August 22, 2005

When I started writing this column, I wrote about turning 30 and all the new opportunities it brought. But, I think it is only fair to also address how life takes us for a ride, a slightly fucked-up, unexpected ride that can leave us feeling like we may never “grow up”. Did you ever wake up in the morning and truly not know how you got to where you are? Ever feel like you were in the movie “Office Space” looking at your TPS report and want to cry/laugh? Growing up, I dreamed of being everything: a writer, actor, singer, astronaut, biologist, lawyer, pilot, international relief worker and teacher. The one thing I can say with absolute certainty that I wanted to do was write with acting as a close second and so, viola here I am. I turned thirty this year and I realized that even at this age when our parents were married and may have even had a family, that our generation is still searching, still trying to make our dreams come true, or even figure out what that dream is.

I think we hit our late twenties/early thirties and start to ask ourselves how this all happened. When I was a fair and naïve 24-year old at my first job in PR, I was miserable and felt like a complete failure as a human being. I tried a million and one ways to rationalize my “job” to myself. That I basically harassed reporters all day to write about something I didn’t even care about and got treated like shit by the client of said useless product, but at least it was “creative”. Then my slightly older and much wiser colleague said something to me that I still use to this day. She said, “You have to decide what kind of person you are. You are either the kind that needs to love what they do OR you are the person that can do what they don’t hate in order to do what they love.” It certainly made things clearer. I could still save the world (or at least not make it worse) if I wanted. It just didn’t have to be my “job”.

I feel like I’ve had this exact conversation many times with friends, co-workers since the day I started “working”. We have choices - choices, a luxury perhaps that our parents’ generation didn’t have. And, this freedom, instead of giving us more clarity as to what we want to do with our lives has only served to muddy our thinking. Can too many choices really be a bad thing? Hell, most of the world thinks that what’s wrong with us damn Americans anyway. So, what do we do? I honestly don’t have the answer. Some might argue that life just happens and “grows you up”; eventually you succumb to responsibility. But, what about those of us without traditional responsibilities that still cling to the dream of the dream?

In your twenties you’re not really sure what you are doing and often your job is just your first job. You take your job seriously but not so seriously. You spend happy hour with your work friends at cheesy spots in midtown or downtown, at night you go to Upper East Side bars that remind you of campus. The office is sometimes just an overgrown version of your dorm or the student center. You spend hours with these people pouring over drinks and discussing what you really want to do with your life. And before you know it, you are in your mid to late twenties and you have something of a career. What I’ve noticed is that it’s usually at this point that you hit the fork in the road and make something of a decision about which way to go.

When I was 27, I had this moment. It was small, quiet and I still don’t know what sparked it but I think it started two years earlier when I was still the PR girl. I had to quit and I knew it because more than anything I didn’t want to become VP and if I kept on that’s where life would take me and nothing scared me more than that prospect. Now don’t get excited, I wasn’t quite that brave yet! I quit, but started working right away in the Internet world and what seemed like two minutes later, the bubble burst and I was laid off. I was lost. I didn’t really know what to do with myself. To an outsider, this may seem like the perfect time for making a life change, but no, not yet. Again, I wasn’t quite brave enough. I got another job (a fluke) at a good company doing something I was completely unqualified for, but one of my old bosses liked me and the saying is true, you never know who is going to help you in the future. It was at this job that I seemed to find peace or maybe it was just that I was finally older. I can’t say for sure, but I had my moment: I enrolled in a two year acting school, started writing more and the rest, as they say is … well, still happening.

Fear is such a powerful, debilitating, comfortable thing. It still amazes me how much it controls us, still controls me even now. My acting teacher had this thing he would say to us when we weren’t getting something. He’d say, “What are you so afraid of? You might survive and you might even have an experience,” (or something like that) and it’s so true. Everything we do, say, feel - work, friends, family, love is all ruled by fear even for the most carefree amongst us. When I was little, I wrote feverishly. I wrote grand, sweeping epics to my own version of “Are you there, God? It’s me Margaret”. I recently re-read that story, which incidentally is still unfinished, and it struck me that even though I was 12 when I wrote it, I seemed so clear about what I was doing. Then I thought when did this all change? When did I decide I wasn’t good enough to do all the things I wanted?

Sometimes, I wish I had been braver earlier but regret is a useless emotion. I sometimes think I wasted a lot of my early twenties just talking and dreaming but not really doing anything. I know real life happens – parents, rent, expectations and all of that. I think a lot of us can say the same thing. I’m not saying I’ve got it all figured out, in fact I sometimes feel I know even less now. But the point is that when it all seemed to fall into place I kept thinking of what my co-worker said to me years ago. You just have to figure out the type of person you are. Once I didn’t hate what I did, I was able to do what I loved…even if I did get still scared sometimes.