Photosynthesis
Or, "A history of creative behavior; how ditching teenage fantasy means ditching all your dreams."
Most of my adult life has been consumed by the feeling that I’m not doing the “right” thing, across the board. While much of this restlessness is born from good old generalized anxiety disorder, professionally I know this sensation was the truth. Rather than pursuing a career I was passionate about, I allowed fear to direct my educational choices and subsequent job prospects; when it came down to it, I was too weak to reject the pressure to simply find something stable and predictable. I allowed myself to be pulled into a sad adult world, looking forward to slaving 50 away years doing something that I hate.
It’s a difficult day the morning you wake up and realize you aren’t yourself anymore.
This isn’t to say that I was unaware of the discrepancy between my internal drives and external activities in real-time. In fact, many times throughout my undergraduate degree and the coming years, I very nearly dropped everything to attend school for fashion design and merchandising. Though I enjoyed the intellectual and curious aspects of my education and work in biomedical research, I knew I wasn’t meant to be there forever. I found a unique niche for myself in science, providing a left-brained approach to problem solving which was often missing among researchers, but I wasn’t naturally inclined to the restrictive and perfectionist nature of laboratory protocols.
While I enjoy solving mysteries and working with my hands, I don’t thrive in an environment where every move is precisely premeditated and mistakes are often unforgivable.
Reflecting on my situation hundreds of times over the years, even writing several essays on my self-realizations, the picture became clearer to me. I recognized that my path had been misdirected in late high school, and I had been aimlessly wandering through adulthood ever since, waiting for clarity rather than finding it for myself. I allowed myself to be stonewalled by other people’s expectations, and lost sight of my own.
For me, much of this dissonance boiled down to the mismatching messages sent by society throughout youth. From the time you’re a small child, you’re told time and time again that you can be anything you want to be. The message is preached from children’s television programming, brightly illustrated books, and influential adults who find it cute to hear you exclaim “President!” or “Dinosaur!” when they ask about your future career plans. Your dreams are built up and supported all throughout elementary and middle school, and there’s no reason to give up that fantasy of running the country or eating smaller dinosaurs. That is, until it’s time for college.
After nearly two decades of unconditional support for your wildest dreams, suddenly the well-meaning adults in your life inform you that it’s time to get real. You aren’t going to be an international figurehead, you can’t become a prehistoric reptile, there’s no real money or stability in art. Pick again. Make sure it aligns with the future technologies and population needs of the world this time.
My whole life I had assumed I’d become an artist; it was intrinsically what I liked to do. From a toddler, I was constantly drawing and coloring. Growing a few years older, I studied my mom’s activities preparing for craft shows and sewing elaborate custom window treatments. I learned to sew and mastered a glue gun before elementary school. I watched the Carol Duvall show obsessively, tuning in every morning at 8am to watch and re-watch her crafting program; taping it if I couldn’t be at home, viewing reruns dozens of times, feeling completely entranced by the things her guests put together and fantasizing about being one myself. I wasted weekends away locked in my room with odds and ends and tape and glue, making useless junk for my mom to hang in the least-observable corners of the house. I spent my birthday money carefully at the craft store; often receiving gift cards to Michael’s to force my hand. A few years later, I took every drawing, painting, and independent art study class possible in high school. I was the quintessential moody art kid, with swoopy bangs, dark eyeliner, and paint all over my altered thrift store clothes. I fundamentally liked to make.
I didn’t have much direction in life, but I knew I’d live in Chicago as a starving artist one day.
Imagine my surprise when it was time for college applications and my career path was suddenly unequivocally shat on. While no one had taken a lead in helping me to think about my future before, they abruptly seemed to have a lot to say about my desired livelihood. “There’s no money in that,” they said, “and you’ll grow tired of art when it becomes your job. Some things are better left hobbies.” I didn’t understand where these revelations were coming from. “You’re too smart for that anyways; don’t waste your abilities, go into a lucrative field like law or medicine.”
With no idea where my life was headed anymore, I found my life at a standstill. Having attended public school with the usual low standards for excellence, my GPA was ridiculous; I had sizable scholarship offerings from major universities, but no plan. Instead of running off to a college program that I didn’t believe in and accruing massive student debt, I worked on my general education courses at a depressing community college and continued to work retail for three years.
Life was less than ideal, to say the least. I knew I needed to get out of the house, out of that town, out of that county. I had to go to a real college, it didn’t much matter what I was going to study anymore, everything felt like settling anyways. And so, after finishing my AAS, I wound up transferring to UIUC for pre-veterinary school.
Flash forward six years, I was still working in cellular research. A stable and lucrative career! I did it! And I was despondent (see below for related posts).
The prospects in 2018 are very different. Rather than anxiety, my days are filled with endless creating, moving from project to project as my left brain demands. I’m still working to quiet the naysaying voice of fear every moment, but I finally feel like myself for the first time in a decade.
I’ve never known exactly where I was headed, but I’ve finally given myself permission to turn back down the path I chose.
