My hat is over the wall

This post really is a continuation of my earlier ramblings: Follow Through.

Frank O'Connor, the Irish writer, tells in one of his books how, as a boy, he and his friends would make their way across the countryside, and when they came to an orchard wall that seemed too high and too doubtful to try and too difficult to permit their voyage to continue, they took off their hats and tossed them over the wall--and then they had no choice but to follow them.

President John F. Kennedy, November 21, 1963

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After all the hubbub I’ve made about this I really feel like I should be making a more dramatic announcement. However, it’s not all that dramatic or even exciting. It’s more just a swiping away of all the other exciting possibilities that crowd my mind and have kept me immobile. It’s coming to terms a little bit more with who I really am, versus who I think I should be, or who I think that other people think I should be.

Part of the problem is that I really truly find everything interesting. I find some things much more interesting then others, of course. And while they have some consistent themes I’ve never latched onto that big thing that I want to specialize in or dedicate my life to. I latch onto something for a while, burn myself out on it and then move on to something else, only to pick it up again sometime after I’m bored with the other thing.

Throughout I have always been very interested in the people aspect of things. People are very important to me, especially people with special needs. Actually I think we all have special needs, just some of us have more obviously special needs then others. I could write a whole book into what has held me back from making this conclusion before, but I’ll restrain myself.

I love learning things. I love teaching people. I love helping people out and going the extra mile for them. I have lots of artistic interests and love fiddling with around with gadgets. I've entertained the thought of going into academia, but some of my own special needs put me at a real disadvantage in that realm; I do have some learning disabilities.

Human Services it is, not medical because I don’t have a science education and I don't want to start over with that. I’m looking towards the direction of teaching and/or counseling. I’m especially interested in working with adolescents and older children and, of course, I’d love to be able to tie some of my creative and intellectual interests in with this, but that’s not essential. I’m interested in working with some of the special populations of teens with mental and emotional issues or with younger people who have developmental issues or learning disabilities. I also will feel more effective working with small groups of people at a time. I may not be able to "fix" the world this way, but I can make a difference in individual’s lives.

Choosing a far-reaching goal and working towards it hasn’t worked so far for me. All that does is overwhelm me. I’m changing my point of focus and I’m going to do this in baby steps. Instead of focusing on the end goal of being a blah blah blah, I’m going to focus on what I’m doing now and what my next move will be. I'm not going to worry about things that are to far down the road to predict. Anybody who has know me for a long time will be scratch their heads and ask, "Isn't that what you started out in?" Yes, it is. I've just gotten distracted along the way.

So my hat is over this wall. I’ve committed to this area. There are lots of things I can do to gain experience and skills, and to gain perspective that will enable me to make better decisions in the future. My first focus is getting a job in the human services working with teens who have special needs and, at this point, that is focus enough.