A Little Background

Before you start reading, I should warn you - I'm nobody special. Don't expect to read about any wild adventures like hiking through the rainforests or going on tour with a band and partying my way across the country. The biggest excitement in my life right now is who's going to get kicked off next on American Idol. I'm just your average 28 year old newlywed who's still trying to figure out what my purpose in life is.

Here's a little background:
I was raised in an upper middle class home, and did all the things that were expected of me. I got decent grades in high school, went to a decent college, got the typical bullshit degree - all the while thinking that at soon as I got out of school, the world would be mine for the taking. I was never raised with the idea that I might not be successful, it was just a given that everything would naturally fall into place as long as I stayed on the right track.

At the end of my four years at college, I graduated with honors and unlike the rest of my friends, I got a job immediately. I can remember being so excited about all the possibilities that life had to offer and feeling ready to take on the world. That was 6 years ago.

As you might have guessed, things have not exactly gone the way I thought they would. My first job? I worked on a Disney cruise ship, which was great for awhile (kinda like an extension of college, really), but I burned out after a year of being perpetually perky in that Disney kind of way. My second job was supposedly as a "vacation planner", but that was really just a fancy way of saying that I worked at a call center answering phones all day and trying to get people blow their life's savings on grossly overpriced tickets to the theme parks. Definitely not for me. Then I tried working at a print shop, then a software training company, then a publishing company, then...well, you get the idea. A decent string of jobs, but nothing that ever made me feel like I had found "my calling".

I quit my last job about a month and a half ago and am now working as a temp, which at this particular company means that I'm lower than the common secretary. A grunt, really. The work is completely mindless (think making binder tabs and stapling papers), and while it has the benefit of not being stressful - definitely a nice change from my last job - it makes me feel like I'm wasting my life.

But the question is, what DO I want to do with my life? What will make me happy? I know people pay thousands of dollars in therapy bills to answer that question but it would be nice (and much more cost effective) if I could figure it out on my own. I'm sure I'm not alone in wanting to have a passion for what I do and feel like I'm actually a contributing member of society. But how many of us really ever find a job like that? Probably only a lucky few - and I can assure that I have NEVER been a member of that group. So maybe I just have to suck it up and take one of those shitty, mind-numbing jobs that pay next to nothing because those are the only ones that seem to be out there. Maybe that's part of being a "grown-up" - and now that I'm married, that's what I have to be, right? Dear God, let's hope not.