{"id":7060,"date":"2021-06-01T06:39:20","date_gmt":"2021-06-01T13:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/?p=7060"},"modified":"2021-06-01T06:39:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-01T13:39:22","slug":"maybe-i-should-have-done-something-else-with-my-professional-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/meditations\/maybe-i-should-have-done-something-else-with-my-professional-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe I Should Have Done Something Else With My Professional Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--themify_builder_content-->\n<div id=\"themify_builder_content-7060\" data-postid=\"7060\" class=\"themify_builder_content themify_builder_content-7060 themify_builder tf_clear\">\n    <\/div>\n<!--\/themify_builder_content-->\n\n\n<p>As I was volunteering at a local food pantry the other day, it occurred to me that I may have made a greater positive impact in my small corner of the world if I had worked in other fields rather than spending almost 30 years in various classroom and teaching almost 30 different subjects (along with coaching three sports).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Up until recently, I had never thought this before, and it was a bit unsettling to consider.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I certainly don&#8217;t believe I wasted my professional life, but I now sense I could have put my writing, speaking, education, organization and presentation skills to much more lasting, and quite frankly, meaningful use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the course of my professional life when I took breaks from teaching or after my teaching career ended, I have worked as a paid staffer and\/or volunteer with animal shelters, the incarcerated, the homeless and multiple conservation and literary arts organizations. I also worked for rural newspapers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During these experiences, which I enjoyed very much, I found I improved these organizations\/businesses and elevated their capacity to serve causes, people, animals and watersheds. I also wasn&#8217;t spending $4000-$5000 of my own money every year to support my efforts like I did while teaching.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Can you imagine what I could have done with the energy I expended staging a couple hundred lunchtime open mics out of my classroom?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, I wouldn&#8217;t have had all the summers off, which I certainly put to good use, including getting the writing going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I am just thinking out loud here, wondering about certain career choices. I regret nothing about these choices because living with regret is no way to live. But still, I think I could have done so much more with my energy, expertise and passions. I&#8217;ll never know. It is impossible to quantify such things.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I was volunteering at a local food pantry the other day, it occurred to me that I may have made a greater positive impact in my small corner of the world if I had worked in other fields rather than spending almost 30 years in various classroom and teaching almost 30 different subjects (along [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7060"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7063,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7060\/revisions\/7063"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}