Seventeen year old little old me is thinking about my life. I try to predict my future, and I'm imagining myself ten years from now. It's uncertain.
What am I going to do for the rest of my life? Who will I be? What school will I go to? What choice will I make?
At this point, I envy my audience. The people who will or are reading my story, my life, my words that eludicate who I am as a person, mind and a soul. You, reader, will just have to keep reading to find out what will become of me. I don't. I have the burden of choosing, of deciding. The hardest choice of my life.
I love to write. I get lost in stories and sometimes mistake fantasy with reality, or dreams with actual events, feelings, etc. I want to write novels about the imaginations in my mind, the stories in my life, the events of my experiences and those of the people around me. I want the world to see what I see. I want the world to meet the people I have met. I want others to share my mind and my way of thought to get if not all then at least a glimpse of my life and my mind. I love coming on this blog to just write about what I am thinking at the moment.
Then, there's the practical me, who asks "what if you don't succeed as a writer? a novelist? then what will you do?" That side of me loves to study. I love the human body. I've seen my father, the surgeon, in surgery, and it absolutely captivates me. I love the smell of the hospital. I love to think about me saving someone. I would love to study nursing, become an oncologist and make an impact on my life, other people's and the world!
But what about my writing?
Will I just turn down part of myself to give in to the other? If I give that artistic part of me to study medicine then I also give up dancing. Just the thought of that gives me goosbumps. Dancing is the part of me that gives me my freedom. It sets me free. I hear drums and I feel this great tidal wave. I can't help but not move along. It distracts me from life and reality. It's inexplicable. All I can really say is that I'm in love with it. I can't survive without it.
How do you know which part of yourself to opress and which to flourish and expand? How do you choose?
So what will I do? Senior year is quickly arriving. These questions can no longer be avoided and put off for another day. Judgement day arrives. . . you want to know what I'll choose . . . and so do I.
I don't believe that you'll have to give up your artistic desires to go into medicine.
I know exactly what you're going through. I want to write as well, and I'm determined to do so, even if nothing I write becomes popular. But at the same time, I know that I can't stake my futue on the uncertainty of a writing career. That's why I'm trying to find a good median between the two. I'm taking my more practical passions and turning them into plans. I don't have to be a full-time writer. I can get a job as an editor somewhere, or even work in a library.
And at the same time, you shouldn't have to give up your dancing. From the sounds of it, dancing for you is the same as tennis for me. It's that freedom, that release that's essential to your spiritual well-being. I'll never give up tennis. I'm bad at it, and the school I'm going to has no sports teams. But I'll never give up tennis. I will make the time to stick with it.
That's all you have to do. Find within yourself the determination to follow ALL of your dreams, and you can find a way.
And that's comin' at ya' from yer local redneck hippie.
I know it sounds cheesy but its the surefire explanation. Maybe what you think is practical (being a surgeon) actually is what your heart is telling you what to do. Regardless, don't do something because it'll be more financially secure or whatever. Its better to be happy than anything else in the world. I'm going through a similar situation. It seems like we're all in the same boat, aren't we?
P.S. Thank you for commenting on a blog of mine, I really appreciated your thoughts.
You're welcome, JenJen118
. . and thanks.