”, they said. A sensible approach. So I started looking at what was being offered, so many options right now with everything available online. “Yeah, I’m thinking about going back to school,” I told my husband finally, trying to be casual, but not being that at all. I was nervous, because saying it out loud made it real. By the time my birthday rolled around, I was in an emotional quandary- a do I or don’t I- and scheduled a session with my therapist, who herself was a graduate of this school, CIIS. She gave me the heartfelt push I needed and after that, the pieces fell into place quickly. I attended a virtual open house and several info sessions and I came away feeling like, OMG, these people are speaking my language…I may actually fit in here.
So there it is, my big news! It’s like I’m standing at the edge of a new adventure, just like on my wedding day. Except I’m in my house, at a keyboard and screen. There’s no Hawaiian botanical garden, no looking out over the pacific ocean, no beautiful breaching whales. But otherwise, it’s quite similar.
💜libra