End of 2010

I've always been someone who plans for the future - or rather, who has dreams and hopes for the future. A long time ago - ie back in 1993 - I visited a career consultant. I'd been a nurse since I was 17, I was married and had two young children and I really felt that there had to be more to life than just working and raising a family. I remember poring over the results of that visit, thinking and strategizing about what t0 study and how to build a new career as a lawyer, or a journalist, or a teacher or something. But the thing I remember most clearly was looking ahead toward The Year 2000 when my kids would be older and I'd be more free to do whatever it was I decided to do. 2000 seemed like a long way off, and I couldn't imagine how it would feel to be over forty. :-(

Well. Y2K came and went. Forty came and went too. During the first half of that decade, the career plans and dreams still beckoned but life intervened. I got divorced. I got sick and after two and a half years, I got better again. I moved to a small, quiet town and lived a small, quiet life as a single mom. I worked in aged care, joined a church, started writing, travelled overseas twice, ran a part time business as a copyeditor/writer, bought a house, raised my kids and started thinking about emigration.

The second half of that decade saw US emigration plans flourish, then crash alongside oil prices and retrogression. So we moved to Plan B and soon after I turned fifty, I left South Africa and moved lock, stock and barrel to New Zealand, in pursuit of a safer, healthier, happier life. My son moved to the UK and gapped it, working and falling in love and partying for nearly two years. My daughter and I settled steadily into our new life in NZ. She flourished and nowdays, calls Wellington 'her town'. I returned to clinical nursing here in the 'coolest little capital in the world' and surprised (and delighted) myself by reclaiming old skills and lost confidence. I actually enjoy most of what I do these days, except for the usual nursing nasties (night duty, bed pans, sore feet, etc ...)

HOWEVER: old dreams never die, they just go into hibernation when the climate proves inhospitable. And my old dream of returning to study is back and starting to look more and more inviting and possible and hopeful. Victoria university in Welly is very supportive of the so-called Mature Student (and boo hoo, I'm now much more mature than I was back in 1993.) Anyway, the point being that in 2011 - ie almost fifteen years after I first contemplated starting a degree - I think it's going to happen. Both kids are starting university and I've put in an application to study one or two papers per semesters. Waiting to hear back from them, of course, and still need to hand in my official documentation, but I'm excited and hopeful and optimistic.

Subjects I want to do include philosophy, religious studies and english literature. Not sure what my eventual major will be or even where exactly it will take me afterwards, but for now, the sheer joy of being able to sink my teeth into things like this will be the stimulus that keeps me interested and motivated and going. I can imagine maybe ending up teaching literature or religious studies; I could imagine doing an MA in Creative Writing or Masters in Information Studies; I can even envision possibly heading into chaplaincy or religious feature writing or something like that ... who knows? The freeing thing now is that with my children moving ahead into the rest of their lives, I'm becoming more and more free to focus on doing stuff that works for ME, and not necessarily doing stuff simply to get by and keep us all housed, fed and clothed.

The possibilities are endless. I'm looking forward to 2011. :-)