Only a lucky few are talented at something that they love doing and that makes them a decent living. I haven't found anything like that. When I was younger the one thing I was really good at seemed like such a long shot at making me a decent living that I quit and only now do I realize that I might not have really liked it either. It was just easier that anything else. In recent years I've tried to focus on finding things that I am good at and in the process have found that my two greatest skills, empathy and logic, don't really overlap in very many career paths.
Everyone who knew me in High School assumed I would pursue acting and at the time I thought they were right. I was certain I'd go to college and major in theater. Empathy being the primary skill of actors that might have made sense. I chose my (first) college based on the fact that it had a good theater department (well that and the fact that it was relatively small and didn't have a Greek system). I realized pretty quickly that acting, for me, was an escape and that I needed to face whatever it was I was trying to escape from. So I switched, first to psychology, then philosophy, then I thought I'd try business but the school I was at didn't offer a business degree at the time (they do now though, in fact a friend of mine is a Marketing professor there now). I decided to transfer to a bigger school.
I told everyone I was transferring and most people were happy for me. There was a guy I knew from high school, I'd been a little bit in love with him in high school but the timing was always off. When I told him that I was transferring and that I planned to get my degree in business administration he got really mad at me. He said that business wasn't me. Of course, I got mad too because at that point we'd barely seen each other in over a year despite being at the same school. We got into a screaming fight in the middle of campus about it, him yelling at me that I wasn't being true to myself and me yelling at him that he didn't know me well enough to say that. It turned out he was right. I applied for transfer and was accepted but instead I didn't go back to school for about seven more years and when I did I majored in English. I couldn't hear it from him at the time. I didn't want to believe that he knew me better than I knew myself.
Flash forward ten years. I recently decided to go to law school. As is the case with many of my decisions it may or may not take, but right now it's my plan. Everyone I know seems to think it's a great idea. People have been telling me since I was about five years old that I ought to go to law school. It's the logic, my argumentative nature, people see law as a natural outlet for that and they might right.
There's another guy now. I haven't known him very long but in the short time I have known him he's become the yard stick against which every other guy I meet and/or date is measured and usually falls short. A lot of that is because he's great...smart, funny, great taste in music, a talent for writing worthy of envy and adoration, and the type of brooding good looks that women since the time of Bronte (if not before) have been unable to resist...but part of it is because I like to believe I have some sort of intangible connection with him and the reason I like to believe that is because he seems to know me better than he should given the extent of our conversations. That is how he really ruined me for all other men. I told him I'd decided to go to law school and he asked if that was really my final decision and I said yes and he asked me if I was happy with that. I was doing something that seemed out of character and rather than tell me it was the wrong choice, or try to talk me out of, he asked me if I was happy with it.
The truth is I'm mostly happy with it, but I'm always mostly happy. I picked law school because I had to pick some kind of school or I was only ever going to be partially functional. I've thrown myself into house hunting instead of studying for the LSAT because the answer to the question, am I happy with it, wasn't simply yes. The truth is, I don't know what's going to make me happy. What makes me happy is knowing that the people I love are happy but I'm not sure how that translates into a career or life goal.
