For some reason, it’s always assumed that, once you get out of high school, you’re supposed to get a degree in something important (business, engineering, accounting, etc) so you can get a good paying job in an office. Most of the people I went to school with who were so sure in middle school and high school that they were going to become singers, actors, etc, settled down with a bachelor’s degree and went to work in a cubicle.
When I was about seven, I watched MTV for the first time. Kindly remember, I lived on base before then and the only American channel we had was AFN, so it was either German television or the Armed Forces Network.
The first video I saw was an early 90s grunge video and I remember being so fascinated by the actors in it. I started to emulate them, to pretend I was an actor in a music video, staring longingly at things, creating these little scenarios in my head and acting them out. Before that day, I would tell people I wanted to be a horse trainer or something to do with horses. After that day, I was sure I would become an actress. And that never really went away.
When I graduated high school, I took about nine months off. Then I was given a choice: either get a full-time job or go to school. I had been accepted during my senior year to the University of Northern Colorado for performing arts, but I never went, so I settled for a technical university because, by the time I was eighteen, it was just expected that I would get an office job.
I spent five years going back and forth between different technical degrees before I finally achieved my Associates in eBusiness Management, aka one of the most useless degrees this school offers.
I’m going to school for theatre now, but because of it, I have to work part-time in the evening. The amount of people who urge me to take full-time positions as an office worker is ridiculous. Most of them try and convince me how useless my theatre degree will be, to which I have to ask them, what use is an Associates in eBus, other than to wipe my ass with should I find myself out of toilet paper?
I’ve never been able to handle full-time jobs. I had one for a grand total of three months when I was 24 and for the first time since I was 15, I became depressed. Now, I’m generally a happy, shiny person who very rarely gets down for longer than 15/20 minutes at a time. But sitting at a desk for eight hours a day doing the same thing day in and day out made me stir crazy. I couldn’t handle it, so I quit.
And maybe that’s just the way I am. Maybe I’m just the kind of person who shouldn’t have a desk job. But I feel like we, as a society, content ourselves with settling for the easiest way through life. We learn to be happy with money, rather than do what we really want because we’re supposed to be successful, not fulfilled. And I think that’s what depresses me the most.
So I’ll continue to work at my part-time job and I’ll continue to never settle for something that makes me unhappy because what’s the point in living if you’re always working towards the future and never enjoying the present?
