Sunday, April 8, 2012

Quarter Life Travels - We're all trying to figure out where we're going

Sometimes it takes getting on the road to find out where you're going. I'm loving this new 20-something travel blogger, Alana, because she's exploring the same ideas I work on here but in the context of living in Thailand. For her, solving the great mystery of "What do I do if I can do anything?" is helped along by moving into an entirely different cultural context. She's insightful, smart, adventurous, and is in the same privileged pickle as the rest of us.

Like me, she was told from an early age that she can do ANYTHING. And like me, that led to more confusion than inspiration. What were we supposed to do with that? What happens when you are smart, talented, and don't have too many responsibilities limiting your life choices? How lucky are we.

The flip side, of course, is feeling pressure to do something with all the advantages we've been given. And that pressure is enormous and daunting. After a lifetime of being told how special we are by people who truly, and enthusiastically, believe in us - we can't be average. We can't. Average is failure, and failure to this little sub-set of Generation Y is mundus inversus (the world upside-down).

It's an interesting question, what happens to a child praised for its entire life when it reaches adulthood.

---

In other news - My 2012 Horoscope has been crazy-accurate. It's been a non-stop marathon since January. No rest for the wicked, to such an extent that I've had to turn down jobs. I'm not making money hand over fist quite yet since the wedding is taking up gobs of time, but I've definitely been able to do more shopping than I have in years. And my dream job - still my dream job. Love it. Managing a women's adventure travel website is almost as cool as it sounds (and it sounds really cool, doesn't it?).

1 comment:

  1. Hey LV - I'm writing on the QLC as well. Hopefully we can interact in the blogosphere. My work is at quellingtheqlc.com

    ReplyDelete