No no, not
that Crossroads,
this Crossroads... you know, where I go down to do a deal with the devil, he gets my soul and I get to play the guitar better than John Lee Hooker ...
Er no, not those either. Just this was the quiet time in the year when I was meant to do some thinking about where the plan is going next. I am miserable at work, stressed and under pressure, and underneath all that, dead bored.
I thought maybe I could retrain as a speech and language therapist to get out of school, and went and did some work shadowing, but it turns out to be same-same, but different. Dealing with people all day long (I am not a people person really. I can't stand people) lots of paperwork, lots of responsibility. Mostly women (a rare male speech therapist told me out of the 400 people on his course, 7 were men.) I don't know if I can stand it.
But really really, the major consideration is that I don't want to. I want to go to art college. I want to take it seriously. I've spent my entire working life being sidetracked from what I want to do by the need to pay the rent and by practical considerations, and it just leads me further and further away from anything I'm genuinely interested in. When I came back from Spain I went for the sensible option & it just lead to 6 years of doing a job I don't like at all.
Seeing as the retirement age will probably be 90 by the time I get there, it seems foolish not trying to spend as much of your life as possible doing something you love, as opposed to getting sucked into the system. Yes I can pay the rent, which is not to be sneezed at, but is that what it's all about?
At the crossroads, it's like viewing two signs, one way points to "DREARY PUBLIC SERVICE" & the other way points to "STARVING ARTIST". Hmm.