Choose Your Own Adventure, the "Your = Somebody Else's" Edition.

Choose Your Own Adventure, the "Your = Somebody Else's" Edition.

I've been trying to do some soul searching the last few days, to absolutely no avail. Typical.

Anyway, let's say you've been doing a job for the sake of having a job for the last 5 years. It's a good, intellectual job, and you're not really compromising your education in doing it. You love your coworkers and your boss, and you enjoy coming to work every day. However, it's not what you want to do and you feel inauthentic and slightly sold-out.

Problem is, you don't know what exactly it is that you want to do.

Let's also say that the last 5 years, since you've known your now-husband, have been spent pretty much supporting him while he tries his hardest to do what he wants to do, including but not limited to: going to school, taking night classes, not working while waiting for the perfect job, running off to Ojai for a summer to work for the forest service, etc. And now, we just found out that The Next Big Erik Thing, the CA State Park Ranger Academy for which he's been applying / testing / background check-ing for the last two years, has been cancelled due to lack of funding for next year and there's no chance Erik will be a ranger before summer 2007. Thanks, Arnold. It's a little bit like being hit by a mack truck, like when Holden Caulfield finally snaps and has those freaky hallucinations or whatever they were. I digress. But it's mostly what sparked all this public / communal soul searching.

You have an english degree, and you aren't very smart. You don't memorize things well, nor do you test all that well, unless there are essays on the test and then you'll surely kick it's ass. You have a well-rounded education, hate quitting, and totally despise doing things you're not really good at. (I know, I know. I'm so shallow.)

I already asked What Jesus Would Do but nobody answered or I'm having a hard time hearing. So, I'm asking you all. Also, hopefully Jesus reads my blog and will answer via the comment box also.

Choose your (a.k.a. Julia's) own adventure:

Do nothing. Stay put. Thank your lucky stars that you have a job even though the free coffee sucks and you have to buy your own recycled paper. Remind yourself that you volunteer a lot and do lots of enriching things that are helping save the world, and it's just a technicality that you're not getting paid to do that stuff. But don't forget that the shipping department has made you cry. Twice.

Become a midwife. This involves school, of course. It might involve being a nurse first, I think, and that would involve putting in some time in different discipline rotations, including gory stuff and maybe even skin diseases or impalements and shit. Also, I've never even seen a birth on TV, so it might be on par with impalements. Who knows.

Become a teacher. More school. and tests. But I would love to be a high school teacher. I'd totally be that teacher, and be an ecology club advisor and cross country coach too.

Start assigning time for a "part time job," which would be writing. I'd set aside 10-15 hours a week at first to work on the computer with NO INTERNET and NO PHOTOSHOP to just write things, either freelance or towards a book. Keep in mind that I hardly have 10-15 hours net awake time at home per week, so life changes would need to somehow be made.

Quit your decent job the very second your husband gets something permanent and work at a coffeehouse/bookstore/library part time and do more writing. Or school. Or make babies.

Make babies. Sometimes I feel like all I'm very clearly called by god to do on this earth is be a mother. I really like the concept of having a spiritual vocational calling, by the way. I just can't really hear mine.

Make a Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good.

Rent out the condo, sell the cars, and backpack across a random beautiful country or two of your choosing for a few months/years, survivng off interest from savings (hahahaHAHAHA) and the $200 per month higher the going rental rate is than the mortgage payment.

Drop everything, move to a rural area on cheap off-grid solar property with little-to-no expenses, have one income (Erik), write, and make babies and crops.

Anyway, choose your own adventure. For someone else. This is your chance to totally play god with my life! Luckyyyyyyy.