New Decision, New Horizons

You have felt a change in your energy for a while. 

If seasonal work has worn you down or low pay has you approaching a debt spiral, maybe it’s time for a change.

Changing your mind does not make you less of an environmental educator. It only means you're making a new decision about how you spend your time.

It’s not about giving up your values, your colleagues, or all things “environmental."

It’s about making decisions that serve you now, and that will serve you in the future. 

It’s about taking good care of yourself.

Environmental learning can happen anywhere. You already know that you don’t need a forest, plants, or charismatic megafauna to interpret, inform, and inspire.

The financial realities of our field are not a personal problem. It’s not yours, and it’s not mine. It’s a systems problem. The framework and the constraints were already there. The only thing we control is how we navigate them. 

Sometimes navigating means knowing when to walk away.

If you decide to take a new path with the intention of applying your teaching and leadership experience, how might you explain what is obvious to environmental educators but not so obvious to people outside of the field? 

If you walked into a room full of people from outside the field, how would you talk about yourself?

In my experience, the good work we see each other do doesn’t always translate. This is because the public doesn’t see the research, the planning, the partnership building, and all the other responsibilities that lead to the valuable experience you can apply to any field. They only see an environmental educator. 

The questions you receive from others are honest. Their curiosity is genuine. Don’t let this frustrate you.

You have all you need to move forward.