What do I want to be when I grow up?

After getting married and buying a house it is becoming abundantly clear that I now need to have a career.
Going to school for theatre and theatre directing since High School was a great idea at the time. I enjoyed it, learned a lot and grew as a person. I loved getting my BFA and after graduating college I loved moving to NY and worked in the theater, or in casting. Along the way I also did A TON of jobs that had nothing to do with my aspirations, they were just bill paying jobs, or jobs to give me health insurance.

They ranged from working at an ice cream shop, catering, dog walking, cocktail waitressing, cleaning houses, working at a dating service, being front of house staff at a theatre, working construction and painting apartments, house sitting, working as a receptionist, and being in HR for a large and small company. I could go on but you get the point.
I have had all these jobs and now that I am not in NY and don't need a ton of money to get by, it's time to find out what it is that I really want to do.

Living in St. Louis the cost if living is a whole lot cheaper and our mortgage is 60 dollars less than what our rent was in NY. The best part about that is that right now we are making about what we made in NY so we really are not hurting. So now I have to time to re examine what it is that would make me happy.

Part of the struggle is that, I want to have kids and doing something that would require going back to school for a while may not work with that idea. I also for sure need health insurance, and to be making enough money to pay all my bills.

St. Louis has most jobs a person could want, and professional salaries as well. I just don't know what direction to go in. Since directing theatre I have not found something that really gets me excited to go to work. I want to find something I am passionate about again, so I can dedicate myself to it. When I want to I am a really caring hard worker.

I love animals, theatre, restaurants, caring for children, being a leader, decorating, planning parties, organizing, being a hostess and not being chained to a desk.

I just don't know how to incorporate some or all of that into a career.

Extra Money

I have decided that until I am in a financial place to turn down making extra money I will accept most opportunities to make extra money that come my way.

Since moving to St. Louis I have done a few jobs that make some extra un-planned money. You could call it the drinking money, or the odd bill that comes up that you need to pay off money.

I have done things from dog walking, and watching, to working on turning over an apartment that a friend manages so a new tenant can move in, to catering which I am doing currently.

I got hooked up with catering because friends of ours live across the street from this woman who rocks and who owns a great catering business here, and has for like 15 years called La Chef.

I have not worked actually on my feet for more than 8 hours since I managed a small restaurant in NY. I miss it and I hate it. Standing and running trays of food is hard and wonderful. My body feels alive, and I feel my back ach. I get to eat a shift meal of great catered food and hang out with other cool people including my husband; all who are just trying to make some extra money too. And the best part is that now that I am married I am not even worried about meeting cute boys that I am serving. I just do my job, make it through and walk out the door with a check.

I think that this could be the answer to how to make our savings grow.

Bike Trails

These last few weeks I have been bringing the bike back to my life. For those of you who knew me in NY you know that I used to ride my bike all the time, commute to work on it in all seasons

ride it to get grocery’s, do bike races and basically have it been my form of transportation.

Along with liking riding it in NY, came an element of total fear. Fear for me, fear for my husband and distrust of anyone who was in a car.

After I moved out of NY, I sort of gave up riding all the time. Part of it had to do with the necessity of a car and that places were actually far far away from each other, But also I think I gave it up because I needed an emotional break from all the worrying that went along with riding in a large city.

In North Carolina we rode a bit, and mostly on long rides through farmland, where your only risk was hitting a cow or something. As the winter came and we moved to St. Louis I just stopped riding all together. Along with no longer riding my bike, I then no longer had leg muscles and or calf definition. It's sad but true.

So, after a hot hot hot summer here and the very occasional ride on my bike I have decided to ride again with the help and coxing from my husband, who swears that he will still love me even if I don't ride my bike ever again.

I have decided to give it a try but I am going to ride my way. No more dodging cars, and racing through traffic. No more carrying tons' of grocery’s over the handlebars. I am going to ride for exercise and on trails and in neighborhoods that are not heavy with traffic.

Trail Net is the St. Louis bike advocacy group here, kind of like Transportation Alternatives in NY. On the Trail Net website you can access a lot of fun bike ride's and ideas of places to go. And the good thing is that all of these trails are with in 45 minutes of our house.

So far we have gone to the Katy Trail, which is a lime stone paved old railroad tracks that stretches for over 100 miles.

It's fun because the few times we have done it, we found out that there are breweries and wineries along the way that you can stop at and try new things.

We went to Babler state park which had more hills than my but was ready for, and I could not even cheat cause I was on a fixed gear bike.

It was nice there because you could only hear the forest and the birds.

And this past weekend we found the river front trail that is 22 miles of paved trail stretching along the Mississippi River.

I really liked that trail because it was newer and you could look at Illinois while you were on the St. Louis side. That trail is not one to go on at night because there are no lights and there are a lot of junkyards and people who live in their car along side it.

Along with all those fun options, we ride around Forest Park,

which is about a 6-mile loop, with some fun hills to make your legs pump.

So, my plan to bring the bike back is in full swing and I will keep you updated as to the progress of getting my leg muscles back!