Once upon a time, there was a little girl. She loved sitting in her pretty pink princess room playing pretend. One day, her mother watched as the little girl diligently covered one of her dolls in gauze. Her mother laughed quietly, amused by the determination on the child's face.
"Sweetie, what do you want to be when you grow up?" the mother asked. And without giving it a second thought, the girl replied, "A doctor."
The next day, her mother watched as the child neatly lined up her teddy bears in several rows, then took her place opposite them by her easel. She took a red crayon, drew a big letter 'A' on the paper, and proceeded to give her toys a lecture on all the words she knew that started with the letter 'A'. Her mother patiently waited until her little one's lesson was over to ask, "Honey, now what do you want to be when you grow up?" And again, without hesitation, the little girl matter-of-factly responded, "A teacher."
Every day that passed, that little lady explored new adventures and new possibilities. She wanted to be a chef, a lawyer, an astronaut, a police officer, an artist, a garbage collector, a circus performer, and a ballerina.
Twenty years later, the little girl became a woman - a fabulous woman, if I do say so myself - who still didn't have a clue what she wanted to do with her life. However, of one thing, she was certain: she wanted to live the good life.
That woman, ladies and gentlemen, is me. I am a twenty-something year-old who, until recently, was just floating through life. I left college only to find that the grown-up life wasn't as glamorous as they make it out to be. Jobs were scarce so, I interviewed for and accepted dead-end gigs out of desperation for a paycheck. Though it was tough to truly become stable on an income of peanuts, I found that there was something truly pleasant about being an adult. Okay, so, no, paying bills isn't fun. Neither are student loans, balancing a checkbook, rent or car notes, for that matter. But at the end of the day, I walk into my apartment and smile because I'm surviving on my the grown-up life on my own. The only problem is that I wasn't happy. The daily grind wasn't leaving me fulfilled. I craved more.
Lately, I've been cruising through life on auto-pilot. One day to took a moment to compare my life to the lives of those around me - friends, acquaintances, co-workers - and I noticed something remarkable. They were making their life happen while I was just letting my life happen. From quitting their stable, well paying full time job to be an adjunct professor of theater at a community college to waiting in the scorching Florida sun for a bus in a town not known for its public transportation just to get their vocal lessons to agreeing to walk down a runway half naked for free in order to gain, these people had goals and dreams and would stop at nothing to reach them.
And still, there I was with no dream, no mission. I toyed with several ideas, but, just as when I was a child, nothing stuck for too long. In high school I was Editor-in-Chief of my school paper and loved every minute of it, especially writing. But by the time I got to college, I realized that most journalists, except maybe Katie Couric, lived below the poverty line. So I opted to pursue Advertising instead. And since it was still in the Journalism and Mass Communication school, I could at least feel like a journalist by association. The day came for us upperclassmen to declare our major. Much to my chagrin, there was a waiting list for the Advertising program. So I went on to Plan C: Telecommunication Arts, the most misunderstood major on the planet. Don't bother asking me what that is because even I couldn't tell you.
To employers, "Telecommunication Arts" meant "Telemarketing and Sales" which to me meant "Torture." But hey, it was a job, right? After three years, I was burnt out Corporate America. My best friend and entrepreneur (an early bloomer) suggested I try different things until I find what fits. So here I was, feeling like a little girl playing pretend. One day, I was a baker, making mountains of homemade cookies, muffins and cupcakes. It was fun, but it just wasn't me. Too messy, I think. Next I tried on modeling for size, and let me tell you, it is NOT as easy as it looks! Can you "smeyes" without looking like you wanna punch someone in the face? No? Didn't think so. I entered a model search and that didn't fare well. Nor did being a make-up artist, a "romance enhancement expert" or a party planner. But one day it hit me - I was always myself when I wrote.
Years ago, I turned my back on being a journalist in hopes of getting a bigger paycheck. But sometimes you come to the realization that the smile on your face and they joy in your heart is worth far more than any amount of money in the world. So my suggestion to all my fellow late bloomers out there, it's okay to not know what you want to do with your life just yet. But what's not okay is giving up on your search for your passion. Go back to being a kid playing pretend. Try on every career "hat" under the sun. Eventually, you'll find the one that you'll never want to take off.
♥ - The Bougie Budgetista
