So. I am at a point where, despite being bogged down by school, i am also realizing that the end is nigh. Once again i am being ejected from the cozy womb of student life into the harsh and fluorescent-lighted world. Somehow i doubt there will be a doctor there to cut the umbilical cord in one easy stroke, nor loving parents ready to put up with my crying and whining and cater to my every whim. sigh.
anyways, what i'm trying to say with this lame analogy is I WANT MY MOM! but she's kinda far away and has her own things to worry about.
So i want to figure out my own life. 25 has in many ways felt ages older than 24. Suddenly i don't feel like it's ok to keep bumming around, meandering from idea to idea without following through on any of them. It feels too old to have big debts and little prospects. So i'm spending all my spare time looking for jobs, internships, apprenticeships, and sugar daddies. Unfortunately Matt doesn't seem into the whole paying-for-my-love thing, and since i'm kinda into monogamy looks like i may have to settle for the former three. double sigh.
But yeah, looking for jobs etc. means making decisions. And anyone who knows me - or has at least spent time in a restaurant/cafe/american apparel with me - knows that making decisions is not my forte. I HATE OPTIONS! (But of course i also deeply appreciate all the options i have in my life, and feel very grateful to be in the position i am in) But i still hate options.
So yes. yes yes yes. Time to get on with decisions. I am having an interview this week for a volunteer job that would take me kinda far away for a while, but could be very fulfilling. I am applying for all sorts of internships that range from leading environmental summer camps to farming to working for all sorts of NGO's to ... well, i don't know, some of them are harder to describe than others. I'm also hoping to apply for a bunch of CIDA internships whenever they post them.
Unfortunately all of these jobs seem to overlap, and none of them seem to allow me to stay in Montreal for the summer, which i would dearly like to do. A lot of them also seem to pay very little, if anything at all. I have started a new volunteer job that i enjoy and there are lots of things i want to get involved in here when the weather gets warm. I am looking forward to bringing my yellow bicycle out of retirement, too, and biking around the city with no coat, revelling in the well-earned warm breeze. Perhaps i'm just dreaming. Perhaps a summer here would be nothing but hard labor and no money or time to enjoy the city. But i kind of doubt summer in Montreal could be less than fabulous, really.
So what to do? Is it bad to pass up interesting jobs to enjoy a city while i can? Is it bad to take unpaid positions when i have a student loan hanging over my head? Is it wrong to fantasize about a summer of minimum wage when i should probably be moving on with my life? Am i getting too old to flit around like this? Is my acute sense of the briefness of life getting in the way of my enjoyment of the moment? When am i going to figure out what i want to "do" with my life? Why do i want to do so many things all at once, and which one is the best for me?
Truly, in the last month or so i have considered a career as a pastry chef, an organic farmer, an educator, a researcher, an activist, a housepainter, a waitress, a world leader, a biologist, a graphic novelist, a regular novelist, vandana shiva's personal assistant, a carpenter, a yoga instructor (ha! not in the shape i'm in!), an epidemiologist, a horticulturalist, a housewife, a lawyer, and a drug dealer.
Do you think these could all be combined into one super-career?
yarg.
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3 comments:
I don't see why at least some of these can't be combined. In art-making I touch on several of them, but the end result/daily work of that is perhaps not what you want.
But I think several of your options overlap, although I think you might want to cross off epidemiologist (how much more school do you want to do, child??). You can always just hang out on PubMed.
I think you should do whatever feels good. I remember how 25 suddenly felt very close to 30, but here I am, 29, and still not quite 30! And who cares, anyway? Do what you love. Work crappy minimum wage jobs to pay the rent, but try not to work full time, volunteer for things you believe in, spend the rest of your time flying on a yellow bike and drinking dark coffee and enjoying the sunshine on your sunscreened-skin. You don't need to make decisions that set your path out all at once, laid out in front of you. Just make some small steps that make you happy.
I like that you are having an existential crisis on my birthday.
Love you lots. You'll do great, in small steps and large.
xxoxoxo
i am staying with an amazing swami in ujjain who wants to start an organic farm for his ashram and is doing ayurvedic anti-malarial work throughout india based on a revelation given to him by his yogi baba during mediatation. his beard is pink from holi. come live with me here and bathe in the holy shipra and watch the sun set while drinking chai... ok, maybe not, but he is looking for people to help him with these things and it is now officially the best place i have ever been in india. maybe anywhere. if you want.
"yogi baba" sounds like "baby mama" to me. it makes for a confusing read of natalie's massage.
almost as bad as my eternal placenta/polenta conflation.
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