I Don't Wanna Grow Up

Just a few days ago one of my coworkers asked me how I decided what I wanted to do when I grew up, as that is a question she is currently pondering. Since both of us are 25, it could be argued that we are already grown up and therefore the question is moot, but I don't feel grown up and I certainly haven't started a career so I think there is still some growing up to be done.

Well, that question started me thinking.

I feel like I'm living up to my destiny as a youngest child, preparing to live a fly-by-night existence once I finish school, always moving and changing, never staying put. I have so many interests and so many things I want to do during my life that I can't decide on a single career path. I could clearly see myself moving from country to country, city to city, job to job during my life, never settling anywhere permanently until forced to by old age or exhaustion.

To be perfectly honest, spending the rest of my life consigned to the suburbs with a husband, a white picket fence, and 2.5 kids sounds like eternal purgatory. Even considering the prospect of it makes me shudder with revulsion. Yes, I realize that that is most people's projected and expected future, but I can't handle it. I need to travel, to experience new things and meet new people, to accomplish something and feel like I've made a difference.

Ergo, my hope to carve out a career in the never-boring, ever-complicated world of humanitarian relief. In short, I want to be an aid worker.

I met a Canadian woman in Kabul who has been working for various NGOs in the microfinance field for ten years, and during those ten years has lived in 22 countries.

I love it!

I love to travel, and even more I love to get to know a place and a people, which you usually can't do unless you live there.

I will admit, based on my obsession with HGTV and especially the show "House Hunters," not to mention the burnout that affects everybody in my chosen field at some point, eventually I will feel the need to build a nest complete with my own permanent home. Eventually, I hope to stock that home with one-of-a-kind items I have picked up in various places rather than average items found in every chain store and therefore every home across the country.

I've never wanted to be like everybody else. My life will be MY life. Different. Exciting. Unlike every one I know.

Barred