Inspired to Make Changes

Over the weekend my great-uncle J came to visit my parents and my brother. He has never met any of my siblings before and wanted to come meet us (my brother specifically) and give him some advice on college since my brother is interested in theater and Uncle J has spent his entire life as a professional dancer.

He is 80 years old and was raised in a farming community in Ohio, yet he followed his dreams and danced in ballet companies, musicals, operas, and on television all over the world. Listening to his stories I got to thinking about the importance of doing something that you love. Uncle J had times where he only had 25 cents and two suitcases to his name, times when he couldn't afford to eat and once had to live with his entire bankrupt dance company in an abandoned barn in France. Howerver, through it all he was following his passion and has lived a very full and exciting life.

Looking back at my own life so far, career-wise, I am disappointed. I changed my major in college to something I thought would be more exciting, then changed my mind again to something I thought would let me make more money. Now, I am unhappy with what I am doing but have been resisting going back to school because I am worried about taking out student loans. K is going to have a lot of student loan debt from law school and I don't want to add to that but, I don't want what he does to keep me from going for my own dreams.

So now I am taking Uncle J's advice, writing things down and doing some planning. Big changes are on the way for me, and hopefully they will be good ones.