I would like to know what to do with my life.
Yes, I understand that everyone has this problem. I believe my mother still doesn’t know what she’s going to be when she grows up. There are days, though, when it becomes painfully clear that I am not doing the right thing. A couple of things that happened today made me think, well, this is absolutely wrong for me. Having a day job is all well and good, but it’s not doing much for my growth as a person. Unless getting progressively angrier is what I’ve got to look forward to, and I’m not willing to accept that quite yet.
I know what I’m doing, and that’s kind of a problem in my workplace. I’d be better off as a drone. Which is too bad, because it ought to be a great job. It just isn’t. My priorities and the priorities of the business – which are perfectly valid and reasonable – don’t match up very well. I keep hoping that they will, because essentially it boils down to the same things, and it hasn’t happened.
Well, all right. Why am I still doing that job, then? At this point, I don’t know. Some of it’s fear. I don’t want to jump into the deep end of something and fail, only to end up in the same place. I’ve actually caught myself thinking about how I’ve just come back to where I started, and that’s painful. Seven years ago, I was doing exactly the same thing, and I didn’t like it much then either. It was a little better, because there was a possibility that I’d get to do some of the work I actually liked. That work doesn’t exist where I am now.
If I quit this job, where do I go? This is where knowing what I want to be when I grow up would come in handy. I know what I’m good at, and I haven’t quite figured out how to make it work in a context I can respect. That’s a big part of the problem.
You might tell me to stop sitting around focusing on it, and do something. I know. Leaping blindly into the abyss isn’t as appealing as it was five years ago, though. I need a lifeline.
Actually, now that I’ve said that, I think I can use a knitting metaphor. The first time I knitted lace, I needed a lifeline. Several, in fact. I kept going, and eventually managed to finish. I knitted some more lace, and needed fewer lifelines. Now I’m in the middle of a lace shawl (and I’ve found a combination of yarn and patter that’s working extremely well) with nary a lifeline to be found. I’ve got a stitch marker, so I can keep track of the middle, which is probably significant in some way. I can do lace, because I didn’t give up when it was hard the first couple of times. Clearly, what I need to do is find the yarn and the pattern that go together, and I’ll learn how to work without lifelines. Maybe a couple of shiny stitch markers, that’s all right.
So, universe, I need a pattern to fit my yarn. Or a really good stitch dictionary and some notes on construction. Whatever you’ve got.
