My Studio - Part 2

If you haven't read part one, please do so here. Where we left off, I had just met my husband. I continue below.

My husband knew my chosen career path was hopeless. I'd have to take both my beginning chemistry classes over again to raise the grade to even have a chance at graduating. We both knew that even students with a 4.0 gpa were rejected from vet school. There was also the little issue that I'd grown to hate the idea of it.

He knew I loved computers, and I was very good at it. I'd taught myself enough HTML to put together a dinky little web page in a time when all you had to work with was basic HTML and notepad. He suggested I change my major and I was thrilled with the idea. I did just that and loved the classes.

I didn't continue with it, though. I was a great programmer. My teachers were thrilled with my work and reassured me I would have an excellent career in programming. But we had changed schools and planned to get married, and to graduate with a computer science degree meant postponing our wedding two years. Instead I got what was called an Interdisciplinary degree. It was called a "waste basket" degree because it catches the credits that would be trash. It finds places for all your classes to count for something, and you have two concentrations. My major concentration was business (my father was thrilled!), and my minor concentration computer science. Even then I knew in the back of my mind that the entire degree belonged in the waste basket.

After graduation I stayed home while my husband went off to work and I had no idea what to do with myself. I'd made a mistake and didn't know how to fix it. My degree couldn't even get me temp jobs and I was miserable. We both decided I would go back to school. I enrolled in Winthrop and two years later graduated with an MBA with accounting emphasis, an excellent GPA, an incredible job offer at the third largest accounting firm in the world (at the time), and once again hating the choice I'd made. I liked bookkeeping and auditing but hated all the philosophies of accounting. I couldn't sit still longer than ten minutes when trying to read the books that promised to prepare me for the CPA exam. That was when I learned that being good at something didn't mean you liked it. I'd been raised to strive for excellence and I was smart, successful, desirable, and unhappy.

During the summer before I was to begin my job, I began having health problems. I was told there was a good chance I couldn't have kids. We'd had some issues in the past with this and we both got scared. We decided children were more important than my career. I have never regretted that decision. I got pregnant after a few months and we had a beautiful baby girl! The moment they put her in my arms I felt at peace.

Zayda

Of course, as most stay-at-home moms do, I got bored. When I'd been at Winthrop getting my MBA, my husband's aunt had sent me a bracelet for my birthday. She left the tag on and the price was $15 for beads and base metals. I thought, "This is pretty, but I can make it myself for way cheaper!" I had started beading to alleviate the boredom. Beading was what I turned to again. It turned out, as it usually does, that I was good at it...and I liked it.

I would sit with my daughter, bead necklaces, and watch "That's Clever" on tv. One day they had a woman who had a torch and melted some glass to make these adorable little beads. She made her own beads!! Oh my gosh!! You can make your own beads?? Wow, that would be way cheaper than buying them! That's so cool! But it was something I could never do. Yes, I was very hands-on, and crafty, and I rode horses and bailed hay and chased cows and tossed 50lb hay bails around when I was a teenager, but a torch was just too dangerous; it was out of my league. Oh well. Sigh.

Part 3 here.