Not sure? We thought so. So here are some questions to ponder, while you make up your mind.
Is there a part of you that’s just a tad envious of women your grandma’s age, whose choices ran the gamut from A-B?
When you were a little kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? A ballerina? The president of the United States? Willy Wonka? Would that little kid recognize you now?
Why do you do what you do? How did you decide to do it? What do you wish you were doing instead? And what’s stopping you?
When you daydream at work (admit it, we all do it), what do you think about?
Did you choose your life or did it choose you?
Tell us your story. No decisions necessary.
This blog is exactly where I am right now; unbelievable! I cannot wait for futue postings.
I majored in theatre in college, only to burn out on it and give it up after college. but now, every day, I think about that life, the performance life…and I wonder what I’m missing. what did I give up? Would I be happier if I had just stuck with it? Would I , could I be more fulfilled if I were doing it right now? Oy, it drives me mad and I keep hoping that maybe all of my going around about it will make me so nauseous I’ll actually get sck (of myself) and do something.
Hasn’t happened yet.
I’d like to get off this not-so-merry go-round and get on with being happy or…or whatever.
I can’t WAIT to see more on this blog. Thank you! Your blog is exactly where I am.
I second Marjorie’s sentiments. It’s almost eerie that you started following me on Twitter and led me to this blog at this particular time.
I have two children, ages 1 and 2, and have a very coveted part-time, flexible, benefited position–at a totally uninspiring job. I almost left last fall to stay home with the kids every day and dabble in freelancing, but decided to stick with the security of being employed. Then in April I started blogging, and fantasize daily about that being my job…about being free to take on projects that are meaningful to me. It sounds asinine typing it out, but it’s the truth.
So, like a lot of moms, I could really use about 50,000 more hours in the day so I can enjoy my family, manage my day job, and pursue my writing and blogging ambitions.
Also considering serving as assistant cross-country track coach at my alma mater in the fall, which would mean a little more time away from the kids and from writing, but is an experience I really want a crack at…
So it gets really circular and contradictory at times–exactly what this sit seems to be about–so I’ll be reading closely.
my grandmother lived through the depression. as an adult, she was a fashion model. as a 13 year old, she was shipped off to have a slilenced abortion. she was gorgeous, shamed, intelligent, powerful and ambitions-yet, she always was so controlled. no crying, no complaining. it just wasn’t ladylike. i do not envy that denial. she had her children at a time when women were getting diagnosed with ‘boredom’. no, i do not romanticize that lack of options.
i always wanted to be a journalist, but along the way i fell in love with anthropology-i love those big systems at work moving us and pulling us in every direction. i graduated, got married, was unable to find a job. i was depressed. i tried teaching, hated it. tried being an editorial assistant, and i sucked at answering the phone and fulfilling the magazine’s uber cool image, i tried working for a non profit and was shoved out by the good old boys who ran it. i since had a son who is my life…but now, i am ‘bored’!! so, i have always loved politics and am applying for a graduate degree in public policy. i surely hope it makes me tick! ’cause lord knows i have been waiting…
I fought my choices for a long time. I felt I needed to prove myself to the world. I pursued higher education to satisfy my family’s high expectations of me (at first), and then to live up to my own high expectations of myself. At 30, I am STILL in school… writing my PhD dissertation.
Sadly, just a couple of semesters into my graduate work, I realized that academia was in fact NOT for me. I took an opportunity to double check this realization last fall, when I was asked to substitute for an old professor – 3 undergraduate courses. Sure enough, the private corner office and my name on the door (as temporary as it was), did give me a brief glipse of what I though I had always wanted, quickly followed by the return to reality – that I did not feel passionate about my work in that environment.
I am pressing on with my PhD bc as much as I’d like to have had this realization come to me before investing the time and money past my Masters, it didn’t. And I just couldn’t accept the idea of wasting so much on a dream that wouldn’t lead anywhere. At the very least, I wanted to finish what I started.
I also joined the Army in an effort to prove myself. An acquaintance actually said to me “you won’t last 3 hours in boot camp”. I didn’t want to be a “sissy girl”. I thought to be equal, I had to be like men. I did alright in the Army, but I HATED almost every moment of it. As karma would have it, though, it’s there that I met my now husband of 6 years.
I was extremely dissapointed in myself (and in denial at first) when it occurred to me that more than anything, I want to be a MOM. The traditional kind, not in addition to a career. I tried to fight it. But the truth is, I LOVE the home, and I even plan on homeschooling. I envisioned a home waterbirth to really put me in touch with my feminine side (exactly what I had been trying to fight all my life – being too feminine!). Again, as karma would have it, we cannot conceive biological children.
So my introduction to motherhood will be through the blessing of adoption. I thought this would be the ultimate equalizer between parents, but it’s not. I’ll just leave it at that.
I currently teach ESL part time, and this is incredibly satisfying for me. It’s not the typical academia, I have a lot of freedom and flexibility. However, I do not have the pay nor benefits which I gave up when I quit working full time in a ho-hum job. (A job I gave up, btw, in order to complete my dissertation and prepare to care for our child, whenever that happens along our adoption journey.)
The saddest thing is that it wasn’t men who made me try to be all things to all people – it was other women. I felt judged by other women, first for not wanting children, and now for not wanting a career. Further, the TYPE of mother I want to be is also up for debate, it seems.
I agree – we can’t win at this game. We all need to start playing a differen game entirely, one where WE make up the rules!
