Forgive me. I've been remiss in my blogging, but it's not my fault, really. It's just that I'm going through that stage of development commonly called the "Therapy 30's." It happens to the best of us, even those OCD-prone valedictorian types who followed their life-plan flow charts with eerie accuracy and precision timing (definitely not me). At some point in your 30's, you be overwhelmed by the realization that life is moving much faster than you ever expected, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities are passing you right by.
Life is full of choices, little ones, big ones, right ones, wrong ones. Everyday we make choices that shape and bend our life path. But for many of us those choices seem reversible, at least in your 20's. Let's say right out of high school a person wants to move to France, study culinary arts, and date a man with an adorable accent. Then two years later she realizes she's inept at learning languages, can't cook to save your life, and the man with an adorable accent, has six other American girlfriends. She'd be devastated, right? But she'd move home, and figure out a plan B, which may include joining her friends at whatever college their attending. Sure she'd be a couple of years behind but it's no big deal.
Now let's say this person takes 14 years to discover she really doesn't like cooking for a living, and has a cheating boyfriend/husband. She can still move back home, and she can still go back to school; however, the experience will be drastically different then it would have been in her 20's, because she will not be part of a cohort of people her same age going through similar experiences.
Then of course you have to consider many of us will made choices in our 20's that aren't reversible. Using our example of the french chef, let's say this person racked up $50,000 in student loan debt and also had a baby. Babies and debt are fairly permanent, since it's generally frowned upon to try walk away from either, and these permanent conditions will drastically affect a start over. Can you afford to go back to school? Does you need to find child care? So on and so forth.
The further you go in your life the more complicated it becomes to backtrack, and seize those opportunities you passed up all those years ago. You can still do it, but it will be a very different experience than if you had done it earlier. I have friends who paused careers to have a raise a family, and I have friends who delayed families to follow the career path. With a few exceptions, most of them will say they are happy with the choices they made, but most had never considered how difficult it was going to be to reclaim those opportunities they passed up initially. Those who chose careers may discover they have a hard time getting pregnant, or that raising small children in your 30's can be an exhausting experience. Those who put off careers sometimes find it difficult to find time/money to go back to school and break into the job market.
So here I sit in my own life. I have a masters degree. I've chased my dreams from the east coast to the west coast. I've had some amazingly awesome experiences, and I've had some I'd rather forget. But now I've reached that point in my 30's when I need to reevaluate my trajectory and decide if I'm going to backtrack to seize missed opportunities or if just going to plow forward with my life to see where that path takes me. Either way, I'm sure it will be quite the adventure. Regardless of what happens, there's one thing's for sure. In 20 years when I hit my mid-life crisis, I'm heading off to France to attend culinary school and date a man with an adorable accent. ;)
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