Long term planning - to run away.

I'm 37 years old.  That's past the point many people are thinking about starting a career.  Many of my friends, and my husband, are starting to look at their retirement now.  Not me.  I'm just getting started.

My primary goal is, and has always been, to leave.  Go.  Run away from home.  Start a new life.  Be vagabond.  See the world.  Probably not a surprise, as I was raised on Rick Steves travel shows.  Yet, barring a few months here and there, I've never lived more than 300 miles from where I sit now.  Having had a child at 18, I've never been able to make the huge leaps I would like to.  Now that children are no longer in the picture, I'm free, in the largest and sometimes scariest sense.

Why is social work the key to the world for me?  Three big reasons...

• Social work is one of the soft sciences on the NAFTA list, which allows you to work in Mexico or Canada with much less red tape.  
• It's also an in-demand career in the EU, which is otherwise a very difficult area to seek employment as an American citizen.  
• Finally, it's one of the often listed overseas jobs in the VA healthcare system.

Now, this isn't the simplest route to live overseas.  The simplest route is just for my husband to take a job transfer to a base in Europe, and be a lady of leisure.  Only problem with that?  Leisure and I don't get along.  I have a busy mind and need problems to solve and people to talk with.  (Another problem I despise acknowledging is that it would also make my entire life and livelihood dependent on my husband.  Not a position I am comfortable with.  I want to know that if things get stupid, that I can still take care of myself.)

Here's a story of a young lady who did it in England.

So now all I need to do the schooling and go from there.  My elderly dogs should pass away before I'm ready to roll, leaving me with just a cat to care for.  Ideally, I will be able to get a job in the same area hubby can take a transfer to, and we can live happily ever after.  Then he can retire as soon as he is eligible (12 years from now) and we can go from there.

This plan will take a few years and a lot of work to execute.  But I think it will work.  I think there's a whole new life waiting out there for me.  So I think I'll just go get it.