Sucky Timing

I should note, as an addendum to the preceding entry, that I am not intrinsically opposed to learning a new set of professional skills, whether through experience or by going back to school. It is just that the timing is wretched for that sort of thing.

First, most obviously, I will need a job in a few months. Little time for learning a new career, there! So it is pretty obvious that on that front, at least, most of this talk of skill sets is moot. My probable employers in the short term will be more interested in knowing if I can type and file alphabetically and have used a computer than if I can do original research, discuss and assess complex environmental theory, and can distill this into a form that undergraduates can digest.

In the long run, re-credentialing may well prove necessary. But here's the second rub -- I would like to have "adult" things like a family and a home I don't have to move out of in one or two years. I would like to live in the same city as my boyfriend. But currently I am too "unstable" to even manage having a cat or even a low maintenance pet like a fish. The thought of deferring having a "real" life for more years while I gain enough experience and credentials to be employed in a stable and rewarding field is daunting, to say the least.

I've always been a late bloomer, but I've never felt the pain of it quite so much as now. One should go through all of this in your twenties when you're young enough that people expect you to be inexperienced and forgive you for it, so that when you have learned enough for stable employment, it is not too late for things like houses, spouses and families and pets. I fear that taking more time to establish myself in a second career will come at the expense of time needed to develop a stable personal life, but if I focus on my personal life instead, how will I be able to afford the time and poverty that will come with trying to recreate myself from scratch?

I put life off in order to get through graduate school, and now, it seems, I'm screwed no matter what I do.

Sigh.