If I knew then...

More thoughts on things

Like what I did

VS what I should have done

And did I really have any choice anyway? Our parents sometimes take our likes and dislikes into account, and sometimes just push us toward things they approve of, and we do them.

When I was a kid I really wanted to be a plumber. I loved trying to fix the sink and the water heater. If someone had helped me sign up onto an apprenticeship I could have kicked ass. Later, in high school, I would bring my clippers to school, and in a rarely used bathroom would buzz the sides or back of boys and girls heads to order. My mom thought this meant I wanted to be a hairdresser (also probably encouraged by the part time job I had cleaning up at a small salon, but that was really a fluke) and took me down to the beauty school (cosmetology college) to see about signing up. I was immediately intimidated by all the people and turned off by the overpowering chemical smells.

Now then, if I knew then what I know now, I would have started the program while still in school and been a licensed beautician before I was 18. I would have done the barbering program so I didn't have to worry about messing about with chemicals, or waxing. I could have essentially then decided if I wanted to carry on and go to an even higher more sophisticated level of hair styling with further education in the field, or worked to earn college money if I still wanted to go to art school. Easy fucking peasy. This was not explained to me, either because no one knew it was what I needed to hear, or else we just didn't know the right people with the right information. As is often the case in Life.

I never really lost that interest in plumbing though, and when my mom died, when I was 36, I was feeling very lost. I had been working in the floral department at Zupan's grocery store, kind of an upscale place, and was told I could only take a few days off for mourning. I needed much more than that so I had to quit. I think now that I could have bargained for a leave of absence, but I didn't think of that at the time. And again, no one suggested it. I didn't know the right people, or I wasn't asking the right questions. I was directionless and grieving but looking for ideas, for hope. I heard about a free program for women called OTI (Oregon Tradeswomen Inc.), a pre-apprenticeship training to prepare you for joining a trade apprentice work training program. They actually commented when I applied that they had several former art students come in and that it worked out well for them. I have some critiques from my experience, but overall it was great. I was very successful and graduated with my certificate.

The problem was, I wanted to work in plumbing, and while we had trips to roofing, carpentry and concrete laying apprentice facilities, we never got to talk with any plumbers. So I didn't get an overview of what that would be like, or the experience of trying it for a day. The electrician hopefuls were the most fortunate, and there were quite a few of them. We had at least two former graduates who were successful electrical apprentices come and talk to us about the building projects they were involved in. It was very inspiring. The office wanted to help us to secure jobs as soon as we graduated and I had an interview with the city for a landscaping assistant position. It paid well to start, and I was pretty psyched about it, despite my plumber's dream. I don't know why I didn't go try and be an apprentice there right away. I think I was scared to do something great but a little risky, and scared to speak up and tell the OTI program what I really wanted and wouldn't settle for anything else. The landscaping hired me pending a physical, which I didn't pass due to a (years later diagnosed as benign) heart murmur. And it was pretty far from where I lived. And my van was not doing so well.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have followed through with the specialist diagnosis they said I needed (I didn't have health insurance then and was utterly clueless about how to get it and confused about where to go for a heart inspection anyway—again, it's who you know and what you ask...), packed up and moved closer to the job so I could bike there, and worked with my hands while I saved some money and grieved for my mother. Alternately, I would have pushed more to get into a plumbing apprenticeship. Either of those would have been preferable to what I ended up doing which was working at Rite Aid for five years. I'm not saying nothing good came from that job, but it was never what I was supposed to be doing. It was like Season 2 of The Walking Dead, mostly 'filler'.
So although I didn't achieve the desired result, OTI was a mostly positive experience. I missed my graduation ceremony though because I was delivering newspapers for a job during that time, and had to go do that. If I could go back in time, I would have tried to get a sub, or else just quit so I could attend the graduation that I had honestly worked very diligently to achieve.

That's something I really still need to work on, is organizing and planning for things in advance so I'm not stuck with a decision I am ultimately unhappy about later. Speaking of later, Take care, all!