A Poor ($80,000!) Decision

I wonder why more people aren’t opening their own businesses today.  I think that it’s because our population is so segmented that people don’t have the dreams, vision, or drive to do it.  I have to admit, I spent my twenties “going with the flow” without a clear plan for my future.  I went from decent job to decent job until ten years had passed and I realized I was still sitting at a desk without any new, concrete plans for my future.

It is necessary to dream your life into reality.  Dreams are the most powerful and exciting part of my days now.

It’s only when you have confidence in yourself and you remove every mental barrier to your potential future that you can open yourself up to dream big.  I believe in the success of Primrose Station so deeply that it makes my heart warm and gives me the energy to not be dissuaded by the obstacles and challenges that will come our way.

Granted, I am not in Montana right now, doing the day-to-day chores like Al is, but I have my own challenges here in Mississippi.

When Al and I got married, we moved to California so he could attend a military school and I decided that I might as well use that time to further my education.  “…Might as well…” being the significant phrase in that sentence.  I’m pretty sure that my decision was based on a combination of (a) feeling competitive with my friends who were getting graduate degrees (b) feeling like I was lacking something without one, because we are in a tough job market these days, and (c) feeling a desire to travel internationally (and The Monterey Institute of International Studies does have the word international in it).

The irony is that I got the least marketable degree possible for my life.  Overall, I could count the decision to go to grad school (with it’s $80,000 price tag) as an EPIC FAIL.

It should be pretty obvious that a graduate degree in International Policy with a focus on Nonproliferation and Terrorism for someone living in a small town in Montana doesn’t make sense.

Now, Al and I discuss this sometimes and justify it in the following ways: (a) you learned a lot and bettered yourself (b) you met some really good people (c) you can get a PhD now and work at the university…but to be 100% honest with you, I’ve always thought that paying for an education is bullshit.  In our society, it may be essential bullshit, but it still smells like a sewage treatment plant.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE going to school, but we all know that degrees are pieces of paper that cannot and should not define us.

And, on top of that, $80,000 is a lot of money to work with. $80,000 could have gotten us well on our way to having a functional building.  We probably could have had our radiant floor heating, windows, plumbing, and electricity by now.  And, Alton would not have had a wife whining about living like a hobo for nine months.

So, to compensate for my moronic decision to spend $80,000 that I didn’t have on a degree that I didn’t need, I enlisted in the Army National Guard.  Now, $50,000 of my student loan debt will be paid off over the next eight years by someone besides me!!  Thank you Army, hooah!  I moved from one challenge to a completely different challenge and now I’m in Mississippi learning how to become a 12W, Construction and Mortar Specialist–remember this is “the wife” writing this, so I went so far out of my comfort zone it was like I was jumping off of a cliff deciding to commit eight years of my life to military service, then learning a job that is in a male dominated field.  Yet, the decision to go into military service to learn construction fits so perfectly into my life that everything makes sense again.

I can’t wait to write some posts about laying concrete, building walls, and framing in buildings.  Al is the prepper in the family, but now that I am learning a trade and not just pushing papers, we can work together to better our future and make an awesome working homestead.  In this instance, a few wrongs did make a right, and that is the life of an entrepreneur–to confidently move forward without knowing what the future holds, because as we evolve and adapt, our plans will evolve and adapt until we become more sure about what we want and who we are.  Take a chance on yourself, it will lead you somewhere interesting, even if its somewhere you didn’t expect!

And stay tuned for new chicken coops and rabbit hutches when I get home!