I've come to the realization that I have multiple personality disorder. Or is it dissociative identity disorder? To be honest it's probably more commonly referred to as aimless youth with no direction in life disorder. Minus the disorder part. And probably the youth part as I'm rapidly approaching thirty.
The problem is that I want to do everything. EVERYTHING. I find most things fascinating and would willingly try out any job. Even the stinky nasty ones that involve crawling around in underground pipes...or do those only exist in movies?
I graduated from college with an art degree and was prepared to spend the rest of my life being artistic and designing crap on my computer that would either be visually appealing for the sake of being visually appealing or cause people to purchase items. But before this, before I even applied to college, I wanted to be a teacher. A lawyer. An archaeologist. A photographer. A writer.
Even after graduating I wanted to be all of these things, though I had swapped archaeologist for anthropologist - which I hadn't even known about prior to freshman year cultural anthropology. So there I was, in "the real world" working in a mind numbing atmosphere as a junior graphic designer for a community college. Enter E2 and a way to appease two of my needs...those of a writer and those of an anthropology enthusiast.
Fast forward a few years, one rocky relationship, a job change and a nervously filled out and mailed application...and I was back in school. Again. For a bachelor's degree. Again.
My theory was that while I could very easily have gone straight to graduate school with the degree I already had, it would be better to get the foundation I needed rather than play catch up. As it turns out I should have just saved myself the aggravation and the incurred debt.
So here I am married, in my last year of graduate school, irritated by departmental incompetence and increasingly turning to my beginnings...as an artist. In the past two months I seem to have had a thought shift. Again. I've been working out techniques for a secret desire to create a minicomic that has been haunting me all year. I've been whole heartedly embracing the current craft movement in all of its cheesy-yet-awesome glory. I've been operating as a knock-off wedding photographer since the summer.
I want to carry out my own research. I want to freelance as a designer. I want to make things with my hands. I want to learn to write with emotion without having to be emotional at the same time. I want to be a photojournalist. I want to contribute something worthwhile. I want to be someone's mother. I want to own a house. I want to make things grow. I want school to be over.
For now I'll try to be content with the hand full of things I am. Next summer, though...I could be on my way to fulfilling my über secret childhood dream of being a spy.