Complaint and Questions

There's a great song by The Cure, called Never Enough, which pretty much sums up how I'm feeling today. Well, not just today, but in this whole slow and painful re-entry into the workplace; I feel its words in a very significant way.

An excerpt:

however big i ever feel

it's never enough
whatever i do to make it real
it's never enough
in any way i try to speak
it's never enough
never enough
however much i try to speak
it's never enough

Frankly it's the story of my life.

I'm constantly feeling like I'm falling short. And in the workplace, it's all the more challenging, because I feel as though I've had so many tangentially-related jobs that I don't really have so much a career history as a pastiche of interesting and short term jobs. I've been in my marriage for well over a decade, but I've never worked in the same job for longer than three years.

So do I have commitment issues or don't I?

Anyway, we're in a recession; as a teacher, my job prospects suck. As an artist, my job prospects suck. As someone who needs a flexible enough job that I can be home at a moment's notice to care for my kids, my job prospects narrow significantly. I feel like I'm too old to be dabbling, a word I loathe, but one that lurks in my mind against my will. I'm good at more than one thing. How do you parlay that into a career? (Amazon can already hear me coming, twitching my double click "buy now" finger in anticipation.)

Should I go back to school? Again? For what, exactly? Not for more money. For a specific qualification? In what? A well-meaning relative told me I should be a speech language pathologist. I'm not so sure about that.

Do you choose what you love, or what is safe? Can you have it all? No. Can you compromise? God, I hope so. But I've been working at this balance for many years before the major childrearing era and in some ways, not much has changed.

Artists and teachers, especially those of the young, are under-valued and over-worked.

I think I need career counseling.