Why do I have to choose?

I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. Until this year I attended questioned the plan I made when I was twelve, I just finished the third year of a degree in a subject I decided on a decade ago. But I can’t help but feel like it's no longer a perfect plan when the world is filled with possibilities. I feel too multi-faceted to be put into one box, one career plan, one subject to write about, one thing that I am passionate about. I love too many things, want to do more than can fit in one lifetime and that’s okay. I can contain multitudes, even if I can’t do it all I can try and I can write about it in the process.

I love movies. The way the stories sweep you away. Characters you met minutes ago feel so real that you follow them blindly into their world, on an unpredictable adventure. The sets and the costumes, the acting and directing, the script, and the cinematography. Everything came together through so many people’s hard work to create a couple of hours of entertainment. Even though they are a small part of your life in the grand scheme of things they feel like they can transform you into an entirely new person. To change how you feel and inspire you to change your life. The power of film to unite people through storytelling is beautiful. I joined a film club at my university shortly before the pandemic and unfortunately, we haven’t been able to meet in over a year. I’m hopeful that we’ll get to reunite soon with new ideas to work on projects together. I would love to write and direct my own movie one day. Sometimes I feel like I am on the precipice of something great. At a fork in the road and once I make my choice I can’t go back. I want to take all the paths but instead, I’ll choose one, or try to bounce between a few until I make my choice. Maybe there are alternate universes, in each one, I take a different path, follow a different passion. I wish I knew which one made me happiest but I’ll have to figure that out on my own.

I love to write. It was the first thing I wanted to be when I grew up. A writer. I fell in love with reading and storytelling. I made up the most amazing stories in my imagination and wanted to write them down. To share them with the world. So that maybe someone else could fall in love with my stories. The worlds and people I wrote about could become a home for them. A beautiful escape like so many books had been for me. I can write in my free time, I think being able to make a living on stories would be a dream too good to be true.

I love to paint and embroider and draw and read. I love doing puzzles and taking pictures and rollerskating and learning new things. I want a career that brings me enough joy that I want to go into work each day. That I don’t spend my weeks waiting for the weekend and counting down until vacations. I do not need a job that wraps all my diverse interests up with a bow. I can watch movies and read and write and draw in my free time. I want to try so many things but when I’ve settles on something that makes me happy enough I will be perfectly content keeping everything else for myself. Maybe I love to do the things I love to do because I don’t have the pressure of needing to do them. I do what I want when I want to make me happy. Would it be a dream to make money doing what I love? Yes. But there is no one thing I love. So I will try to do it all and remember why I do it in the first place. For me.