New name for blog

So turns out the whole PhD thing wasn’t my thing after all.  It took a lot of thinking, a lot of sleepless nights, and heartache. But I finally had to admit to myself that I had started back to school for a lot of the wrong reasons. Such as:

1. Certain people who shall remain nameless, and whom I love and respect deeply hold this exalted title, so in order to win love and respect in turn, I must achieve this milestone as well.

2. I really REALLY wanted to quit my previous job, and I figured the only way to convince my darling husband that I needed to quit a fairly lucrative job was to put myself in training for something potentially more lucrative. 

3. The prestige of a PhD would enable me to change the world.

Trouble with these reasons? How shall I begin?

First off, these nameless people already love and respect me, so I don’t need to go chasing down a road after them in order to win this from them. It was their road, not mine, and they love me anyway. They never expected me to do this, and although I’m sure they were proud that I was attempting it, I know that these are people who love me unconditionally. They want me to be happy, and to be who I am, and not who they are.

As for the whole quitting the old job thing: all I really had to do was convince him that I was deeply unhappy, and that my job was a huge part of that, and that every day on the way to work I wanted to die. He really doesn’t want me to die, so he’s on board with me not working right now, or going to school, so long as I quit wanting to die [note the change in the title? there will be more on this later]

And as for changing the world? Once upon a time I thought I could do it in a class room and I couldn’t. Then I thought I could do it in a counselor’s office and I couldn’t, and so I thought if I just had a little more education, a little more prestige, I really could change the world. Newsflash: I CANNOT CHANGE THE WORLD!!! It’s not my responsibility. It’s not under my control. And thinking that if only I could fix myself, I could fix everyone, was part of why I felt like a huge failure and wanted to DIE. So continuing on that path was sheer madness. Madness.

I want to be really frank here. I have believed since I was about 12 years old that I would one day take my own life. I still believe this. But I’m 47 and I haven’t done it.  In most instances, people would say that thinking about a thing and not doing it for 35 years is some kind of failure. But this is success. For 35 years I have woken up each day and made the decision not to die. Not to kill myself.

Please believe me that for many of those days this was an easy decision. Many days and even years have been mostly happy, and the thought of suicide has been only an undercurrent. But a lot of those days have been tough.  And of course I’ve been at every point on the spectrum of wanting and not wanting to continue this thing called life.

I’m just going to go about my business, and blog about it sometimes. And maybe tell about some of the tougher times in my life, and how I got past them. And tell about the good stuff too. This blog isn’t going to be miserable. It will be like me, and run the spectrum.

Right now, I’m in a good place.