Career Concerns

Finding an enjoyable career must be one of the greatest trials in life, and it's so rare for anyone to get it right on the first try. I am no different. I am currently in the underachieving liminal state, not knowing which path to take and unsure of how to find the job that suits my tastes and will eventually build to a respectable income. I spend my days and nights tossing and turning over the dilemma and I'm bit overwhelmed with all of my choices. I really am a clean slate. I could do practically anything, so it's beyond me why it's so freaking hard to choose.

Even once I shake the idea of me becoming an Academy Award winning actress out of my head, I'm still left with a very diverse list of options that seems to shift everyday, if not every hour. First of all we have my major, cultural anthropology, which I could develop further by going to grad school. However, I really don't want to be a professor, and I'm getting a little tried of doing research. Second there is becoming a lawyer, but I'm afraid that law would bore me to tears, and I'm not exactly sure if I want to spend my days and nights reading legal briefs. Plus does the world really need another lawyer?

My current hope is becoming some type of freelance writer if not novelists because I love the creativity that it involves and I love that I wouldn't have to leave my house to do it (I'm becoming such a homebody). Only problem with writing is that I'm not quite sure if I'm talented enough and I'm completely lost when it comes to submitting my work. Lastly, we have a new possibility of becoming a nurse. I like this option because it definitely wouldn't be boring and I would not have a problem finding a position somewhere because every hospital website that I look at has at least 20 postings for an RN. My only question is should a hypochrondriac become a nurse? I mean, it's not like I'm severely paranoid about my sudden death from an extremely rare flesh eating disease, but the voices in my head are loud enough that I should consider their delicate feelings and concerns. Plus, being a nurse is very serious business. There are people's lives at stake. Do I really want to take on all of that responsibility?

These questions keep dancing insistently in my head, waving flags of pros and cons but without revealing any clear cut answers. I hate being so indecisive, but I don't think there's any way around it. Finding a career is a rite of passage that takes many people a lifetime to pass, if I can get through it in as little as 5 more years, then I think that I'll be doing big things.