I plan to put this behind a cut as soon as I can figure out how to make one with the online updater

[siwangmu]

Alright. This entry is important. I guess I have to hope that it'll be important because in writing it I will somehow find a clear answer to my question, though, because my usual "can I just get other people to tell me what they think?" approach probably isn't the best one for momentous life decisions. On the other hand, what could be better

Comments

[demiurgent]

I am thirty seven years old. In six weeks, I will be thirty eight.

I took the job I have now when I was thirty.

From eighteen until thirty I attended two colleges, lived in five cities, nearly starved more than once, fell in love, fell out of love, had some good sex, had some bad sex, spent a lot of nights talking until three AM, spent some nights drunk, worried myself sick and had moments of transcendent joy. During that time I drew paychecks as an actor, a secretary, a transcriptionist, a dispatcher, a copy jock, a convenience store clerk, a bookstore employee, a temp, a manual laborer and a professional pillow fighter. I worked for state, local and county government. I worked for huge corporations and worked under the table for an incoherent and abusive Hungarian restauranteur. No less than five times I dropped my entire life and went to go do something else in another time zone.

I now work as a technology professional, English degree and all.

You don't need the answers now. You really, seriously don't. You have the most wonderful, most incredible gift of them all. You have time. Time to screw up, time to find something better. Time to try and fail and try again and see what happens. Time to lose your head, and your heart, and your wallet.

You're on the cusp of graduating with two degrees, one of them frigging Japanese. You're not going to have trouble finding work.

You don't need to know what your life's passion is yet. You just need to know that by God, you're going to find it.

And that, to me, you've got a handle on.

[larksilver]

hmph. Again, I'm trumped in the "less babble, more sense" category by Mr. Burns. Listen to him! He's much better at this talky thing than I am.

One note: my closest friend says he can set his clock for "Darla-splosion Day" based on how stressed out I am. It's pretty sad when blowing stuff up in your reality in favor of something different is so common it has a name, isn't it?

To completely steal from that song a while back, some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't know what they're going to be when they grow up.