For the majority of my adult life, I’ve felt like I was lost, stunted, and stuck in patterns that weren’t serving me. During my junior and senior years of high school, most of my peers had very clear plans for their lives after graduation, and everyone seemed eager to head to college. In this and many other ways, I felt like an utter misfit by comparison. There were only two classes in all of my school years that had imprinted on me in ways that ignited genuine interest and passion. One of them was photography. The other was a class in which we learned about and exercised meditation, I Ching, dowsing, tai chi, and other various spirituality practices. In each of these classes I remember feeling like the lessons were making a direct connection to my innate nature: as if the taproot of my purpose was being recognized and nourished. I would spend hours taking photos and in the darkroom getting totally lost in my creativity, feeling like only minutes had passed. It was fascinating to practice with dowsing rods or tai chi movements and be tuned into how my energy field was interacting with others. The alignment I felt from the lessons of these two classes was undeniable. The problem for me was that I didn’t believe I could study either of these passions at the college level. Mostly, this was due to my own self-limiting beliefs that I wasn’t an artist and I wasn’t good at meditating, therefore I had no business following these trajectories. I also graduated high school at a time where priority was placed on setting yourself up for financial independence by choosing a stable and lucrative career. All the messaging from my own head and society was telling me that I wouldn’t be successful enough if I chose either of these routes. I wanted nothing to do with college, but felt like it was my only option because that’s what was expected of graduating seniors in 1998. As a means of trying to move my life forward towards success, I subconsciously buried the taproot to my passions so deeply that the connection to my purpose became dormant and indistinct.

Reluctantly, I ended up attending a small community college right out of high school to study the basic liberal arts curriculum. Academically, I did very well, but there were a myriad of reasons why it didn’t work out for me to stay. I transferred to a college closer to home for my second year, and still had no further sense of clarity at the end of it. I decided to drop out altogether, and entered the workforce. Throughout my twenties, I bounced through an assortment of jobs from retail to administrative to manufacturing. I was a quick-learner and excelled at everything I did, which made me the target of high praise that was always followed by being given more responsibilities. This pattern inevitably sculpted me into a person who would stay in abusive, stressful, and toxic work environments far beyond what I should have tolerated. 

When my thirties arrived, I decided it was time for me to have a “real” career. I was still chasing the elusive financial freedom I had been trying to attain for over a decade. Since high school, I had sworn I would never enter the medical field. I didn’t think I was adequate or smart enough, and I didn’t ever want to have to stick someone with a needle. But the promise of good money and job security had me researching my options. When it came to choosing a specific profession, there was only one allied health career that made sense to me, and that was to become an X-ray Technologist. I figured it was about as close as I could get to photography, and knew that my eye for a great image would prove to be an asset. I enrolled in a two-year program, graduated with honors, and was extremely fortunate to land one of the few open positions at the hospital where I had trained. To say I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this work is an understatement. It hit all the marks for me. It was visually appealing and challenging, and I loved the artistic aspect of figuring out how to get a perfect, diagnostic image. I’m a natural-born caretaker, and it made me feel good to go above and beyond in extending kindness and compassion to my patients. I was finally making a livable wage with which I could support myself. The department was full of good-humored, fun people who were also extremely intelligent and knew how to work their asses off. It felt like everything had started to jive for me. 

This wasn’t that long ago, but even at that time, healthcare was different. It hadn’t yet been severely warped by the monopolistic, executive greed that began to encroach itself on the healthcare system shortly after I started my career. I worked in various departments throughout the Radiology umbrella for over a decade. As time continued on, everything shifted towards becoming less and less tolerable for me. I wasn’t able to handle the constant lack of appropriate staffing, the inability to provide adequate patient care due to overbooked schedules, and the perpetual high-stress. Then COVID added an extra layer of shit to the already-steaming pile. To add insult to injury, I contracted COVID in March of 2020, ended up with Long-COVID symptoms, and then had an adverse reaction to the Moderna vaccine which triggered a slew of very problematic health issues. In the process of trying to determine a course of treatment I was also diagnosed with Lyme disease and a toxic mold exposure. I was very sick and absolutely miserable. On top of that, I then contracted another bad case of COVID in August of 2022. I knew my body couldn’t handle going back into the high-stress environment I had been working in, and I felt like doing so would just prevent my ability to heal myself. I made the decision that I needed to leave healthcare in order to be able to practice my own self-care.

The last two years since then have been a blur. I prioritized my health and took some much-needed time to relax my nervous system. I stuck to a strict supplement regimen and saw an energy-work practitioner in the effort to heal my body back towards its baseline. I worked odd jobs here and there to make some money. I got engaged, dealt with a flooded house, and then got married all within the span of nine months. Finding myself in need of quick money, my brand new wife and I decided that I would take a travel technologist assignment to help relieve our debt. Just 50 days after our wedding, I moved into a rental two hours away. I was able to come home on most weekends, but for eight months we barely saw each other. It wasn’t a great way to begin our marriage, and each week that passed became increasingly harder and more depressing. The only benefit was my ability to pay down our wedding and flood debt, and stash away enough savings to support a few months of not working. As those months come to a close, I’ve been trying to determine how to continue from here.

If I could name one thing I have always wanted to do without waiver, my answer has consistently been the same since high school – photography. It’s a passion of mine that has never faded, even during periods where I haven’t practiced it. I’ve been talking for years about starting up a little side hustle in an attempt to sell some of my work and make a little extra money. One of the biggest hurdles that has held me back from doing so is my own fear of failure and ridicule. Another has been a lack of the necessary energy from spending most of the last two decades in survival mode. My mind is constantly flooding my thoughts from a viewpoint of scarcity and angst, telling me to fall into line like everyone else: find a real job with good health benefits and a solid retirement contribution match. But lately, I’ve been trying to be very intentional in paying attention to the messages from the Universe to help me tap deeper into my intuition. My brain may be saying one thing, but my heart is speaking even louder, and it’s proclaiming, “FUCK that shit!” This is, after all, the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius. It may sound completely crazy and far too “woowoo.” But the cosmic shift of this astrological moment is going to manifest in very tangible ways. The world is changing. Late-stage capitalism is ushering in the death of the patriarchy, and I am 100% psyched to be an energetic part of helping that happen. My eyes have been opened wide, especially over the past year. I can’t unsee or unlearn all of the malaligned elements of our societal structure that have “radicalized” me into rejecting the status quo. I refuse to go back to being a cog in the wheel of corporate gluttony. I’m not exactly sure what this entails for me, but I keep coming back to this quote by Albert Camus: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” This is the inspiration behind me finally knowing what I want to be when I grow up – a revolutionary anarchist. I really want to figure out how to remain in my intuitive power and make my own way. I know this means putting my faith in the abundance that the Universe wants to bestow, and trusting that it will provide as long as I believe that truth. Again, woowoo, I know. But this shit is real. Stay tuned.