Life at 23

I am 23 years old. I am a writer, a thinker, a traveler, occasionally a retail-seller, a daughter, a friend, a girlfriend. Sometimes I'm sad and sometimes really-really sad but other times I'm over the moon ecstatic. I've written exactly 3 articles for a fashion magazine, conducted over 150 interviews, sold 1000 items of clothing, wrote one book for a chef, translated 50 bodies of various text, read numerous books, have studied countless hours. Approximately. I have cried, I have loved, I have laughed and I have written a million words about all of those emotions.
Thinking back at how I expected my life to be by the time I reached my 20s, well it was not this. I expected I would have graduated from an amazing university with honors and gotten a degree in something that I love, I would have written my first book and maybe even had it published, I would be financially independent and may have even gotten married to the love of my life. Being a teenager, 23 just seems so far away and so grown up. You expect that everything in life will have fallen into place by then and you will have everything figured out. Reality is far from that and for good reason. When at 18 I was planning my bright-looking future I picked a major that, though I stuck with for almost three years, I realized I hated. I love to educate myself (matter of fact I do educate myself every single day) but I refuse to study something that utterly bores me and that I have no intention of working with just to have a piece of paper to shove in someone's face. Furthermore, I knew in my heart that there was no school that could teach me what I already was sure I wanted to do, so I decided to drop out of University and proceed to actively follow my dream by getting writing jobs(which hasn't been easy) and by taking time to actually write. I never put school out of the question I was just only willing to study something that I really love and until I found that it would just have to wait.
I am now not so suddenly but definitely abruptly faced with the question, not so much posed to me as a question but rather as a threat, of what I want to do with my life. My options as posed by my father are these: go back to school or be cut off and left to fend for myself, in order to realize that I must go back to school. I think the phrase we are looking for is emotional blackmail. Because, while I completely agree with the fact that I have to think about my future and what I want to do with that future and with the fact that I should find the way to support myself, I feel that this is not the question my dad is posing. In his eyes I am meant to go back to school in either option whether that is by choice or by facing the hardships of the real-world and changing my mind about it and going back to school. I feel like I will not be supported in either situation but rather I am expected to fail for even trying to make it without a college degree. I am automatically put into a category of "the one without a college degree" when I am so much more than that. University degrees are for some people but not for all. Maybe they are for me too but not until and if I find what it is I would want to do with that said degree.
Forgetting the words of my father, I am posing the question of what I want to do with my life to myself, whilst having the knowledge that I have already accomplished many things and have a lot to be proud of. For I don't feel that the time I have spent has been a waste rather quite an experience that has helped me to know myself better and in that be a better writer. Because I always knew I wanted to be a writer and if I can put pen to paper and finger to keyboard and produce something worthwhile than damn it I am.
I have worked in jobs I loved and some I hated and I'd do it again, and if paying the bills means getting a job I hate then I'll do that too (maybe it'll even give me something more to write about). And if a degree is what I want to get then that's what I'll do. Though I've been dreading myself and my impossible thoughts and agony and stress methinks maybe this is not such a bad thing. I'm choosing to focus on the positive and to commit myself to committing, to really apply myself and to follow my dreams. Whatever I decide in the process of fulfilling those dreams, I won't do it out of fear or because someone said so, but because it helps me better myself, for myself and gets me one step closer to the end of my personal rainbow. 
Like my mum said "where there's a will, there's a way"

Positive attitude, negative thinking

I guess it's been a while and I've been a busy bunny. Work related mostly although I did go to my friend's music gig last week. It's amazing to me how a person so talented can be so pessimistic about his talent. God, I don't know if I'm talking about him or myself. Because lately I find myself feeling frustrated and often annoyed, well more than usual anyway, over the smallest things. The truth is I'm feeling the pressure of "making it" as a writer and considering I decided to drop out of college, I guess I'm anxious about what will happen in the future. I'm always thinking and stressing myself out and it's like my mum always jokes when I tell her I'm thinking, she says "don't hurt yourself". I see people, my friends, doing so many things and accomplishing even more as we speak, learning foreign languages, getting degrees, continuing their studies abroad, traveling, and I'm starting to feel slightly depressed, feeling like a loser. I was studying Art History before I made a conscious decision to leave because I had gotten most of what it had to offer and no longer felt I belonged. In fact, ever since the beginning I never felt I belonged. I hated that school and almost everyone in it. Furthermore while I enjoy studying the subject as a hobby, I am certain that is not what I want to do with my life. I don't regret my decision, but I wonder if I should be doing something else. If I had the financial means I would go to another college and maybe one day I will. But is money the issue or am I being lazy? Am I less than perfect? Am I daydreaming? Or am I just afraid of living outside the comfort zone? So many people never leave their comfort zone, while I decided not to live there in the first place. Is that wise?  I mean I don't doubt my abilities as a writer nor do I not know what I want to do with my life. I guess I always knew I wanted to be a writer. Ever since I could write I was writing poems and stories and songs. It's just that sometimes I don't know exactly how to get there. I suppose for my age I've been doing a pretty good job, with my articles being published and now writing and editing a book for a famous chef and having completed an early draft for my own novel. But I worry, as my dad says, when do my smarts run out? Is talent really enough to make it? I guess in his opinion, as an artist himself, no. I'm not determined to prove him wrong, I'm determined to prove my own fears of failure wrong. I'm good at giving other people optimistic advice, like my crazy-talented friend with the amazing voice, who one day is going to be a very famous musician, even if he doesn't believe it now, or another friend who always wanted to be a dancer and so I told him "go be a dancer". And you know what? He did! Somehow though I fail to take my own advice. I've talked to people who are so anxious because they have no idea what they want to do in their lives and they say I'm lucky because I already do. I say to them "do whatever makes you happy until you can find the thing that you can also make a living out of", no matter how long it takes. So why is it that I feel so small when I'm actually doing what makes me happy? I think society's idea of what a 20-something should be doing, getting a degree, a job, having everything figured out has been etched into my brain. Or maybe it's what I think I should be doing. Perhaps I'm the one putting pressure on myself to be what I think others will find acceptable. In many ways, my own thoughts are what is holding me back from realizing my potential. Maybe yours are what's doing it for you.