I should know better than to look at graduate programs online when I’m tired. I wonder: with a little ingenuity, could I have gotten placement in the UCLA urban planning master’s or PhD program? Should I be working on that now instead of pursuing a career in biology? I want to advance quickly, but I can’t do that without knowing what I want to study and I can’t figure out what I want to study without putting the proper years of work in. I have to be careful of my interest in ecology and evolution: how seriously can I take the lasting influence of an old flame? Maybe I should be focusing on economics courses and working towards an econ PhD program! Would I be happier if I were in a geography graduate program? What if I just got a job as a script reader at a studio and worked my way up to fantastic wealth and fame? Would my time be better spent if I just enrolled at the musician’s institute and wrote songs all the time?
Like Coyote said: “Some things are easy for some people, but those same things are not easy for me.”
Also relevent: “You keep same-ing when you oughtta be changing…” but I think the opposite is true of me. Not so much “I made my bed now I have to lay in it…” but there are SO many things out there that I could do well and be really happy with.
I’ve chosen one for now. I MUST follow through on it.
But what if I’m only motivated because some cute guy told me I’m smart? I need to learn to separate my interest in the guy from my interest in the subject. I’m only attracted to other subjects because then the relationship is totally unambiguous, not because I’m actually more interested in those subjects. SCIENCE! Just the sound of the word makes me smile. Not so much URBAN PLANNING! or ECONOMICS! MUSIC! does it for me too. SONGWRITING! I can unequivocally say I am passionately interested in each of those subjects. I wish I had a hundred times to be in my 20s. I wish I had millions of dollars so I could be a full-time student and not have to have a job. I wish I had the kind of mind where I could learn independently and not have to be enrolled in school to keep going. I wish we lived in a society where we don’t need a letter on a transcript to prove that we know enough about something to talk about it seriously with other people.
But none of those parameters apply to my reality so I have to keep on living, and honoring whatever song my heart keeps singing.
