I spoke recently to a friend here, who was having what I consider to be close to a melt down, over the most commonly asked question for twenty-somethings in my generation: what the fuck am I going to do with my life? I for one was crippled by this questions some years ago, before I found music, before I found a lot of things. It is this assumption/social pressure/ anxiety that what we do for money, our career, defines who we are as a human. For some people it does, and some people love their job, and that’s great. But what about the rest of us? What about the servers and the bartenders and the baby sitters and the dog walkers who bust their ass all day and night just so they can go home and work on their passion for the other few hours that remain?
A very wise girl once told me, while drinking white wine from the bottle behind a music venue in Southern California, “how you support yourself, how you earn money, is not or doesn’t have to be who and what you are.” This at the time totally blew my mind. I had been down and out over serving tables and writing free articles for a local magazine for quite sometime. I kept on wondering when my career, and therefore my life, would actually start. But immediately after this night I stopped saying, I am a waitress, and I started saying, I am a writer. Because writing was truly what I did, serving tables was only how I put food in my mouth. And slowly but surely this shift in perspective started to seep into my life, and it changed everything.
And sometimes this is what I think, worst case scenario: I never write anything worth a damn, I never get published, I never finish a novel, no one ever remembers the work I did, and I am forgotten. Okay, even if that happened to me, I still have everything else that goes into being a human. I will still wake up every morning and drink good coffee, shitty coffee, all the coffee, and I’ll go to yoga, and I’ll eat amazing food, and I will travel, and I will watch my friends have babies, and I will paint, and laugh, and drink wine, and have sex, and see live music, and sing in the car, and watch sunsets, and bury people I love, and write poems, and grow old, and make jokes, and smoke joints, and talk on the phone to old friends, and yes, somewhere in there I’ll also make some money.
I think my point is, while there is merit in being driven, there is also grace in acceptance. Often times only a shift in perspective is needed to change what you are, because the paycheck, is not the definition of your life.
THE LITTLE BLACQUE BLOG 
As a 20 something, I have never heard from any other 20 something that they know what they are doing with their life. This brings me so much comfort. I find the most discouraging part is having a degree and it essentially meaning nothing. It made me really feel like the school system is kind of backwards. There is so much emphases on needing the education, you get the education but you don’t have the experience, yet if you have the experience you don’t have the education
This is so true. I think, for me at least, the key was appreciating my education without having the carer, and then finding something I really loved to fill the space where I thought money was supposed to go. I am always happy when my jumble of thoughts resonates with others. Thank you for reading ❤
Love the last paragraph 🙂
thank you thank you ❤
My pleasure 🙂
R A D. I’ve truly enjoyed following your blog and reading your thoughts. x
thank you dear!!! ❤
Amazing blog. Thank you for sharing
Thank you so much, please come back often ❤
This is what I’ve been doing at three a.m. in Dallas TX. Reading myself into peace. Thank you for organizing my own fears and thoughts into much more romantic terms, Beauty.
There aren’t enough bookshelves in the entire world to properly organize my aches and fears. Thank you for sharing them, it lightens the load if more than one can bear the weight.
all of the love-
Love these questions and meditations .. inspiring at the crossroads .. I totally relate.
This made me cry. I’m sitting in a coffee shop somewhere in North London reading your words. I’m a singer songwriter working as a babysitter , constantly struggling with time and fear of loosing the ability to create. Then who would I be?
A human. And that’s really something.
Thank you Rose for reminding me about this privilege!
Jadwiga ❤️
Thank you for ressurecting this piece. I too needed so badly to reread it at this exact time. Incredible how the internet can make oceans away feel right next door. What a world. All the love.
❤