Plan B: making changes

I have a bit of a secret that I’ve kept from the lot of you for quite some time, and I’m actually a mix of shocked and impressed that I’ve been able to keep it for this long. But that day has come where I must – ABSOLUTELY MUST! – spill the beans.

For about a year and a half now I’ve been working on a plan b to get out of journalism. It was a hard decision at first, rife with many hems and haws and I don’t knows. I’ve always loved to write. For as long as I can remember I’ve been telling people I was gonna be a writer, and at the ripe age of just 14, I defined that focus into journalism. But the thing is, the journalism I dreamed of, and the journalism I fell in love with is no longer the state of journalism today. And with Big Ring and I both in the same field, working for the same company, I figured it was high time I become passionate about something else.

I got this on my first trip to Paris in 2007 when I was still in love with my career. Sigh…

After weighing all my options, and wondering if I could wrap my head around the possibility of going to the dark side of public relations, and realizing I could not, and  trying to figure out what the hell else I might be destined to do, I decided to get out of the writing field altogether.

I want to be a dietitian.

It’s a natural fit really. I mean, I love food and have been dealing with the nutrition behind food for a quarter of a century. But it was actually my frustrations with the current state of the dietetic field, having no idea how to help a healthy Type 1 diabetic, that spiked my passion. I kid you not, every time I go into a diabetes clinic, they look at me like I’m crazy for being there; I actually even had one woman look at my numbers, and ask why I was there. They couldn’t understand that I wanted to be better, as close to perfect as I could possibly be. Every question I had, every inquiry, every wonderment about how to deal with my diabetes while running for instance was met with a quizzical stare. They couldn’t help me. And after talking to other like-minded, athletic Type 1s, I quickly discovered I wasn’t the only one.

So, eventually my goal is to work with active, athletic diabetics, who actually take care of themselves, and want to do better. I want to be the person to give them those answers. It’s not going to be an easy road; it’s a five-year course, two of which I plan to do through correspondence, but the last three have to be on campus.

Back to school I go…

But why tell you this now?

Well, for the past year and a half I have been upgrading my sciences (Biology 11 and 12 and Chemistry 11 and 12 … which, by the way, I seem to be a total brainiac at (despite my regular proclamations that chemistry is the bane of my existence!)). And yesterday I had to take a Chem. 12 test over at the distance ed site. Every time I take one of these tests, I always set out a juice box and my blood testing meter for just in case. Never had a problem with it before – until yesterday.

A few minutes into starting my test, the testing clerk taps me on the shoulder and says I have to put my cell phone away. I look up, look at the contents of my stuff on the desk, look back at her quizzically, and so she repeats herself – pointing at my BG meter. And I was so flabbergasted that someone could actually think my meter, which by no means is sleek and compact, could actually be a modern-day cell phone. I’ve been asked if it was a pager (again, totally laughable given that pagers are so 1992!), if it was palm pilot (really?), or some gaming type device, but never a cell phone. I mean, maybe if we were still in the ’90s it might have passed for one then, but today, are you kidding me?

It took everything I had not to giggle 😀