Describe your future.

So I started this blog so that I could share my thoughts and feelings with the big, wide world. I will be posting random little things I think of and things I think need to be discussed and should be ranted about. Without further ado, here is my first post about my future.

Yeah, I completely 100% know what I will do in the future, I've got it figured out like every other teenager. I’m going through a mid-life crisis at the ripe old age of 15. I know what you’re thinking; get over yourself, and believe you me: I’ve tried. I have no idea what I want to do with my future. I can’t fathom what my life will be like in 5, 10 or 15 years, let alone 1. From the very start of high school at age 11, I’ve had a rough idea of what I want to do with my life which has constantly changed up until now.

All I know is that I enjoy a couple things and that I would enjoy nothing more than pursue a career in, but I am clueless as to whether I will be successful, which worries me.

I feel as though the case for me and many teenagers alike is an inability to annihilate a continuous, persistent thought at the back of our heads of our future. Everyone always asks what you want to do and it really bothers me. Considering that this is being written at 3:20 am in my Summer Holidays, you can tell it’s an issue. On one hand I think I need to do something smart and reliable, like accountancy or banking. Yet, on the other hand I don’t want to be restricted and live a life full of boredom and lacking in creativity. One thing I’m sure of is that when I retire, I want to look back on the last 60+ years of my career and be saddened to leave it behind, and in order for that to happen I need to choose something that I will enjoy.

I mean, I really enjoy languages and cultural stuff. Art too, if it’s in my free time because at school it makes me see art as work, not play which means that I start to loathe something I’m supposed to enjoy. And that’s great because they’re things that I find interesting and won’t ever get completely bored of. However, I am always being told that I need to choose a career that has money in it, but is money really the only source of happiness? If I choose something I can throw myself into, with enraging passion, does it mean that I will be condemned to a life of poverty and misery?

On the flipside, say I have a very well-paying job and a ‘perfect life’ which is enriching but means that I have no life of my own, no husband or children to keep my life worth living. I would be utterly miserable.

A popular belief in society for women is that you will eventually have to make the ‘decision’; do you want a career or a family? Because according to the universe, you can’t have both. If you take pleasure from both, then you have to decide which is the most important to you. But I completely disagree. Yeah, if you want both it’s going to be beyond difficult to manage, in spite of that, if it’s really what you want, it will work out in the end. If you’ve ever watched The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel you will be familiar with the quote: ‘everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end.’ That’s exactly what this balance is about, if it’s truly something you desire and you work for it, it will work out eventually. I know I’ve repeated myself, but I think it’s important to actually take that in.

Personally, my take on the key to happiness is finding balance. For some people, devoting your life to helping others, even if that means living in poverty is how to be happy, then that is their key to happiness. For others, being able to live comfortably with a roof over your head, relaxing vacations 3 times a year and eating out for dinner in top notch 5 star restaurants is the key. But for me, a healthy balance of self-indulgence, selflessness and goodness is how to be happy.

I believe that even though I feel like I’m stuck in the middle of nowhere with several different paths to my future, I can still choose to grab my life by the shoulders and steer it down the right one which will pave it’s way for me whilst I stand back and watch, oblivious to stop the chain of events from unravelling. I still have no idea what I want to do in the future, but I know this: being OK is my main priority. If, after a long day at work, I can go home with a roof over my head with someone to share it with and still say that I’m okay, then I know that I’ll be just fine. Just fine.

Bex