WARNING: This post is really long (I am pretty bad at that, aren't I?) but its very applicable to Tilted Living -- it's about how I SHOULD live my life for the next.. 20 years?
How do you deal with life when
everything seems to be so exciting, but you don't have enough time for any of it? Ordinarily, a post like this would be when things were going bad, but ..oddly enough.. things are going TOO good. Let me explain:
I have a wonderful WONDERFUL girlfriend, so much that I couldn't sleep for a half hour after she left last night, because I was smiling too much. I've never been with a girl who understood me, liked me, loved me, had such a unique personality, believed so strongly in some things and still was so compromising in others, and yet was still attracted to ME. She's a perfect distraction from everything in my life, and yet I can still be ME without feeling tied down.
I have a great roommate, the man who you cannot enrage. No matter what I did, I'm sure he'd say "Oh, its OKAY" and mean it. We live 3 minutes from my University, and 5 from my work. My parents pay for my rent, my cell phone, my food, and even my car insurance (for the time being).
I've got a job that pays twice what I've gotten in any previous job ($15 / hr), and I do very little. It's a 6 or 7 minute drive to work everyday, and I only work 4 hours a day (except Friday). It fits perfectly with my schedule, and they're very flexible when it comes to re-arranging my hours (as long as it stays at 24).
I'm two years into a BS in Computer Science -- any career with this degree would likely net me $45,000 - $60,000 a year, and my current employer has even offered to give me full-time salaried status after I graduate.
Why then, am I so panicked? My life appears to be ideal from an outsiders perspective, yet inside I'm kinda going... "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"
You see, I have too many things I wish I could do, and not enough time to do them all. I've got 18 credit hours of school in addition to 24 hours of work. On top of that, I have all the time I must spent on homework and studying, and time spent with my (as above) awesome girlfriend. When I think about my career opportunities, I get incredibly scared. I'm a Computer Science major, and I already LOATHE the idea of being a professional programmer. I get frustrated to the point of tears when computer programs I've written don't run like I think they SHOULD.
Maybe I should change majors? But-- I'm half way through, and my parents have told me they'll only pay for 4 years -- so I'd better get SOMETHING in that time frame, right? I love helping people, and I especially love being recognized as a contributor and a guardian and a helper. Last year that meant that I wanted to be a police officer. The idea that I could help people on a day-to-day basis, serve the community, and be recognized every day in that uniform as a protector of the People appealed to me. I would graduate with a BS in Computer Science and apply to the Police Academy. It was settled.
Unnttttill I realized that I would likely become a very corrupt police officer. You see, I believe in supporting the spirit of the law, and not the the letter of the law. If I saw a drunk college student (under the age of 21) I would be hard-pressed morally to arrest them. My morals would tell me that I wasn't really serving as a Protector if I were arresting someone who was not directly harming person or property. This applies to many laws, and I'm sure they're all open to debate. For me, however, I disagreed with too many laws to be an effective enforcer of them. What do I do NOW?
Flash forward to this year. I've gotten a class as a Junior Teaching Assistant (a free 3 credit hours) for Freshman Seminar. I absolutely LOVE being a teacher. There's something rewarding about hopping from station to station helping these 17 and 18 year old "kids" understand the inner-workings of the robots we are building. Its especially (and selfishly) powerful when they have the "Lightbulb" moment and entirely understand the concept -- and recognize ME as the one who helped them. I love that feeling! Enough so that I decided I would finish my major in Computer Science, perhaps going for a Masters or PHD, and teach entry-level computer classes at a University. I communicate very well (and often), and I've been noted by my friends for being very good at teaching them things. Although I distate the higher level Computer Science classes (Automata, Computability, and Complexity, anyone?) I would feel comfortable teaching an intro-level "How to use a computer" class -- and I think it would be rewarding.
HOWEVER, the mix is now complicated by another aspiration. After seeing images like
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=255737 and
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=266141, I decided that I WANT to be able to create those things. I want to be able to spend a few hours making a dedicated art piece like that, and be able to show it off. Look what I created!!! I'd love to work for a cutting-edge game company, designing amazingly realistic 3D characters and virtual environments and realities. The problem here? Well.. I suck. I'm relatively horrible at analog (2d, pen and paper) drawing, and my skillset with a 3D program like Maya or 3Ds Max is almost none. Its entirely complicated and convoluted, and I'm already busy. I've been reading a very good book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which describes art as merely giving your left brain a task it refuses to do, so that your creative right brain will take over. The book has been around for 30 years, and many artists swear by it -- they went from horrible art to published paid art. That said, it inspires confidence that if I were given the time or rigor of an University devoted to this art, I could succed. I know that my computer aptitude (and degree) will certainly make the 3D creation of art much easier. It can't really be a hobby, however, because of the time and consistency I'd need to continue creating these things.
Now that I've told you my whole life story, you might have begun to see the problem.
What do I do? From 8 am to 6 pm, I'm in class or work. After that, I want to relax and see my girlfriend, or drain my brain playing computer games. Some days, I'll have homework, and neither of these will be possible. On the days following those hardcore studying nights, I'll DEFINITELY want to do the things above. Where does my pursuit of art fit in? If I wait until I finish my degree in computer science, I'll likely have to start working full time to pay for the expenses that my parents won't be paying anymore. In doing so, this same free time will be gone as I work my life away at a job-- that although it pays well -- is SO boring. (I pretend to test computer software while I read TFP and art forums) If I want to pursue the art career, I need to somehow accumulate the funds for another 2 or 4 years at an art school of some sort, and if I strive to become a teacher -- likely the same thing. What if I go to the art school and learn that these skills really are more innate than I thought, and I won't have what it takes? What if the same thing happens with getting a Masters / PHD and teaching? I could drop out of school NOW and go to art school, but I'm not positive my family or friends would really support that. I could quit work and use that time for academic and art studies, but I'd be quitting a job that pays me twice what I could get anywhere else. In addition, I'd not be able to go out as much and my money would slowly drain.
I'm at a HUUUUGE crossroads, and I want to make sure I take the right path now. I'm sure you older members will agree that I should find the thing I want to do NOW instead of wasting years doing the wrong thing. I don't want to end up 10 years down the road stuck in a shitty job with a shitty house and a shitty life that I can't escape. It occurs to me that this must be a common problem, so what's the right path, how do I balance my time, and how do I return some semblance of sanity to my life? AAAAAAAHHH.. If you made it this far, please offer some sort of suggestion or .. something..
Please help..
Love,
JinnKai
