I Made A Decision

CEFR Level B1-B2

When I left public library work in 2022, I wasn’t sure what my next profession would be. All I knew is that I had given my heart and soul to doing my best in a role that required me to practice all the skills that are outside my innate talents and limited my opportunities to use the skills that help me to thrive. After ten years, leaving was 100% the right decision for me. 

I didn’t know what my next profession would be, but I wasn’t limping into the void with no destination.

I planned to teach ESL to adults because so many people came to the library asking for ESL classes and the closest class was an hour away. I got certified to tutor ESL and told anyone I could think of about my availability. 

Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t even get a stable volunteer position. I don’t know what happened to all those people looking for ESL classes for adults, but they seem to have disappeared when I was available to teach. To build up contact hours, I worked online through one of those websites that let tutors market themselves, but for a variety of reasons, it never clicked into something I felt good about doing full time.

In the meantime, I tried a bit of this and that, but nothing turned into full-time stable employment. I loved content writing, but discovered that I’m horrible at acquiring clients who need a freelance writer, especially since I have an aversion to listicles and SEO-stuffed page-filler. I enjoyed the one ghost-writing gig I took on, but the particulars of that project means that it wasn’t useful for building credibility. Plus, I’m particular about who I work with for those kinds of projects. With one thing and another, I discovered all sorts of things about myself. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, all those discoveries did was close off one career path after another. 

Then one day I felt convinced that I should attend seminary, even though I felt no calling nor desire to be a preacher/pastor nor to work in a church in any capacity. I am usually served well by following my gut,* so I began investigating. Ultimately, in January 2024, I started at Emmanuel Christian Seminary (Milligan University). I didn’t know where this new path would lead. I was just taking the step that I knew to do right then.

Starting in late 2024, deep into studying biblical Greek, I had a recurring thought: 

“I wish there was a profession where I could make study quizzes and other learning aids, plan out homework to support class lectures, and create discussion questions, but for adults. There are so many things I want to explore and then share with adults in a class setting. I wonder what profession would let me do that?”

Any guesses what that profession might be?

Yeah, college professor. You’re smarter than I was. It took me months to come to that answer. 

In 2025, I finally accepted my lifelong calling: teach at the collegiate level. There are plenty of reasons why I didn’t pursue that profession before, some of them very good reasons. But in 2025 when I made the decision to say, “I want to work as a religion professor,” it felt right.

I don’t know where that decision will lead. All I can do is take the step that I know to do right now.  

The same week I made the decision to pursue a career in academia, federal government decisions were made that caused all kinds of problems in higher ed. Ironic. Despite the bad omen, if you believe in such things, my decision was not swayed.  

I still consider myself a writer and composer, but those can stay as hobbies or side gigs.

I still believe that there are too many interesting things in life to pick a niche, but my focus in academics is religion/Christianity/Biblical studies. This focus caused a problem. 

Would I continue writing about religion under a pen name, start writing under my name (allowing me to claim MDiv credentials when I finish the program), do a bit of both?

After discussion with college professors, thought, backtracking, getting real with myself, and some more thinking, I’ve decided to link my real name to my pen name. I’ll start writing about Christianity and religion on The Variety Page Circular, along with all the other things that catch my attention.

Will I eventually make a dedicated page for religious writing? Who knows? While I’m in school, my goal is to keep things as streamlined as I can. 

Will I give up travel writing and exploring whatever catches my interest? I certainly hope not! Life’s too interesting to pick a niche, even if I do have to pick a focus for my career path. 

I’m nervous about the decision to start writing about religion here. People are viciously cruel to people who talk about religion and Christianity. That’s why I initially started with a pen name. My family didn’t sign up for people to track them down and be mean to them just because I decided to have opinions and share them. 

Please don’t be mean to me. 😥

Who knows how long I’ll sit on this post before I publish it. What I really want to do is write a full post repeating: Please don’t be mean. Please don’t be mean. Please don’t be mean. Because obviously, if something gets repeated often enough, it becomes true, right? (Wrong.)

Okay. Deep breath. Steel your soul. Here we go. 

---

* If I were speaking in church, I might rephrase those sentences as “I felt the Holy Spirit leading me to attend seminary.” Actually, I wouldn’t use that phrasing, but part of my brain would know that I was deviating from the expected formula when I talked about “my gut” instead of “the leading of the Holy Spirit.” This isn’t to diminish the reality of God helping or leading Christians. It is an acknowledgment that Christians have jargon, and sometimes that jargon gets used with purposeful intent and sometimes it gets used because the speaker has been socially conditioned to use those phrases.