Back on Track, whatever that means.

Now that my changes to my blogging are done, I feel it's time to write a new post and keep people in the loop about what's going on. 

I finally feel like small positive changes are starting to take place. I feel like I have aspirations and goals again and these came to me from places I I never dreamed of. 

I still very much enjoy working with children and feel that environmental education is of the utmost importance to children from all walks of life, but maybe that's not what I'm meant to be doing after all. I love teaching, but education encompasses so much more than that and I now have something else to focus on. I've realised that I don't think I will enjoy all the peripheral workings of the education sector, that come alongside the teaching. I just tried to tell myself that I'd learn to deal with them, when I felt like I didn't have any other options. I also feel like the education sector wouldn't necessarily run alongside the family life that I know I would like in the future, yes I could 'make it work', but family life will be of utmost importance to me. I want to know that I can go home at the end of the day and not have to have work on my mind 24/7. I'd like to be able to go home and enjoy time in the future with my children and not have spent a whole day feeling like I'm hearding cats beforehand, which is what working with children can sometimes feel like! 

Also, I always said that my Daddy should have been a history teacher, because he's taught me so much over the years, but he didn't teach me as such, he shared his knowledge and I do feel there's a difference. I want to be able to share my knowledge of the things I enjoy with my children, without the possibility of coming across just like any other teacher. I always enjoyed learning and discovering with my Daddy, and I don't want to risk losing the ability to do this with my own children. I'm not shutting the door completely on environmental education, but I no longer think it's going to be my main career focus.

Thanks to one of the assignments I've had to do this year, I've found a new focus. Something that I enjoy and enjoy the possibilities of progressing in. I had no aspiration to move up the career ladder previously- moving up in that sector decreased the amount of face to face teaching you were able to do, and took on more of a management role. I am not keen as much on the management side and want to be able to move up the career ladder to do more of what I love, not less of it. I have spent the past few years convincing myself that I don't really have a career drive, because I knew the bits of that sector that I wanted to be involved with, but deep down I know that I always do have a part of me that's striving for more success and to better myself. Eventually I would have had to fulfill that. 

My new career aspirations are rather different, it has to be said. I'm hoping to swap teaching kids pond dipping for cameras, technology and hours of editing. I've decided to move into the world of television. This isn't as hugely irrelevant to someone about to graduate in Countryside Management as it may first appear. I want to focus on factual programmes in areas I have knowledge in and enjoy. Natural history, nature, rural affairs, British history, heritage, landscape, those kinds of things. I know I have to start at the bottom and not necessarily in those fields. I will have to start as a runner, which I have deduced is TV code for 'General Dogsbody' but I then hope to move up (yep, the very things I've spent 2-3 years telling myself I didn't want) into research and production. Hopefully moving into pitching and creating new programmes. Eventually, I think I'd like to go into presenting. 

And this is where my Uni project comes in. I have spend the past 5 months working on a video project with two of my closest friends. My role in the team was 'Creative Director' which involved taking on the role of presenting and now, I seem to have stumbled upon something I'm good at. I have had wholly positive feedback on my presenting abilities from almost everyone who has seen the video. Also, the constructive criticism is only making me want to try and find new opportunities, to give me the chance to improve, instead of upsetting me like it usually does. Maybe this is just me growing as a person, but I finally feel like I've found something I'm good at and this time when people say it I actually believe them. 

The more we filmed the project, the more I enjoyed being in front of the camera. I started to feel more comfortable about it and more natural in what I was doing and importantly, it made me happy. My depression and anxiety has slowly been eating away at my happiness and I don't want this to be something of a sob story, but it's nice to be finding happiness in career-related areas again. More importantly, I had insight into the wider aspect of what was involved in the making of the video, not just my own role and this made me realise that I was enjoying these aspects too, the peripherals in this sector were just as interesting as my main focus. 

I know it's not going to be a smooth ride, I have to start at the bottom, use my creativity to my advantage in research and production. Believing that I am a creative person will be a good start. Turns out creativity isn't limited to being good at drawing/ acting/writing stories, my creativity is through researching and pitching ideas for television; or maybe even non-fiction writing, since that's another area I get lots of praise for. I need to trust in this creativity and see where it takes me. 

I don't regret not doing GCSEs/A-Levels/ a degree in something more related to where I want to go. I will still need the science/ geography knowledge I have previously focussed on to get into the area of programming I am most interested in. In fact, I think previous media studies would have killed the passion I now have for it, before I got to the place in life where I have the opportunity to start properly in that world. I have also thoroughly enjoyed all my science/ geography related studying so far and enjoying what you are learning is very important.

I know I have to remain sensible over the next few months. It's critical that I finish my degree to the best of my ability for a start. Then I will have to find some form of employment to sustain myself and it won't necessarily be straight into the television world, but I also know that I have to throw caution to the wind and put myself out there a little more if I want to make it in that business. I have to believe that although it may sometimes seem impossible, eventually everything will work out in the end, the way it was meant to be all along. Whatever that may be.