I started my adult life burning too brightly. I actually had a plan starting off, a very solid plan–I wanted to be a doctor all through high school. I was actually extremely determined. My whole life was derailed when my best friend died the day I was going off to college; his parents later sued and won for medical malpractice, but suffice to say that the idea that I would be working with the kind of people who could lose a 19-year-old boy with no fatal illness made me lose my taste for the whole damn profession. I lost direction; I dropped out of college after two years. I have spent my 20′s working minimum wage jobs, when I was working at all.

The time for an academic career has passed me by; they say you can go back anytime, but the truth is that it takes someone extraordinary not only to go back to school at a late age, but to go back and make a great career of it. I refuse to go get a degree and spend the rest of my life being too old for my credentials–subtly passed by for the younger model who had it together at the age of 18.

I’m almost happier now, though, that I am not just graduating from med school, as I would be if my life had gone according to plan. I’ve learned a lot about myself, and life, and humanity; I’ve found passions that run deeper than the goals I set for myself when I wasn’t even old enough to vote. It’s a shame that our system is set up to favor those who go to college straight out of high school, because you don’t even come to know yourself until you get into your mid-to-late twenties–sometimes later. It would be nice if our society placed a higher value on personal growth.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

I’m smart, got good grades in school (except in economics) and the only job I can even get an interview for is a secretary. I want to do something! I want to work!! And be productive and useful and make a living and get married one day. Unfortunately, as this blog states so perfectly, how do I decide what to do? I’m terrified of looking back at 24 year old self and yelling “Why were you so scared?!” At least now I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I keep telling myself I’ll find something and it will get better, but I’d love any advice I can get from someone who has been in this position!

Thank you for writing something so timely, I look forward to reading what y’all have to say.

I led a pretty conventional life at first, following my parents’ conservative wishes (they had their reasons, and I respect them). At the age of 30 I began to question what I was doing. It was then that I decided to move sight unseen to Japan. I didn’t know the language, never stepped foot in the country, but I had some friends. I packed two suitcases and a one year journey turned into 8.

It was there that I fell into a line of work that would later lead my husband and me to start our own business. I met my husband and had our baby in Japan, and again I questioned the life we were leading. Japan was not where we wanted to live forever; our company was not where we wanted to spend our time. So we quit, started our own company, and moved to the US.

There have definitely been times when I yearned for fewer choices. If I had just one feasible route, I wouldn’t have to work so hard or wrestle with so many “what if”s. Even in terms of relocation, we had literally the world at our hands. It is very overwhelming to make a choice about where to settle down when your choices include countries. But in the end, I am grateful for the choices we have. It’s a true privilege. My parents were immigrants and limited in their abilities and financial resources. I cannot look at them and say that I am not grateful for having the choices that I do, because having choices means I become the driver rather than the passenger, and that knowledge alone is pretty empowering.

I was born curious and daring, but not with enough talent or determination to master a career-worthy skill… sort of a jackass of all trades. Often it seemed as if when everything goes, nothing means anything, and all paths seemed to lead nowhere.

I had put incredible pressure on myself to define who I was. But, what I eventually came to accept was that “being something” was not nearly as important as “going” and “seeing” and “doing”.

In the natural process of learning and feeling, we are always becoming, and coming into being is the fragile and exquisite state closest to the source of all energy and creation.

As long as we pursue our dreams, and we have many of them to be sure, we are adding to the experience of a lifetime, which is the privilege of being who we are.

So the where do we go from here? Like other people have said, we make up the rules. Each game has a unique set.