I had gotten through the "child support" years. Getting into a profession that enabled me to do that was the purpose for which I went back to school. My guess that "Family and Consumer Sciences" (aka "Home Economics") would be an easy enough major to finish within a few years turned out to be correct. In the fall of 1995, I began teaching "stirrin' and stitchin'." After ten years of that, after getting through the "child support years," I was getting pretty bored and began, more than ever, exploring my inner urges, my conscience, and my sense of "what am I all about."
Implicitly in all my actions, I decided "No longer am I going to put my life on hold, but I'm going to live my own life and be me no matter what!" The internet became a powerful vehicle to use for that, especially as digital cameras, webcams, social websites, and chatrooms came to be. I had always enjoyed diving off high dives into the deep end of swimming pools! I never enjoyed the shallow end as much as the deep! To me, my life was the deep end, and all my internet toys became the high dive I was only too glad to use. I never came right out and said, "I'm getting bored with teaching." But, more and more I definitely was putting a lot of time, attention and energy into creating websites, making and posting Youtube videos, joining and freely posting to social websites (MySpace, Friendster, Yahoo, etc.), and interacting with people from all over the world through chatrooms. Gradually, I was deliberately making myself more and more known.
I began traveling to meet people. I visited friends in California. I visited friends in Colorado. I even visited friends in the Philippines. As a result, I began posting pictures and commentary about my travels onto websites -- some that I made to enhance my teaching about foods, recipes, clothing, family, and homelife in other countries. Not only did digital cameras make it possible for me to make videos, but they made it possible for me to take thousands of pictures within a short time, save them on a CD, and quickly share them with the world, and that I did. Unfortunately, as some would say, I got a bit careless. As I would say, my inner self was becoming more and more alive and telling me it's time to move on towards more living and learning. Among all the hundreds of pictures I posted on the internet were a few (three or four) of shirtless me sporting beachwear while in tropical places. Some parents who saw the pictures complained, and so I ended up resigning from teaching. At first, I felt a bit shaken, but gradually, I became more confident that this was exactly what I wanted. Shortly after teaching, I attended truck driving school and drove 18-wheeler semi trucks for a short while before moving to South Korea -- something I never imagine myself doing.
One of my Youtube subscribers suggested that I move to South Korea and teach English as a second language. He provided me with a recruiter's name and email address. Within two months, I landed in South Korea and began my new job.
"You'd better do it while you're young enough and able to do it," mom and dad said. But after working and living there for five years, mom wrote me a short letter asking me to come home, "We're getting older, and we need you!" So, on my mother's birthday, June 16, in 2013 I arrived back at home to give birth to the next chapter in living my life.
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