And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope

“What are you good at?”

It’s a loaded question to be sure. Unfortunately it’s also one of the first ones out of people’s mouths when you start whining about what you should do with your life—as I’m becoming want to do.

Sure there’s also looking at your job history, your hobbies, your passions but more often than not, most people jump right into the what you’re good at. Sure, it makes sense, why do something you’re awful at? You’re more likely to find something you can make a career out of if you don’t fuck it up at every opportunity.

But what if you’re not good at anything in particular?

I guess that’s my main problem. At (practically) 25 years old I cannot answer what most high school graduates are asked and generally can blindly attempt to pick an interest to start their post-secondary life with.

Despite what seems like a rather large pity party (hey, balloons!) what I mean to say is that while I don’t completely suck at some things (I do suck at a lot of things, hello long distance running), but I don’t have that one thing that makes me a unique snowflake. I don’t have that weird passion that follows me around until the end of the movie when I realize that that’s what my life’s calling should be. God, do I wish I had one of those.

I mean, granted I do have plenty of things I like to do. But that’s just it, it’s a like. A hobby. A thing I do to kill time or because I’m generally interested in—not something to make a career into. Unless you know someone who will pay me to sleep in, grab coffee and do the crossword followed by getting a massage. Or a job which basically let me online window shop all day long.

Any takers?

Bueller?

They often say to look at your schooling and find out what you enjoyed or what you excelled at? Where did you get your best grades? What clubs were you a part of? Truth is, I hated every moment of my high school life and therefore put in the least amount of effort imaginable to get through what was my seventh circle of hell. I skimmed my way through it just to get out. I did decently in most of my subjects but not outstanding. I won no awards aside from the escaping my “special” education without addicted to drugs or being a teen mom. If those are the standards, I get a gold star.

I manage to survive high school only to go from pretty much every dead-end entry level position out there. A couple of office jobs, some food industry jobs, a bit of retail. Aside from waitressing, I’ve hit the trifecta of “starter” jobs. Granted they got the (excuse the pun) job done, but that’s all it was. They paid the bills, they got me from point a to point b. I survived because that’s what you needed to do.

I guess the main theme of my life, professional and personal has been just that: survival. I got away with the bare minimum because often times that’s all I could get away with—not to say I was particularly dumb, but often times there was just too much going on. Despite my want to be challenge, there just wasn’t anything to be challenged by. Each time I returned to school, I was forced to play nice with others and instead of pushing myself to get further, to rise to the challenge, I found myself in more of an exercise of patience.

Coddling ungrateful people seems to also be a running theme in my life but we’ll save that for another post.

Survival was my only way to get through those years---that and the thought that things would magically get better. I was suppose to go to post-secondary and meet my kindred spirits. Instead I found more of the vapid teenagers I tried desperately to escape 8 years ago. Except now it was on my dime.

Now I’m stuck in a place where I’m really trying to find something that will make me happy. Something that will get me excited. That I can wake up to and not dread. I want to be inspired, to create, to love, to just be fucking excited to do something. Anything.

Until then anyone need an unemployed part time blogger who enjoys long walks on the beach, coffee and crosswords and online shopping?

Anyone?