School, Education and the foggy uncertainty of my future

I never had a plan. When people asked me "What do you want to do when you grow up?" my answer was simple, find me a husband and have me some kids. All those grand childhood dreams of being a singer or a dancer, some kind of musician, never amounted to much. Not for a lack of want so much as a lack of self-confidence. In fact, my whole life can probably be summed up by my lack of self-confidence. I chose things I knew I would excel at so I wouldn't be disappointed if I failed. Trust me when I say failure + low self-confidence is pretty debilitating. I chose the safe route; I was a practical person. I made smart life choices, I didn't accumulate debt, I owned my car, I accomplished things and it made me feel better about myself. Then one day I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder, honestly when I walked into my psychologists office on that first day I was borderline agoraphobic. All that internalizing had finally manifested in these awful panic attacks and I couldn't shove my issues "under the rug" so to speak. This is when my journey begins. I won't bore you with all the milestone details but suffice to say I learned that I needed a life goal.

Now don't get me wrong, I like my job. The people I work with are amazing and I consider myself very fortunate to work with such an awesome team, but the stresses of my job are bad. My best description is an abusive relationship,

"I can't tell you what it really is
I can only tell you what it feels like
And right now it's a steel knife in my windpipe
I can't breathe but I still fight while I can fight
As long as the wrong feels right it's like I'm in flight
High off of love, drunk from my hate,
It's like I'm huffing paint and I love it the more I suffer, I suffocate
And right before I'm about to drown, she resuscitates me
She fucking hates me and I love it.
Wait! Where you going?
"I'm leaving you"
No you ain't. Come back we're running right back.
Here we go again
It's so insane cause when it's going good, it's going great
I'm Superman with the wind at his back, she's Lois Lane
But when it's bad it's awful, I feel so ashamed I snapped
Who's that dude? I don't even know his name
I laid hands on her, I'll never stoop so low again
I guess I don't know my own strength"

That's right, I share this kind of relationship with my work so you can understand how, when I realized this, I felt the need to change it. But how? What dream is this? My job is great, I get a decent middle class wage, a pension and full benefits, it doesn't make sense to change jobs. I argued with myself,  how will I pay for school, what will I even take? For months now I have been pondering this one seemingly simple question. What will I even take? I had dreams once but none of that will make me money. I need a practical job, I told myself. A practical job for a practical girl who can set up back into her zone of practicality, logic and comfort; I need something I know I can do. So for months I battled with it.

Things changed when I finally got this book. My friend suggested it to me quite a few months ago and I just recently got it, its called The Happiness Project. I'm starting to become a believer in "When you are ready for something, the universe will drop things in your path pertaining to it". If I had received this book at any other time I probably would have missed out on what it had for me. And what it had for me was one sentence

You can change what you do; you can't change what you like.

I really thought long and hard on that. I can't change what I like. Well, if I can't change what I like then whats to stop me from making money doing it? I really had to ask myself, "Why can't I make money doing _____?" and I was surprised by the answer because it was myself. I am the reason why I can't do that, I'm the only one stopping myself from doing what I really love to do. And for the first time in a really long time I got excited. I also got scared, very scared, because all of a sudden my future became quite foggy. If I was going to make money doing something that I loved then I had so many options, but off all those options my most practical choice was writing. I love writing, I know I'm good at writing, I've had lots of compliments on my writing and I have lots to write about. I have a blog and I'm currently writing my way through a ton of book reviews. I don't have some grand novel of fictitious and amazing characters sitting in my desk, but why do I need that to write?

And now here I am looking up schools and deadlines and application processes and student loans. I'm thinking of all the traveling I want to do and how I can write about it. I am thinking of all my life experiences and I can write about that too. My life is full of uncertainties and I feel happy. For the first time in 25 years I am full of confidence. I can write about all of this, everything, and there is nothing stopping me anymore.