This is eating me up inside, so let me blow the dust off this almost completely abandoned blog to admit to something embarrassing.
After a mere month of my fully remote studies I already want to resign. Yep :( I'd like to gather my thoughts here before I build up the courage to talk about it with my mom. She's the closest person in my life and we have a long tradition of sharing our daily stories and struggles with each other - so I'm not afraid of being judged and I absolutely do want to discuss this with her! But at the same time I feel the need to blow off some steam before that happens. I want to organise my thoughts first and maybe re-read them before I make any ultimate decisions.
First of all, why shouldn't I resign? I barely started, I didn't have that much time to form strong opinions yet, I could still get used to some things. This university has a good reputation and good lecturers, I myself "met" them online and can confirm that they have the right crew for the right job. I have a decent (not perfect! but not bad either) record of sticking with my major life decisions, I'm known for being persistent in pursuing educational goals - so I'm going to lose some of that credibility. Many people already expressed their acclaim and optimism. It's not going to be fun telling them that I dropped the ball right at the beginning!
BUT. I wouldn't be writing this post if I didn't believe that I have pretty strong reasons to not want to continue with these studies. Because they are costing me my happiness. One month ago I loved my non-working weekends: they meant I could lounge in bed till late morning, go on long walks in the woods, spend time with my mom, watch movies, chill with my cats, go to church, doodle and paint or even do nothing and still enjoy it. Heck, I even kinda like my working weekends because, excluding Summer, these tend to be rather relaxed too. These things are - or were - my happiness. I know they may sound stupid to more active or ambitious people, but that's simply how I like to live my life!
And now I exchanged most (and on some days all) of those things for being glued to the screen for about 10 hours almost every Saturday and Sunday. Hastily making notes, feeling my head pound with pain every single time, knowing that this will go on for the next 5 years. Struggling to combine this with my job that often requires me to be flexible and show up at unusual times. Could I pull this off? I think I could if I pushed myself extra hard and made big sacrifices, but after my 1 month trial I don't want to anymore. I want my little old life back even if it was underwhelming by most people's standards. Time is my most precious resource and I want more of it to belong to me.
Truth be told, I don't need this degree. This means I will never get to work as a therapist and while it does make me a little sad, I already got my academic education & it's nothing to sneeze at! I enjoy working in my current field too. I know I dunk on my boss a lot in private conversations (and he absolutely deserves it, haha), it's true that none of us workers are satisfied with how we are treated or how much we are paid, but I... still kind of love my job in the museum and I don't think I'm ready to part with it anytime soon. It provides a lot of flavour and variety, there is no competition between colleagues, there is no corporate bullshit. This job means I get to meet many curious people I can share my knowledge with & frequently learn something from them in return. This job makes me laugh a lot.
There are so many things I have this job to thank for. It's unbelievable how much it affected my ability to make phone calls. I used to be utterly terrified of that! More than 2 years ago, ordering a pizza felt like torture - and whenever I could, I dumped that responsibility on somebody else. I always preferred to contact strangers via email if only that option was available. But since my job requires me to make and answer calls from strangers regularly - often multiple times a day - my fear quickly began to fade away until it vanished completely. Now I deliberately do it all even in my private matters because it feels so much more convenient than writing emails. A big change and a lot of positive influence that came solely from my work, and that's just a single example!
In the last half of the year, my life goals shifted quite a bit. Sometime in the middle of the Summer I had to finally admit to myself that I was developing a bad addiction to certain apps (YouTube in particular) and I wanted to combat it. And I was approaching this problem with a lot of determination, but before I was even able to properly put my plans into action, August came by and I spent the entirety of it feeling sick as a dog, hoping for death to put me out of my misery. That set me back a lot, but thankfully not for long - I had my tonsils removed in September and sprang back to life with more energy than before.
Some time ago I wanted to have disposable income, I wanted to build or buy my own house - those are some of the things that prompted me to start those studies. But you know what? While it would be nice to be wealthy, I hardly view this as my personal goal anymore. Chatting with my best friends on Twitter/Telegram, taking mom's dogs for a walk through the woods, doodling my cartoony sailors - those are the things that make my life meaningful, happy and worth living. Those are my new goals! And in this case these studies are not moving me towards them, but rather in the opposite direction. Life is so short and fragile. It's very easy to miss the chance to pursue your favourite hobbies and passions. And it's dangerously easy to internalise that chase after financial success because everybody seems to promote it so aggressively.
The situation with my grandma has recently changed too. She spent almost half of October in the hospital and even though she was able to make a full recovery, she has to take things easy from now on. We both agreed to hire a cleaning lady and decided to get daily food deliveries - this way she won't have to worry about cleaning or cooking while I'm at work. This is a major milestone and I'm thankful for it, but grandma still needs somebody for company and to take care of the garden. I want to be that somebody. Grandma may have her scary fits of rage, but she was still very kind to let me live under her roof & I want to repay that in one way or another, she deserves it. Granted I'm not a experienced gardener and I won't be able to overcome my hardcore primal fear of slugs, but I'm willing to do my best!
To be perfectly honest, it's not that I regret giving these studies a try. I overestimated my ability to work a full-time job and study on the weekends, but I wouldn't know if I hadn't tried it. This one month alone allowed me to re-approach some things, take a look at them from a different perspective. I might pick this back up in the future, once I have much more free time... Seems really unlikely at this point, but you never know! For now I think I'm done with studying. My previous studies were great for almost every reason and I appreciate them tremendously, but only recently I was able to remember how insanely relieved I felt when they ended. This may not be true for many (if not most), but for me having a job offers a lot more freedom than being a student. I got comfortable with this freedom. I don't want to give up on it!
All in all, I hope I can resign as early as this month. If it was a public university, I definitely wouldn't be so hasty - but these studies are costly and I don't want to invest more money into something I lost my faith in.
