Friday, October 28, 2011

Decisions, decisions...

The park district is doing some health incentive program where if you get blood drawn, you get a $25 gift card. When I signed up, it seemed like a great idea! But now it's 5:30am and I'm starving and I want caffeine and I have to fast until 7:40am. I signed up late enough that I could drop Kaylin off at school before my appointment. It was a bad decision! Everyone keeps teasing that the only gift card left will be for Sports Authority. We don't even have one around here! I'm going to be ticked if I waste my entire day off with a caffeine withdrawal headache and get stuck with a Sports Authority gift card!

Tomorrow is my 39th birthday and I'm sort of upset about it. My goal at my 38th birthday was to use this year to figure out what to do with the rest of my working life. I mean, I absolutely LOVE my job and the zoo, but it is an extremely physical job that I seriously doubt I will be able to do for more than the next 10-12 years. And only that long if I'm very lucky. There is little to no opportunity for advancement or even movement to another department, so if I want to keep my full time status I need to remain a zookeeper. My feet have been terrible for 2 1/2 years now and I'm tired of being in pain all of the time. Logically, I KNOW it must be easier to switch careers at age 40 than at age 50. At the same time, I love my job and know I will never find anything I like as much. Do I continue working until I am physically unable and THEN try to figure out what to do? Or do I plan ahead and find something else and possibly regret leaving the job I love years before I have to? I could walk out to get the paper and have a tree fall on my head or get diagnosed with terminal cancer or drop dead from a heart attack at any time. Is the gamble to follow logic or to continue working in a dead end job?

I procrastinated making any decisions because it seemed so likely that Gene would be transferred to a different city and that my choice would be made for me. It seemed logical to wait a short time to be in the new place before returning to school or especially job hunting. It's still possible he'll be transferred in the next year or two, so why make any huge decisions now? AAAHHHHHHH!!! Because I'll be a year or two older at that time! I don't know what to do! I know I WANT to stay at the zoo but is that a smart decision?

Screw it! I'm going to stay and see what happens. I bet almost nobody gets to have a job they love as much as I love mine. I'm not going to stress over the what ifs! I'll cross those bridges when I come to them. I'll continue to do what I can to help my feet and maybe they'll get better. Maybe in the next 10 years I can figure out something else to do for the park district when I'm too old for zookeeping. It couldn't be worse than working at Pizza Hut. :)

No comments: