Education, Vocation & Midlife Career Reflection

July 28, 2025

It’s the dog days of summer. Perfect time to publish a series on work and career, right?!

No, it’s not.

But I’ve never been good at publicly processing, ie: publishing, on trend. Except for that brief flash in the pan circa 2010 when I was writing about making homemade soap. I could have built a little online business around that if I possessed strategic insight for content creation and the will the follow through on such insight.

I have neither. Which is why I’m plowing through my series on work and career through the months of the year when people don’t give as much consideration to this topic.

All of that to say, I have another video up at YouTube.

If you’re reading this in email you’ll have to click through to the blog to watch it. Or head straight to YouTube.

Here’s the description of that video.

In this personal video essay, I reflect on my three decades of interest and experience in education philosophy and practice - from earning a B.Ed. and homeschooling our children to completing a Master’s Degree in Educational Studies when that homeschooling work was completed.

I explore how my philosophy of education emerged through both lived experience and academic study. I share how that philosophy informs the kind of work I’d like to do within the field of education. I talk about why I’m not pursuing a PhD, even though research would be one means to influence education policy, which is a dream of mine.

Wrapping up my thoughts on education I discuss that I have a very fulfilling life, outside of my paid work, and so I wonder the degree to which my paid work needs to be fulfilling. What does it look like for me to seek meaningful, values-aligned, income-earning work in midlife? And also, how much fulfillment from my paid work is reasonable to expect in an otherwise rich, fulfilling, and rewarding life?

In this video I talk about trade-offs, privilege, and what I actually want from work as a recent grad school graduate, homemaker, and vocationally-driven person.

Timestamps (to give you an idea of what’s in this video)

1:25 – From B.Ed. to Homeschooling: Why I never became a school teacher
6:00 – Wanting a seat at the table where decisions are made about education
9:59 – My Big Hairy Audacious Dream/Goal
13:02 – My Philosophy of Education
23:06 – Wanting to Contribute Through Education—From Home to Society
24:03 – Why I’m not pursuing a PhD (and what I’d love about it)
28:51 – Vocation, paid work, and asking: Is more fulfillment possible?
30:49 – How I define vocation
35:17– My working context: constraints, freedom & flexibility

This is our second summer living here and it is again a spectacular season. I probably should be documenting that instead of all this work stuff. But this is what I’m processing these days, so this is what you get.

PS. if you want the summer stories - flowers, family, garden, happenings on the South Shore, etc. - I share all that at Instagram. Also, not on trend.