it's tough to know what to be when you grow up. or to even imagine what you might want to be, or do, or how you imagine things looking when you're sitting at 27. this is not a 'now I'm an old bastard and woe is me and where are my elastic-waisted pants?' type post, this is just me contemplating things as they stand. if you're reading this expecting some sort of conclusion, you'd best stop reading now, as *SPOILER ALERT* I don't figure it all out by the end of the post.
weirdly enough, it is hard to go back to work on the Monday after you've just spend a week in Melbourne and then at the beach. it gets one thinking, 'well why do I keep turning up to this office, when the prospect does not fill me with joy?'. after all, You Only Live Once, amiright?
sometimes I wish I lived in a world where I would have received an owl bearing a letter from Howgarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. there's no way I would have been a Muggle, if we lived in such a world. by 27, I would be highly proficient in some specific and valuable sort of magic that would give me a steady and enthralling job, plus probably some magical little children who managed to explode the cat's whiskers on a weekly basis. white picket wizard fences are probably slightly different, but all in all, I suspect I'd have been content.
alas, not a wizard, not even a little bit. even though JK Rowling definitely has some gaps in her stories, you can't help but feel slightly wistful about the ease with which magic helps you make up your mind about a career (once you've killed voldemort, of course... yep I'm not afraid to say his name, coz I'm a badass). the world in which we live, however, yields no such easy outs.
I'm not sure if it's just me, but I find the not-being-exactly-sure part causes me to shift between angst, apathy, and downright panic (not the lose-your-shit-in-a-public-place kind of panic, more the kind where you're quietly screaming inside while attending family events where each person feels entitled to ask you about your future). I wonder why I panic, but then I remember I'm a Taylor, and we're born into a strong sense of the necessity of Doing Something. Dammit. plus our family events are huge. hence the move to Canada for 3 years of snow, parties and potluck dinners... you don't even have to plan a whole meal when you have a potluck dinner. bliss.
I've mentioned travel plans and hopes for getting my shit together, and at 27 I feel it may well actually happen in ways it couldn't possibly before now. still, getting shit together is one thing, but knowing where you're headed with all your shit that you've gotten together (are ya diggin' my elegant prose here?) is another matter entirely.
I recently saw a stand-up comedian in Melbourne called
Hannah Gadsby who spoke about how she measured being grown up by the ability to plan for things, and then actually make them happen. also, she noted that having a bedside table to put things like a glass of water and her seeing-eye glasses made her feel like some success had been achieved in the past year. I agree and also think she is a fucking genuis, for other reasons that I might even talk about in a future post.
at work I have been doing a lot of reciting the alphabet under my breath today, mainly so things go in the real alphabetic order and not some made-up alphabet I've put together. I have been known to excuse such alphabetical faux-pas in the past by saying in an overly defensive voice "well I have a degree in English so I'm allowed to make up my own alphabet". it's not true, folks. it's not even partially true.
anyways, back to the alphabet reciting. i've been doing that, right, and putting things in alphabetical order, and highlighting those things which ought to be highlighted (highlit?), and labelling things with a permanent marker. and here comes the best bit- the smell of marker. it's just so naughty and delicious. the forbidden marker smell. occupational hazards include wacky blog posts which traipse from thing to shiny thing without much tying them together, brain damage, judgement from your friends, jealousy from the highlighters and accidentally drawing on your nose with black permanent marker.
really, what I'm getting at here is I think it has to get better than this. I don't mean that there aren't good things about my job, because there are. I'm more getting at the fact that there will be more than this. eventually. because I plan to travel, and this job is good for the saving of travel funds, I'll be here a while yet. then, I'll travel, and get whatever sort of job I can, seeing as I don't speak swedish. Then after that, I presumably will be back in Australia with an almost-finished Masters. After that, yikes, I'd probably better get a real job. And maybe a bedside table. Hannah Gadsby is 35, so at least I have a little time up my sleeve.
this is me keeping calm. unfortunately I don't look this good when I'm having the anxiety about the future. and part of me wonders if it's ok to keep shifting the goal posts. there was a time not so long ago when I thought that I'd have in organised by the time I hit 28. that's in October. now it seems 35 is such an age, but then, I know what I'm like at making progress, so perhaps we'd better round it out at a nice even 40.
I can do this.
