Written Friday, May 12 2017
I find the question “what do you plan on doing with your career?” just as frustrating as “when will you get a husband?”
Both assume that I even want those things. Because, in our society you can either aspire to be a wife and a mother OR a workaholic CEO pantsuit woman. Apparently, you cannot be both and you also cannot be neither.
I wish I would answer both those questions with “kindly get your big witch nose out of my fucking business, Geraldine.” But I don’t.
I stutter away reeling off random things I’ve made up about wanting to go back and study or considering changing fields completely. The truth is that I don’t actually know and to be honest I don’t actually care.
Unfortunately, I can provide no statistical evidence of the following statement, it is purely based on my opinion only but I think if someone was to survey people who work 50+ hour weeks on what they would rather be doing they would say something along the lines of “waking up late, spend time outside, seeing friends and family, getting the creative juices flowing, travel, relax, spend 10 hours a day watching one TV show – pretty much whatever I felt like doing at that moment.”
Then I would cackle and be like THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT I DO. All the time! I do what I want to do, when I want to do it. I have next to no responsibilities. I like my job. I’m not on welfare. I don’t bother anyone with my excessive leisure. I just enjoy myself.
And some people may look down on me for that. I have had first hand experience in disapproval from other people who have absolutely no fucking right to tell me what to do. I once had a man laugh in my face and say “good luck with that” when I told him where I studied at University. I have had people remind me how difficult the film industry is and that it probably won’t go well for me. I had a woman say to me (at my grandpa’s funeral might I add) “Please tell me a ‘barista’ isn’t what you’re going to be your whole life.” With the sort of expression that seemed as though I had just told her I lick the dishes to clean them at work.
I wish I could comically pull big red neon letters blinking ‘FUCK OFF’ out of my pocket every time someone patronises me.
Being rich doesn’t really interest me. I don’t like big houses. The only thing I could tell you about an expensive car is what colour it was. I often spill red wine all over myself and would never wear some sort of golden dress spun from the silk worms of the Himalayas for that exact reason. I don’t want nice things, I don’t need nice things – stop trying to force your materialistic views onto me.
I want a job where I work with kind people and do things that ideally are productive for society, entertain people and/or help them. I would like enough money so I could live in a house and have 25 different species of animals living there. I want to probably rent a house that when you walk in it’s like you’ve stepped into an alternate dimension where the outside is the inside like the club on ‘Night at the Roxbury.’ I want enough money to be able to explore different countries and places. That’s pretty much it.
And for some reason, I end up feeling bad about that. Even from the pressure I put on myself. That if I’m not currently working towards a successful career then my life isn’t really worth living. And I have to remind myself that I don’t have to be like that.
If I was to find myself mangled in a freak accident and had time to consider what I have done with my life before I died alone, I would be happy it. I’ve met some amazing people, I’ve been in love, travelled, created, learned…
I would not be lying there thinking about all the hours I worked on my career. Because I would also be dead soon and didn’t even need a career anyway.
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