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Thursday, August 01, 2013

Life's About Changes.....

I wrote this about 9 weeks ago and afterwards decided I wasn't going to blog it. However, this an important part to our lives, a major change and I decided I want this entry in our family book when I eventually print it out.


I'm scared. I'm nervous. I'm anxious. I'm second guessing myself.  My head's telling me we are crazy, what were we thinking, how are we going to manage? My heart on the other hand tells me everything's going to be all right. We're doing what is best for our family! Kory just gave his 2 weeks notice to the Mine. A place that we have received a steady, predictable pay check for the past 2 1/2 years. In 2 weeks we will officially be jobless. AWWWWWWW!

Since January of this year Kory has been frusturated at work. He HATES the 6 days a week, 12 hour shifts that he has been on now since January. This work schedule was suppose to be temporary, just a few weeks. Almost 20 weeks later he's still on the crappy schedule with no end in sight. Being we thought this was suppose to be temporary Kory accepted several small cabinet jobs. These small cabinet jobs take him away even more and is taking much longer than anticipated due to his 12 hour shifts that won't seem to go away. Work and the extra work he's doing is really affecting our family. It's very common for Kory to go to the shop at 3-4 am, return home for breakfast at 6 and than leave for the Mine by 6:30 am. He then return's home that night about 6:30 pm for dinner and to read scriptures with the kids. By 7:30 at the latest he's usually left for the shop again and doesn't return home until after 10pm. This crazy schedule of his is affecting our marriage and the relationship with our kids. We are both trying to be patient with each other but's it's very difficult. I know it's hard on him to feel so stretched out as he is. To have so little sleep day after day. I know he's not happy that he's very seldom around. He know I'm not happy with our current situation. We both know this is not good for our family.

 Our families vacation to Nauvoo in March really helped us see that we needed to make changes for our family. However that's easier said than done sometimes. How do you change jobs living in Alton, Ut. Our current home's population is around 100 people. The people that work here and in the surrounding area are farmers/ranchers, school teachers or work for the county road.  Kory's dad does own 1/3 of a very large ranch with thousands of acres of property. Kory could work for the family ranch, it was an option that we knew we had. Being there has already been one fall out between two brothers over this family ranch that has really caused some contention between the siblings and parents we really didn't want to put our family in a similar situation.  Besides that Kory HATES cattle and horses. If he could run just the farm part of the business he'd be happy with that. But due to our more cold than warm weather season's the farm part of the ranch is only in operation 3-4 months out of the year. The rest of the year it would be expected that he would work with the cattle. Kory contemplated going back to school and getting a teaching degree. He wouldn't want to teach elementary but secondary eventually ending up in a college setting. Kory's about to turn 34 though and I'm 33. We know we're not that old but it would take a few years for Kory to earn that teaching degree. So we feel we are to old for this option. Where would he work during school? He'd want to attend school full time so the part time jobs available to us don't pay very much. How would we support our family of 7? Me going back to work full time to put him through school was an option but we felt we couldn't afford child care for 5! Working for the county road was another option we looked into but they paid quite a bit less than the mine did and worked simialr hours. Kory didn't/doesn't want to be a Miner for the rest of his life or work for the County. We knew we needed to make some changes but weren't sure how go about it. We started searching the internet for job openings in the surrounding towns, Kory talked to a few cabinet shops in St. George and Cedar just to see how their business were doing. The economy seems to be picking up but we didn't feel like it was enough to open our cabinet business up full time again. So we continued to do what we were doing while praying, sometimes begging, that something would come up to allow us to make the changes we needed.

About two weeks ago I was talking to my mom on the phone. After I vented to her once again about our job situation she mentioned her Massage Therapist. This guy, Jared, has been helping my mom's sciatic nerve issue she has had since last summer.  Last summer she was told by a few Chiropractic's that they had each done everything they could do to help her and the next step would be surgery. Trying to avoid surgery a neighbor talked her into making an appt. with Jared. At this point she didn't know if a massage therapist could really help or not but she felt it was worth a try. In the end he was able to help her, no surgery! Since than he has been able to help my mom and my dad with other issues relating to the muscles.  Jared does not work in a spa atmosphere. He does not give "come relax, feel good" massage's. He has his own office in St. George, Ut.  His clients are those that are in pain. He try's to issolate the muscle causing the grieviance and than massage the knots out of the muscle. We have talked to several of his clients and all we hear are praises about him. Once he is able to relax the paticular muscle, the extreme pain in gone. These people can once again walk without being hunched over. They can stretch their muscles and not be in pain. They many times are sore, very sore after seeing Jared somtimes they are brought to tears it can hurt so bad while he is working on them but by the end of the appointment the actuall pain is gone. Back to my conversation with my mom. She mentioned that she had just had a visit with Jared. He mentioned to her that he is very busy. So busy that he's booked 6 weeks out. He is currently seeking out other massage therapists to train in what he specifically does to help expand his practice and clientel. People call him in pain and they can't wait 6 weeks to see him so they end up going back to their medical doctor or back to the chiropractor. He know's he could probably help them in ways these other proffesion's aren't able to but because he is so busy he's loosing them. During my conversation I asked my mom to get a few more details from Jared. Kory has always had a desire to learn massage therapy but he has no desire to work in a spa atmosphere and so has done nothing with it. Could this be our answer?  Several day's later my mom called me back. Sounds like Kory does have a chance at this. He just needs his massage therapy license. Kory has talked to Jared once on the phone. He is going to go down next week and watch what exactly he does. We have prayed about this numerous times and feel we are making the right choice. So Kory has enrolled in Massage Therapy School. He starts July 1. He will be attending full time, 5 days a week, 8am to 5pm. We live an hour away and he will commute when school starts until school ends, the end of January. He will than need to take the state license test. After he has his license he will do a short internship with Jared and than he will be working on his own. At the moment Kory would like to work with Jared in his office, sometime of a partnership for at least a year or two. At that time if we feel it's right maybe we will branch out on our own.   

I feel like everything has happened so so fast! Within a week we have made this major, life altering decesion for our family. We have made enough money over the past few months that we were hoping to buy property with. Instead we will live on this for the next 6 months. Kory and I both feel like this is what's right for our family. The next 6 months aren't going to be easy. But we hope that this future job will give us what we want; the income needed to pay off student loans, a flexible job that will allow Kory to coach the kids baskettball team if he wants, go on field trips, to be around and available to our kids when they need him. If money get's tight during the next several months he can take on another cabinet job or two. I know we'll be O.K. It's when I sit down and really think about what we've done and focus on the "what if's" that I start to panick! I know Heavenly Father has answered our prayer. I know we have made the right decision.
  

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