"Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed."Wayne DyerVisit Finland
I need to see a concert in Helsinki. I need to sip vodka from a bar deep in the heart of Turku. I need to practice rolling my R's. I need to sauna for unhealthy hours only to throw myself into the snow, naked as the day I was born. I need to work as a porter at Ruisrock. I need to see the Aurora Borealis from Lapland. I need to smell leather in the grind of an underground nightclub. Even if it's for a weekend, I need to be there.
Camp Counseling
Being on summer camps as a kid are some of the most exquisite memories of my entire fucking life, and I'd love to be a part of making those memories for someone else.
Work In Australia
Teach English In China
As young Chinese nannies come to England to teach children in Kensington the complexities of Mandarin, young British students are going to China to teach children in Beijing the warm tones and furls of English. I like that synchrony.
Visit Utah
I want to see my missionaries. I want to experience a Utahn Mormon church service on a Sunday.
I want to climb the mountains. I want to camp in the greenery. I want to drive through the deserts for miles. I want to see the Hare Krishna temple, and the Latter-Day Saint temple, and I want to hear The Tabernacle sing.
The more I think about what I want out of my life, the more I realise there are two contrasting paths that eliminate each other, and to follow one I would have to obliterate the other. There's the insecure side of me that longs to be a doctor. The side that needs to leave an imprint while wrapped in the security of a job that defies recession; a job that will provide consistency, a beautiful big house, a flashy car, and above all that, some form of meaning. I will have achieved, and in that achievement I would be saving lives.
Then there's the other side of me. The side that can't take the workload, the stress, the pressure and the hours. Signing up to medicine is an absolute lifetime commitment. Doctors in this country work anything from a 48 hour week to a 58 hour week. There is no respite. There would be a minute window of opportunity for me to have children. And even if I did, would I be able to dedicate the necessary time to them? To be the parent I want to be? Would I have the space to do what I to do with my life? I want to stay at home for some point. I want to create the stability I have never had. I want to orchestrate my children's sleepovers and be the embarrassing mother. I want to be the floaty old lady with the long hair and the longer skirts who wears dungarees while traveling the world; smelling of cake and spice and lime water.
I want adventure. I want to love and I want to experience. Will I get that in a clinical, disciplined world of certificates and instruments? Sure, there is inevitable satisfaction, but is it satisfaction that compliments me or satisfaction that compliments the 'idea' of what I am expected to be?
I don't know what I want anymore. And my first university applications are in 8 months. In 8 months I must decide which path to follow, and which to ignore forever. Because if I choose medicine it will last me forever; and if I don't, my youth is the only chance I will have to execute it.