In general, I want to believe that the people I interact with each day have good intentions. After all, seeing people and the world in the best (rose-colored) light possible is kind of my thing. This belief in the general goodness of others leads me to speculate that most people just have a difficult time understanding when someone makes different decisions than the ones they themselves have made. I don’t think this is at all off-base an assumption if you look at an arena, like oh I don’t know, politics, for example.
Recently I’ve been confronted with the fact that people have a hard time processing what exactly it is that I’m doing with my life, at 28 years old, with a Master’s Degree, a pile of debt, and a job that is nowhere near my field of study.
Indeed, you might be asking yourself, What exactly is she doing?
To that I say: Whatever the hell I want.
Now that’s clearly a flippant answer, but bear with me, because I’ve got a little bit of aggression to work off here before I can really get to explaining myself.
Yes, stranger who I have just shown excellent customer service, this IS how I’m choosing to utilize my college degree at the moment. I’m sorry that you find my life choices unacceptable. Would you also like my mother’s cellphone number so you can call and voice your disappointment to her as well?
Phew, okay. Now maybe these questions, the raised-eyebrows, the “how old are you?”s are more innocent than I interpret. Maybe the brunt of this judgement I feel is self-inflicted.
Let me be clear, that no one is as aware as I am of how crazy it feels to leave your job suddenly with absolutely no plan or idea of what comes next.
That is not how I have lived my life. I have always been a planner. I make lists. I plan itineraries out in incredible detail. I don’t like to make split-second decisions, lest I forget to think through any one of a billion “what could happen” scenarios and have something go awry.
However comfortable I may have felt with these systems in place, at some point last year it became apparent that they were no longer working for me. I found myself in a place I certainly did NOT plan on: depressed, unfulfilled, completely lost, and feeling like a vacuum. (Empty, but also like I really sucked.) Haha. Obviously, it was time for my rebellion. I could no longer follow the same patterns of thought I always had before.
When I left, I was only clear on one thing: I wanted more happiness in my life. I wanted to stop living each day on autopilot, doing the same things with very little energy or joy. I wanted to be intentional about the way I spent my time and the attitude that I carried with me throughout all of my days.
For me, being intentional about happiness meant making a huge change. I knew I couldn’t go on the way I was. To some people, that might look a lot like failure. It might look like grasping desperately to stay above the surface of life. It might look like being lost in the middle of the map without a compass. Honestly, it sometimes feels like that. But I know that’s not what it really is when I think past how it looks to others and focus on what it means to me to have made this change.
More happiness for me. More positivity for the universe. A big old win-win for everybody. 🙂
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