What I am doing with my life

I recently friended two people on facebook- one was a student with me in college, the other was a professor.  The student is now an opera singer in Boston and the professor still teaches at my college.  It was pretty cool to see what they've been up to for the past few years, but then I started wondering if they looked at my profile.

Both of these people only knew me in college when I was studying music and we weren't close enough for them to know that I was dating my long-distance bf (now hubby), who I definitely saw a future with.  On the surface, it seems like I was just a music student, preparing to enter the world in the teaching profession.

There was more to that.  I knew that I'd end up marrying Hubby and that our lives together would mean giving up my career temporarily.  I knew that we'd have kids and I'd be a SAHM.  I knew that whatever person I appeared to be in college would not be the same person I am now (thankfully, I was right!).

I don't do anything with my degree.  I haven't taught music since 2006.  I haven't held a job since 2007.  My heart is still in music, and I performed with the Honolulu Concert Band until 2009, but on paper, it looks like I'm not the same person I was back then.  I am the same person, just with different priorities.  In college, I should have realized that my major wouldn't work for me in this lifestyle and I should have studied something else, but I had invested a lot of time and money into music and didn't want to give up on that so easily.  I'm glad I stuck with it- now I know for sure that it's not exactly the right fit for me and our life.

I'm also much different in other ways, too.  College was when my thyroid really started to get me down.  Literally.  Some days I barely had the energy to crawl out of bed, but didn't know what was wrong with me.  My eyebrows were falling out, I was wearing sweaters in the summer, and my whole digestive tract just stopped working (gastroparesis, I believe it was called).  It was depressing- I thought that maybe I was just being a lazy piece of shit and that brought my self-esteem down.  I was falling asleep in my classes and my memory was completely shot (not good when you're trying to memorize composers and dates and time periods).  The whole college experience has ended up to be a blurry, hazy time to me, and I'm afraid I was perceived the same way:  blurry, hazy, out-of-it.

I'm definitely more myself now.  I feel like I've really become the person I knew I was deep down and barely recognize my college self (although, Mother Nature, if you could please give me my early-twenties body back, kthxbai).  So, in case you're wondering, this is what my life is:

I'm a SAHM for now.  I plan on going back to school for a degree in accounting, and possibly studying music instrument repair.  Once the boys are in school full-time, I'll be going back to work, so my accounting degree will happen within the next few years.  I have no idea where we'll be living.  Hubby and I will both work, which hopefully will help with college tuition costs with the boys when they are 18 and will set us up for retirement.  I plan on staying involved in music, either fixing instruments or performing in a local band, but I don't see myself returning to the teaching profession, at least not in a public school setting.  Major details of my life are still to be decided, but my direction is set and I know what I want, and more importantly, I have the conviction to go out and get it.

So there you have it, my college acquaintences.  I'm not the head-in-the-clouds mediocre person I once was.  Sorry if you have to get to know me all over again.  :)