I choose happiness.

Like I mentioned Sunday, last week was a bit hectic and crazy (and not the good kind of hectic and crazy).  And this week was quickly starting to follow suit.  So, I decided - as of yesterday - to quit the second PT job at the airlines.  This decision was a difficult one but not because the pay is good, the management is great or I would not be seeing new friends often but because I had to let go of the cheap travel benefits.  For those of you know who me, I have never enjoyed flying.  Like not at all.  To the point where a few nights leading up to my flight I would be stricken with nightmares of the plane crashing and not being able to say good-bye the ones I love most.  My fear of flying has kept me from doing so many things in my life that I now regret like studying abroad in college or going to the University of Alabama for college (the idea of flying to get to/from school was something I was not willing to do).

However, that fear has started to fade away over the past few years.  This past June I flew over the big pond for the first time with two younger sisters to spend time in Ireland and Scotland.  Now the travel bug has set in.  To the point where there is not a place in this world I would not be happy to travel to.  Seriously.  Anywhere.  So when I heard of the openings at the airlines and I was offered the job on the spot I was ecstatic and immediately began to day dream of the different places I would now be able to see for an extremely cheap price.

To make a long story short, even though I told the woman who hired me numerous times I had a second job where I worked 3 days a week she either a. didn't listen b. didn't write it down or c. just didn't care (I'm thinking all of the above).  I mean she called me the day after I talked to her about when I could next come in to catch up on some training that she was sorry she hadn't gotten back to me yet but was wondering if I could come in on Monday.  Seriously the next day.  That is how bad she was.  Now I know she had a lot on her plate with the large influx of new hires but wouldn't it have been just as easy to write down, "I talked to yada yada on at yada yada time and we discussed yada yada"?

Anywayyyyyy, I was scheduled for the night shift from 6:30-? which is fine but that would mean two days out of the week working from 7:30am to 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 in the morning.  And after some thinking I decided the travel benefits were just not worth it.

I mean yesterday morning, before I had to decided to quit the airlines, I was changing the baby's (who I nanny for) explosive poop she had which resulted in me getting shit on my fingers, my pants and the carpet because I accidentally set the wipies down in the shit that had gotten all over the changing mat all while the baby was getting frustrated because I wasn't changing her fast enough so she ended up getting shit on her as well.

And you know what I did?  I laughed and thought I would rather do this any day over working somewhere for peanuts for cheap travel.  Because you know, hanging out with kids, cleaning their shit and all, in the moment makes me so much happier than planning a trip for the future.  The last 6 months have been about change.  A change that makes me happy.  And I plan to stick to that.

I choose happiness.

-Alyson-