The Walk To the Top

Happy HUMPPP DAAAAY my friends!! Today is a spicy one in Buffalo. It’s so spicy that I was sweating while doing nothing which says a lot since I’m a person who doesn’t sweat much at all.

I had some fun filled weekends recently. Now that the virus is dying down I saw my group of girls, got to go to a bonfire with my boyfriends friends, and even dragged him to a photo shoot…. 🙂

The photo shoot was super unexpected but amazing! Two amazing photographers are starting a workshop to collaborate with other photographers and help them build their portfolios. They needed some models so they reached out to me on Thursday morning to meet them Saturday morning! Free pictures with my manmeat?! No way I was turning that down. I’m so excited for even more pictures to be sent to me!! Stay tuned…

So today’s topic sprung into my brain when I opened my email and found out I’ve been accepted into school… again… for the third or fourth time.

You know when you were sitting in your room your senior year and you had to decide what you wanted to do for the rest of your life? I sure do and boy do I hate that it was ever a thing because I am a completely different person than I was 6 years ago.

Some of you probably have known what you wanted to do since you were in middle school or even before. But if you’re someone like me you’ve probably changed your mind more than 23 times and have a road to career that looks something like mine- a road that’s climbing the biggest mountain and there happens to be 14 mudslides on the way up, there’s a herd of goats blocking your path at one point, OH and your car probably spontaneously combusted. That metaphor could sum up my experience with figuring out what I want to wake up and do every day for the next 30 years.

Step One: Congratulations!

Well this treacherous path of me ‘figuring’ it out started when I received my acceptance letter to Daemen College. I was ECSTATIC. I would go and become a PA with no problems.

HA.

What a young naive Lex that was.

A semester in I was like “hmm yeah maybe this isn’t what I want to do”. College was a lot different for a person like me. I walked through high school barely studying and being on the honor roll every quarter and I was quickly learning that college was not like that.

I switched to general studies just in time for my anxiety to makes its grand entrance into my brain!!

My second semester I went to school a total of maybe a month. My anxiety kept me home, kept me guessing if I was making the right decisions. That anxiety allowed me to receive a whopping 2.8 GPA.

It made me realize that I was wasting my scholarship money and loan money for a school where I unfortunately wasn’t going to gain anything from. So I dropped out. I convinced my parents that I would take a year off to pick up more shifts and figure out what I wanted to do. They thought that I would never go back if I took time off and I happily proved them wrong hehehe.

Fall 2016 hits and I stumbled into the prestigious ECC. Let me tell ya- I was a close-minded young girl who thought that my life was over because I was going to a community college but little did I know that I would end up wishing I did that from the start. The stigma there was and still is around community colleges is frustrating to me. They save you money and allow the young or even old a fighting chance in the collegiate world. (But having friends who were at private schools and who knew what they were doing was intimidating to 18 year old Lex and I wish I could go back and smack some sense into her now.)

I was enrolled in Health Information Management which consisted of medical billing and coding and a whole lot of other behind the scenes work of the health care world.

I was the youngest person in my class by 10 years. The oldest classmate was around 67.

It was a long 2.5 years to that degree but I did meet one girl that I still talk to! One of my two friends I made at both schools compared to the huge groups of friends that most people make when they go away to school.

It took 2.5 years instead of 2 because my professor wouldn’t accept my project a day late and I ended up failing my first class ever: healthcare law. I had to retake it which pushed back my timeline of doing clinical. Then clinical hit and after it ended and I received my diploma in the mail it hit me again. The thought of “Oh shit, I literally do not want to do this forever”. And I was back at square one.

Thankfully by that point I already made the decision to leave my ice cream shop job and get my foot in the healthcare door by working at Immediate Care. Even though I wasn’t going to use my degree for exactly what it was for it was still good for me to have. I knew that I wanted to work in healthcare in some way. That way ended up being front office work.

From then to now I’ve had ideas of going back to be a K-5 teacher (which so many people said would be my perfect job but I only want 4 kids, not 25), ideas of going back for a surg tech, and ideas of going for healthcare management. But I decided to not go through with each of them for varying reasons. Now I’m accepted into ECC where I actually found something that I think could work long term. But I’m being hush hush this time so you can all smile when you find out I got the degree 😉

In the mean time I’m going to enjoy this front desk job that I stumbled upon three weeks ago. It’s the most beautiful set up for me. Getting out early on 3 days of the week, only having a 6 minute drive to work, and working with older, sweet souls. It will be tough to manage work and school at the same time again but I’m in the head space where I know what I want and I want to be successful and happy.

9-5

I am truly a believer that no one should be miserable when they wake up to go to work. No paycheck is worth your sanity and happiness.

My forever dream is to get paid to do what I truly love: write and explore nature. But unfortunately it’s a slim chance that I would ever making a living off of that so instead I’ll keep doing those simply because I love them. But even so, I will never ever ever EVER stay in a job that makes me tired, miserable, and dread going to work. My last post talked about change and I have never been hesitant to change my job if I wasn’t happy. I outgrew 2 jobs mentally and that’s okay.

I’ve already been working for 10 years and only have had 4 jobs, 2 of which overlapped. I know that I have quite some time before I’m sitting in Switzerland enjoying retirement so I’m making sure those years until then are filled with happy mornings, looking forward to going to work (I’m not a freak and I still would rather be in bed most morning but ya know what I mean).

Really I think the point of this post is for my readers who sometimes feel lost. My best friend has told me that it takes time to figure the big stuff out and I finally believe her. No ones timeline is the same. You don’t have to be a astrophysicist to be successful. Success is based on each individual person: one size does not fit all.

Maybe I end up being a stay-at-home mom, maybe this degree works out and that’s my career, maybe I end up being a famous writer (lol jk), maybe fate has another plan for me.

This uncertainty would have scared 18 year old Lex but 23 year old Lex knows that it will figure itself out. I’m making money and living my life contently. This road to the top of that mountain is calming down. Now I’m walking surrounded by flowers and sunshine enjoying the walk to the top.

Drop some ideas of what you want the next Lex’s Letter to be! Thanks for reading!