Posts Tagged ‘doing what you love’
Favorite Foto Friday
Looking back, this was taken on a great day. This picture was shot somewhere amidst an 8 hour ride on a very cramped bus down the coast of South Africa back to Cape Town from a weekend safari/bungee jumping excursion. The bus ride, while not so comfortable enabled the viewing of some of the most beautiful landscape which, in turn, provoked some serious reflecting/writing.
It seems like forever ago we were attempting to eat lunch on this very windy beach. While I feel very far from my days in South Africa in terms of how long ago it was, I also feel much closer and more inline with the journey I started there. The journey to do more things that I love.
I’ve spent a lot of time this week thinking about where I want to be going. I think many people in life set a goal and reach it and then forget to set another one. Sometimes the struggle of achieving that goal is so difficult we are deterred to set new ones.
Ever since taking my job at the ad agency, I have been trying to think of where I want to be a few years from now in my career. I think I was so excited to finally find something that I love waking up and doing and getting paid for that I have become a little bit consumed with my work over the past year. But I have been forgetting to think about where I want to be in my life.
What about traveling? Writing? New adventure?
I need those things too and I haven’t exactly been making a lot of time for them. We must not forget to live. To let down our hair.
It’s certainly a balance though. Because without sufficient funds, we can not expect to enjoy the letting down our hair part so much.
So, this weekends to do list? Try to laugh and smile as much as possible. I’ve got some catching up to do. 
The ‘quarter-life crisis’ is the new ‘mid-life crisis.’
I just finished my last interview for my surf story and am about to set out to work on writing it. But first, a snack: a cup of coffee and several spoonfuls of raw cookie dough. 
I haven’t gone grocery shopping in weeks as part of the save-for-California financial program I’m on. Sweatpants, slippers and big comfy sweater on I can’t help but laugh at myself and prey, ‘please let this story get published.’
These days I like to think I’m beautifully enduring a ‘quarter-life crisis.’ I am almost 25. I just resigned from a management position to become a full-time bar tender so that I could spend more time doing what I love. To pursue my passion for writing and my desire to break into the public relations industry. And the thing is, I’m actually happier! I am thrilled to be eating cookie dough and furiously writing before traveling to LA with my friends on Thursday. That actually encompasses a lot of things that I love: sugar, writing, traveling and spending time with my friends, helllooooo!
I look around, and while I’m only 24, the idea that there are people who are my age and just absolutely killing it and doing what they love makes me envious and gives me a heightened sense of anxiety, but is also inspirational! Why can’t I do that to? I can. I do not have to sign a contract and take a salary and live a “stable” lifestyle. That “stable” lifestyle idea actually makes me feel very mentally UNstable.
For generations before it was, without a question in your mind, you went to college, you majored in a profession, you got the job that correlated with that major and planned on doing it for the next 40-years. You married your college sweetheart started saving for a house and retirement. Then after doing the same thing day in and day out you woke up realizing there is very little that you love about the life around you, enter mid-life crisis. I’m not saying this happened/happens to everyone! But it did/does happen.
However, I think that way of life is nearing an end. Now a days, and I guess, in a way, we can thank the down economy for this, my generation is coming to the realization of how important it is to be surrounded by what you love at a much earlier age.
If it’s so hard to get ANY kind of job, why not get the one you want?
Companies get bought and sold, technology is advancing so fast, younger, smarter people are being pumped out of universities in mass quantities every year. Nothing is guaranteed. The world is changing rapidly at every second. It leaves us constantly questioning EVERYTHING. Our values, what we love, what we want, etc.
It’s not a ‘crisis’ so to say. It’s actively living. It’s being in touch with our true needs, wants and desires, and it’s a beautiful thing.
While I can’t necessarily do what I love for work right away, writing or pr, I can enjoy the struggle of getting there. Every moment becomes more significant. Every day off, every new adventure, every new bar customer, every human interaction becomes that much more meaningful.
The difference between the ‘quarter-life crisis’ and the ‘mid-life crisis’ is that in the current ‘crisis,’ I can still laugh and enjoy the unknown. My biggest responsibility is myself and my happiness. I don’t have responsibilities like mortgage payments, a husband and/or children. I’m enjoying the journey of getting these. Of getting to a point where I can healthily have these things, which, in turn, will theoretically make it so I appreciate them that much more when I do have them.
I love my ‘quarter life crisis,’ because it is my adventure, my journey into finding myself.
