Do you know what you want to do with the rest of your life? No? Well I bet everybody else could tell you what you should do! I’ve got a great career in the computer software field and I’m about to graduate from massage school. I’m getting really tired of people assuming that I should do one thing or the other. Their assumptions are particularly frustrating because I could use some good conversation and feedback.
There’s the majority of people that assume that I should keep my high paying, visible, successful career. They seem to be focused on the salary and the fact that it’s a "successful" career. Then there’s the group of people that assume because I went to school and I’m graduating, I should do that for a career.
My problem is that I don’t know what I want to do and I want to talk to people about it but it’s really hard to have a productive conversation when they’ve already decided what I should do without even knowing how I feel!
For example here’s a conversation I had on Sunday:
Friend: I think it’s so great that you’ve put all this time into school and you’re about to graduate, start a business, have flexible hours and be able to spend more time with your kids. What a great thing you are doing.
Me: I’m not planning on quitting my job and going into massage.
Friend: Stormy! You’ve got to. You can do. You’ll be able to spend more time with your kids!
Me: Quitting work and starting a massage business wasn’t really ever the plan.
Friend: It’s tough to start a massage business but you can do it!
And the conversation I want to be having is about what do I want to do. Not how I can do it. I’m completely confident I can work out the details of whatever I want to do, if I could only figure out what that was!
Luckily, I live in a time when we are all going to live long enough to have three or four careers so I don’t just have to pick just one! I can be a software geek and then a massage therapist and then a doctor and then a librarian. Or maybe a book scout. Or I could just try to do them all at once!