When I grow up

Did you know what you wanted to be when you were 17 years old? I can positively and honestly say no. On most days, I'm not even certain now what I want to be when I grow up. Or when I have to admit that I'm actually grown up. I wonder how much of what I thought was actually a viable career or what was even possible as a job - was driven by what my parents told me, what I had seen in school or on television.

I have a friend who has a nearly 17 year old daughter that is wrestling with what she should be when she grows up or the path that she should take when she graduates from high school - NEXT YEAR! She's asking me for advice - as if somehow my career hopping will be a one-stop-shop for someone exploring a lot of different careers. 

What advice did I give her? I told her that she is 17 and still only 1/2 way through her junior year in High School. She should enjoy being a kid and not having responsibilities and bills. That she should just have fun doing what she enjoys doing. 

I guess my point to her was simply that you don't have to write your future before you've lived. You don't have to do what someone else thinks you should (or shouldn't). That you should have the time to just explore who YOU are. Do something that makes you happy. Do something that is FUN.There are too many people in the world who are barely surviving their jobs  because they had to do something to pay the bills. They are perhaps in a career that someone else told them to do. They had to  make a choice. 

But life in today's times has more to do with creating your own way. About making choices that are for you. There are jobs out there that people really think are - FUN!


The day that I graduated from High School my grandmother told me, "The more you learn - the more you realize that you have to learn." To be honest, I was kind of ticked off at her. I mean honestly what happened to congratulations? But what I realized as I went away to college was simply that my view of the world was narrowed by what and who I knew- what they did for a living and what was generally acceptable as far as a job, career, way to pay for school, way to do school...that I had to go to school (althought I have to say going to college was the one thing I will conceed that my parents had been totally right on me doing).

I hope that I can remember this as my kids ask me about career advice. I hope that my friend (and her daughter) heard what I said. I meant it only from a place of love.