322- Getting the Thoughts Out of My Head

What do you want to be when you grow up was a question that all children are asked with humor as they played dress up or looked wide eye in amazement at role models that seemed to good to be true.

 When we were in high school, the question was asked with some doubt coloring the voices. As if they weren't quite sure we would know yet, but with a definite impatience evident in the tone.

In college? You were asked what you're going to do with your life and woe to you if you were silly enough to study anything that did not end in business, nursing, engineering, or some sort of pre-study program. Like me. I chose to get a degree in theatre. And I was happy to defend it from everyone because why would I want to be like everyone else and get a degree in business? I could learn just as much while learning how to be a creative thinker and producer of fine arts.

 Then, I graduated, moved back home since I had no money saved up, and took a position that I thought may be a suitable career. I'm lucky despite my own petty issues. I may be miserable since I left behind a social life that included close friends to living at home with the company of the people who love you even when you all drive each other crazy and have no privacy. But I'm not struggling to survive and I'm healthy and loved.


   However, I can't help but look at my fellow recent graduates. Many have returned to school for another degree. Others have pursued careers that allowed them to segue way seamlessly into foreign travel or secure positions. Some have applied for job after job after job and finally taken one that will give them experience even if it gives them no real joy. And most have ended up in retail, restaurants, and other positions that needs no more qualification than decent personality, 18 years of age, and a good interview.

And we all are grateful. We have to be. We have to put aside all the years of hearing how special we are, smart, talented, engaging, and how we can do anything we want and we have to learn how to hear the words no, not now, and maybe next time. Or we just don't hear anything back at all.

I believe silence is the worst sound of rejection. As in they can't possibly be bothered to spend time on rejecting you, much less considering you. And in our current economic environment, our generation has learned that there's just nothing out there right now unless we want to go back to school, work at positions that don't require the fancy degree we lovingly framed, and just accept that we aren't as special as we had believed as we studied away on our college weekends, sleeping in and skipping classes and thinking about what we were going to wear to the bar that night.

 It's the real world apparently. But I don't buy it. This is just the next stage. And for our current times, its a hard step to take up to that stage. I can only speak for myself as I stand up here and wonder: Do I take a step backwards? Return back to a college town and make the best of it and surround myself with people who care about me even as they move on with their own lives? Would that be going backwards and risking any type of progress? Or should I just admit I made a mistake by returning to life at home and should have stayed there in the first place?

Or am I playing it too safe? Should I risk it all and just move to a new city, try and find a job and risk being alone, completely alone with no safety net? Or would I just end up home in a couple of months, broke and having to start all over?

It's almost been a year since I walked across a stage and I don't think I've grown at all. I think I've done exactly what I was scared of when people asked me what I was going to do when I graduated. Settled. Got complacent with a life that's filled with one person movie nights, social media networking as a social life, and a job but not a career. And have people tell me to give it time. Give it time and just become numb with the complacency of it all. You can happily numb or you can be painfully depressed.

As I stand on the platform and look back at my steps here, I can't see the steps ahead. Since graduation, I've made two distinct choices to get to where I am now. When's the next fork in the road going to come?

At least getting the chance to make a choice is something I have left.

Even if I don't know which is the right one.