Self-Portrait?

I accidentally took a self-portrait when doing a close-up of these spoons. You can't really recognize me, but in an abstract way this photo works perfectly--especially since "abstract" really fits me right now. I'm rather vague, abstract, and a little bit lost right now, so this fits as a self-portrait. After all, self-portraits are supposed to be how you see yourself at the time, right? I also like that there are actually two slightly different images of me in it, since I've always felt that my personality was somewhat divided and contradictory. It's like there are two of me, and they often clash. I never know from moment to moment which of me is going to be dominant at that time. I wish I could just figure out which me is the real me, and stick with that one. I think that I've been trying to be someone else for so long that I don't know who I really am anymore, and that lies at the root of all my problems right now. The real concern right is that I can't settle on a path until I know who I am, but I don't have the slightest idea how to go about doing that. How do I figure out who I am? Why can't there be some guide? Why don't we come with how-to manuals? That would make life so much simpler.

Finding Myself and Saving the World

Lately I've been rather obsessed with self-expression. I think that stems from something I've been dealing with since I moved out, which is figuring out who I am, what I want to be and where I'm going. I know, no small order, right? Well, since I've graduated college and started searching for a job I've had to figure out precisely what it is I want to do for a living. I know, I know, I'm supposed to have figured out all that in college, right? Well, I didn't. College is an amazing experience, but it really doesn't do a whole lot to prepare you for life and a career. As I've been wading through all these job search websites and job listings and talking to people and looking at grad schools I started thinking, and as usual, thinking is my downfall. I had originally planned, back in my naive, no-sense-of-the-real-world college days, that I wanted to work in book publishing and editing. Well, my new, street-smarter self has figured out that that is an EXTREMELY competitive field and nearly impossible to break into unless you have some connections. Which I don't. And even more importantly, I've come to realize that I don't want to work for some evil, giant, soulless corporation. I want to save the world. As naive as that statement is. I want to feel like I'm doing some good in this mad, mad world. That my existence has meaning. That I can help other people. That realization has led me toward looking at non-profits, human rights organizations, and things like the Peace Corps, which I never even considered in college. After all my research, sadly, the Peace Corps is out because even though it sounds fantastic and I would LOVE to do it, I have no qualifications for any of their positions and it is apparently really, REALLY hard to get accepted by them. GRRRRR! So that leaves non-profits and any other save-the-world type positions I can find. However, jobs are not as easy to come by as people seem to think. So until someone finally accepts me as the fantastic employee I will be, I'll have to stick with my resident penchant for self-expression to figure out who I am and make myself into who I want to be.