Born to Be...

Today, I had a long talk with Boyfriend about the future.

No, not our future.

Well, kind of. BUT not in that scary "we have to talk" kind of way.

Really, more about his future, which of course, directly affects mine. Boyfriend is at a crossroads in his life. He has the option (soon) to potentially move up at his job into a better union position, get his certification in a couple computer networking things, or continue on with engineering electronics. Regardless, he will be able to stay at his job and move up, but the paths are SO different and might take us far, far away from Las Cruces.

I love my job for the experience I'm getting, the people I work with, and the skills I'm learning, but I'm not passionate about technical writing. It's hard to be passionate about such technical content (although the people who designed and built this stuff are, of course, very passionate about it). So I've always known that when Boyfriend's job takes him away (whether it's in a year, two years, or four years), I'll be going with him. I've been lucky in that I've known what I want to do my whole life, which of course is to write, which is something I can do anywhere. When I was nine years old, I wrote a story for class and I vividly remember my teacher laughing and reading my story aloud to the class. Then she said, "I just love your writing."

My writing. It was like a light bulb went off in my head. Sometimes, I think, when you love something, you don't even consider doing it for a living because you automatically put it into a "hobby" category. As in, even if I became an accountant or a teacher, I would always write in my spare time because I'm a writer, that's what I love to do. But at some point, I realized that I love writing articles and columns about as much as I love writing my fiction and, even better, I could get a degree to put into pracice IMMEDIATELY.

So journalism it was and after four years, I graduated and headed out into the real world and was lucky enough to get my column with ths Sun-News. Most people don't know right away, but I don't think that's worse or better than knowing. It's just different. For example, even though Boyfriend is stressed about his next step, I secretly think it's kind of exciting having different paths in front of you like that.

Then again, I'm not the one trying to figure out my future. Boyfriend is a very serious person... and by that, I mean he takes his responsibilities very seriously. It drives him crazy that I pay for us most of the time (he works part time and pays for a lot of his own stuff and is going to school. I work full time). So when I buy groceries, even though it's stuff for me, I know he wishes he could help more with the bills. So in this future decision, I know he's thinking about what would best support our future family as well as what would make him happy.

That's something I do love about him, though. I constantly tell him, "We're fine, love, look, we have money in the bank, we're fine!" and I truly mean it. I'm happy to help us out now because someday, I know he'll take care of our family. So though I wish he would relax about it, I love that he is such a proud provider in a time when a lot of guys aren't.

I'm actually kind of excited to see what he chooses. Whatever it is, as long as it makes him happy, I know he'll be great at it!