The Woodlands Biotch

…if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives.  Some of the most interesting 40 year-olds still don’t.

i’ve changed career paths some seven times now, and have only recently decided on self-employment. but deciding what you want to do with your life is more than just your work. it’s your life. it’s where you want to live, whether you want to be alone or surrounded by friends, what hobbies you choose, what god you believe in. it’s all of it. and those are all pretty big choices.

so don’t rush it. figure it out as you go along. because if you try to cookie-cutter yourself into some mould that you figure you’re “supposed” to be in so that you have that ready-made answer when people ask, “so, what do you want to do with your life?” there’s a pretty good chance you’re answer isn’t really based on what you want to do with your life. it’s based on what you think they want to hear. whoever “they” are.

some other advice that goes along those same lines comes from a book i’m sure i’ve mentioned before, called normal is just a setting on the dryer: and other lessons from the real, real world. she says, “figure out where you want to live and go live there. everything else will follow.” when i decided a few years ago to restart my life, my destination had been boston. i won’t lie, a small part of the decision had been based on the melodic image produced by augustana (a moment of silence for all the innocent pianos that gave their life in the making of the video). but there were several large factors that held me back; the fact that i had just started down career path #6 and had recently feathered a brand new, albeit rented, nest not the least of them. and of course now i’m glad i didn’t go. much like i’m glad i didn’t stay in l.a., when, on a whim thirteen years ago i greeted a new year there with old friends and considered staying.

my point, and i do have one, is that in both of these instances i thought i was deciding what i wanted to do with my life, while subsequently ignoring that the life i was currently living wasn’t so bad that it needed some sort of escape. i’d already made those “escapes” and was rebuilding already. there was no need to derail those plans in order to have a more interesting answer to the question, “what do you want to do with your life?” because the truth was, i already had my answer. it was, “live my life the way i want to. answer to no one. be happy.”