figuring it out

We've all been there. Some of us breeze through it; some of us get stuck; some of us take a kind of boomerang approach and return to it again and again.

But all of us, at some point, will wonder, "what should I do with my life?"

It concerns some more than others. Some people, I think, spend frustrated years searching for the 'right' answer to that question, as if our lives have no meaning otherwise. They zoom down one career path and up the next, hoping to end up in the place that they are 'meant to be'.
And perhaps getting more disoriented and confused along the way.
Others seem quite content to not think about it at all. I know a woman who has a masters degree in English and started her career as a teacher in her twenties. After her OE, she got a job at a fish factory. She is now in her mid-fifties and has been there ever since. Never married, no children; she lives at home with her mum.

Perhaps that's an extreme case, but an interesting one. Where did her ambition go? Did she ever have any?

And really, does it matter?

As kids, the "what do you want to be when you grow up?" question seems to fit in alongside learning our ABCs - mainly for the amusement of adults. If only we knew that our response would be saved up and dug out during a speech at our 21st birthday party... "When our Johnny was five, I recall he wanted to be a space monster..."

I don't think there's any particular age that this question can or should be answered. I know people nearing forty who still haven't figured it out.

At 25, I've had my fair share of I-will-never-go-there-again jobs. I've answered phones, cleaned urinals, poured Guinness, packed strawberries/asparagus/corn and assembled boxes of frozen cordon bleu and chicken nuggets. It's difficult to say which of those came out on top in the Worse Job Ever stakes.

Oddly, I did all those jobs with a (very expensive) degree under my belt.

While my future career options are now a little more palatable, I'm still nowhere near making a decision. Perhaps it will come to me in another six years, when I'm still in my current job; or perhaps when I'm backpacking around India, or blogging about my travels in Africa. Or buying frozen peas at the supermarket.

In all honesty, I don't think people care what anyone else does with their life; they're too preoccupied with their own.

So who are we answering to - ourselves, or the rest of the world?