What am I doing with my life?
I don’t know. I’m still trying to figure that one out.
What do I want to do?
Well, I don’t know. See, my problem is this: Even though I’m a grown woman, I’ve never lost that feeling of…
Okay, wait, let me back up a second here.
When I was in junior high, I wanted to be an astronaut real bad. I read up as much as I possibly could on the space program and became a mini-expert on the subject. There was absolutely no question in my mind, despite my ineptitude for math, science or intelligence, that this was going to happen. By the time I got to high school, my mind eventually changed – not because I was failing basic algebra, but because I’d found something new to capture my interest.
And so it goes like this: in college, I changed my major no less than four times (not always officially, but it’s a wonder I managed to accumulate enough credits in one discipline to graduate in four years). It became a running joke with my friends; at the beginning of each semester, I’d read the course catalog cover-to-cover* and comment on how interesting everything sounded. Again, I’d see stuff like “advanced organic chemistry” and think “Wow, I should try that.”
Really, Julie?
Really.
I don’t know if it’s naivete or stupidity or some grand combination of both, but I – and we’re getting back to my original thought here – I’ve never really lost that sense of “I can do anything.”
I mean, I’m not completely delusional. I know that my shot at becoming an international spy has probably come and gone and I think I might be too old to enlist in the military, but everything else? Completely possible – with some work, of course.
My brain is practically busting with ideas right now. Should I go back to school? Should I move to another city?Another state? Another country? – and live there for awhile? Should I find another job? Should I not waste the deposit I just put down on an apartment here and just suck it up and move? (I can’t lie: the thought of having to live somewhere for an entire year without incurring financial penalties unsettles me – this is beginning to sink in).
See, I don’t know. My calm center of pragmatism reminds me that even though I’ve felt this way for-freaking-ever, I’ve still not really done much about it.
Damn you, rational mind! I was so going to be a fighter pilot!
*Kids, this is when they were in a big printed book that one had to pick up from the Admissions office, not some downloadable PDF file that you access from your smartie phone
the sloppy copy 