Thursday

Today during work I got into a fight-ish with D. online (classy, I know, especially since I get paid by the hour).  So then I was already set up for a weird mood to occur.  Then after work I went to Borders to clear my head and to hopefully pick up some books about, you guessed it, life.

Yes, I am a big proponent of the self-improvement section.  Books on navigating your way through your 20s particularly pique my interest.  So today I was trying to find books to help me figure out possible career paths, etc.  I didn’t find anything that I wanted to buy, but this book called Design Your Self or something like that was pretty good.

Regardless, I spent about an hour and a half there, and I went on quite a mini-journey through self-help, travel, literature, chick-lit, and business.  I forget if I hit any other sections, but I picked up a lot of interesting books and decided I want to at least try to read Eat Pray Love. I’m not usually much one for the praying, but as long as its not preaching Christianity or something I should be ok.

While I was there I got into an off mood – I felt sort of like I wanted to cry and didn’t know why.  I think because I realized that there is no book that can tell me what I reallly want to know – how to best navigate my life’s journey.  That’s something I’m going to have to do by myself.

For me, right now, that journey includes trying to embrace the fact that I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life.  One day it’s producing, the next it’s consulting, the next it’s counseling, the next it’s starting a business.  Another thing that concerns me is my quest to find a true passion, both for its own sake and out of the hope it will guide me towards a career.  I wish I had more of an ability to see anything through.  I am full of ideas but lacking in follow-through.  I may say I want to write a book, and it may even get started, but it’s doubtful it will get finished.  Because I will get bored before I get through penning the fourth chapter.  And I don’t really know what to do about that problem of mine, except acknowledge it and try to have more focus and drive.  I am very whimsical, one second seeing myself spending a year in London, the next a happy family woman in the ‘burbs, the next jetting off to L.A. the second I graduate.  I feel like I’m waiting for my life to start, so much of the time, yet I know that my youth is going to fly by and I’m going to regret not appreciating it more now when I’m older.  But I don’t know what to do about that … I guess just recognize and own the stage of life that I’m in right now.  Because really, the present is all that we have.  The past is gone and the future is yet to come.  I think that to decide what my goals are, I need to sit down and be truly honest with myself, without overly glamourizing anything.  I need to look at my true strengths and weaknesses and allow myself to just feel the way I feel about things.  If I am more truthful with myself throughout my daily activities and life path, I will be able to more easily distinguish my likes and dislikes.  I need to keep an open mind and not get too hung up over anything, and if I feel like I “should” like it or not.

Enough philosophy for one night.

Em