When I Grow Up

December 15th, 2004

So I’m not allowed to work or go to school while I’m waiting out this immigration thing. Which isn’t always so bad. I get to stay up late, sleep in, and almost never have to put on respectable clothing. I can drink coffee all morning and not worry about having to find a bathroom later in the day. I can sit in front of the computer all day, writing nanonovels and dreaming of employment. Dreaming of school, too. But I can’t actually do that.

On the other hand, though, I miss having money. I miss being able to walk into a store and not feel guilty about buying some new knitting needles. I miss having stuff to think about, people who need me. Sure people need me, but there isn’t always that constant hum of stuff going on in the back of my head. No amount of self-directed projects is going to restart the humming.

I’ve always had a fear of the future. I’ve always been afraid to commit to a career. Everything I’ve done has been “temporary” or “just until I figure out what I want to do.” I’ve spent a whole lot of time feeling sorry for myself, telling myself that one day I will go back to school. I’ve even gone back to school a little bit, and failed pretty miserably. In case you guys are wondering, the month after breaking up with someone is not the time to return to school, no matter how much of a good idea it seems at the time. The distraction of school doesn’t keep you from being sad.

I was going to be a whole bunch of things at some point in my life. Nail tech, hairstylist, dentist, which my cousin urged me not to do because I would get AIDS. (This was a long long time ago.) Attorney, and then judge, professional actor/singer/jlo. Damn that jlo for stealing my thunder. Math teacher, computer somethingorother, CPA, Hawaiian studies activist/teacher/Hawaiian issues attorney, psychologist, journalist, novelist, English professor, letter carrier, photographer.

Obviously none of those stuck.

But in less than a month I will be 29. I can remember when my mother was 29. I need to figure this shit out. I need to decide, I need to take charge and deal with it. There was a time when people would pressure me to talk about it. Not everyone can understand the thing where I don’t know what I want to do. The thing where I don’t want to talk about what I want to do. The thing where I’m deathly afraid of picking the wrong thing, of finding myself twenty years from now, unhappy in my career choice. I don’t know how I became this person. The kids I went to school with are settling comfortbly into their jobs. They are commiting to something and making it work, having babies, supporting families. They don’t seem to be threatened by the prospects of a bad choice.

I am still afraid.

Lately I’ve been thinking about my future again. In that obsessive way that I tend to do, where I don’t think about anything else, and read every single thing I can about a given subject. Well, this month it’s nursing. Nursing! I’m really excited about this, but you never know with me. Sometimes I get excited about stuff and then three months from now I have a new thing to be excited about.

It’s a big deal that I’m telling you people.