I have briefly read some of the postings on this site, which I think is profound and timely. The itching thought that runs though my conciseness is that it is ok to think or dream or believe a girl can do anything, yet the doing and execution is what can undo her. Coupled with a family and the people whose feelings and egos may be bruised and battered along the way. The absolute reality is that any job or hobby that evokes passion requires an equal if not greater sacrifice. That notion of ‘What do you want to be when grow up’, is not coupled with ok, you can do it, but it’s going to be hard. Mom doesn’t say ‘Gee little Sammy thats great so when you fall in love and get married make sure you can integrate all of your passion and dreams into your marriage.’ That would have been the best advice anyone could have given me. Instead I plunged head long into a decision before I had the courage to really declare my dreams, AND the ramifications of those dreams.
So the where do we go from here? Like other people have said, we make up the rules. Each game has a unique set.
You guys reading my mind??
I used to think “Undecided” = “Defective”. For me, the tragedy of not having realized a singular life purpose or definitive success by the age of, oh thirty-something, is that the window of opportunity for achieving it suddenly became a guillotine of dreams—progressively lopping off the deferred and aborted bits, until all I had left was an amputated idea conjured up one bored night on a cocktail napkin in a some random bar after one too many glasses of Chardonnay.
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.
[…] Are you Undecided, too? […]
What an interesting blog. Yes, I’ve pretty much chosen my life after allowing it to choose me for the first 20ish years.
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 graduated a year ago after puttering around in college, trying out different majors without finding anything that made me want to say, “Yes! This is what I want to do for the rest of my life!” I have a degree and four minors. This past year has been the best and the absolute worst ever, I’ve cried more times than I care to count about never being able to find a job that will allow me to move out of my parent’s house.
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.
So, are you ready for a laugh? I go to my undergrad’s career services to take one of those magical quizzes to pair me up with a career, not based on personality as is Myers Briggs, but based on my interests. (the COPS test). Anyway, I circled the statements such as “splicing genes in a laboratory” and rate it as Like, like moderately, dislike moderately, or Dislike. 4 choices, 2 hundred something statements. After I took it, the conselor took, not 10 minutes to score, but nearly 30 minutes! The results? …get ready to laugh…She actually had NO clue what to tell me about my results. She too was utterly confused! Ha! Not only am I confused, I confuse others!! Well, she tried to explain my results but couldn’t b/c normally it would conincide with the degree I had, or with previous work experience, and none of it conincided. Everything, in fact, was the opposite of each other. We put the test to the side, and we spent 2 hours talking. This counselor who must’ve been in her 50’s, also told me it took her nearly her whole life to find out what she wanted to do. I thought huh, it not just me. Ok, I feel better. My nervous itching started to subside, and I started to open up. I told her what I became interested in after 4 years of graduating (and working sucky jobs that I hated a month into them). Surprisingly, she mentioned the military. Something I had previously thought of joining twice before hand, but never did. And then it started to spark my interest again, and again, once she mentioned it. I thought, wow weird. I met with her sometime last week.I am still contemplating joining the military,but I always wonder why I didn’t join before, and whether the fact that it’s something I’m thinking about AGAIN, actually means something. ( I have a boyfriend now, and he is deathly afraid of never seeing me as much so he doesn’t want me to join.) That’s just 1 of obstacles I’m dealing with, the other is the aptitude tests, which btw I suck at. I am so glad I found this book. I feel so much better knowing that there are others in the same boat as I am (cheesy ain’t it?) Thanks Barbara and Shannon!
It is extremely comforting to know that there are so many other women out there in the same situation as myself. I am 23 years old, and currently trying to decide what to study for next year, since I have never studied after leaving school. I have been toying with the idea of journalism for a while now, but am still not sure. Well, I am never sure. I am terrified of making any decision and get completely flustered when having to decide what to wear, or eat, never mind what to study and where to live. I have gained wonderful work experience in the last few years, and have achieved well, but feel more lost than ever. Being a perfectionist and completely obsessed with what others think of me, I have been unable to live my life for myself. Furthermore, my fear of not ‘over-achieving’ has turned me into a chronic procrastinator, thus my days are filled with nothing less than worry, fear and dread.
Somewhere along the line I became very interesting in public speaking, as well as anthropology. Then again, being as spiritual as I am, I have even considered abandoning everything to go and meditate in an ashram in India. I am started to suspect I am having my quarter life crisis at the age of 23. I have done a career test, and it didn’t tell me anything about myself I didn’t already know.
So, now I am trying decide whether I want to be a lifestyle print journalist, a television presenter (big dream, I know) or something more along the lines of anthropology. Do I study for a 3 year university degree or a 1 year varsity diploma since I am already 23 years old? So many decisions! I have even considered being hypnotised to try to understand what I really want.
I am frustrated with myself and all these high expectations, and I’m sure my family and friends are also growing increasingly tired of all this. As a young woman my mother never put all this pressure on herself. She just did whatever worked for her at that time. She just did whatever made her happy. Why can’t we be like that? Why do we feel that it is our ‘duty’ to conquer the world?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, this is also me.
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.
I am currently reading the book right now and I cannot believe how much I identify with it. As a 28 year old recent graduate school graduate this is my life! As a little side note…I just read the part where you talk about how women only make 70 cents to every dollar a man makes, well the Wall Street Journal on the front page today talks about how the average American makes way less on average now then they did in the 1990s and they mentioned how women still only make 70 cents to the dollar that men make.