Not Where I Thought I’d Be
At 34 (35 in June), I’m not where I thought I’d be at this stage of life. I don’t have kids, I’ve yet to find a job that fulfills and doesn’t kill me, I barely know how to manage my finances, and I still don’t own the cozy family home that I’ve always wanted.
In other words, I just don’t feel like the adult I was made to believe I’d be at this age. For some time, this has caused me great distress. Especially with social media becoming more prevalent in everyday life, it’s hard not to compare myself with everyone else out there.
Establishing my professional life has by far been my biggest struggle. I always thought that work would occupy a much larger space in my life, but here I am, in my mid-thirties, still figuring things out.
When I fell off the beaten track was when I decided that I needed the time to go back to the basics. I was 7 years out of university and no matter how hard I tried to make things work, they just didn’t seem to sit right.
And so began my quest for understanding.
I left my job, went on a meditation retreat, returned to university, and applied for a Master’s program, facing rejection for the first time in my life. Reeling from the blow, I decided to take time off. I gave myself the chance to do things that I liked, that brought me joy; I went to workshops, I joined different groups, and met new people. I got my first job by connecting to someone in my network (no need for a CV or formal interview), I worked as an extra on a D-List movie set, grew my Reiki practice, as well as explored many different forms of healing. I waited tables at a restaurant, dabbled in performance art, travelled to India to go back to my roots, then started working in customer service to be able to pay my bills after the onset of the pandemic that basically paralyzed life as most of us knew it.
My trajectory has been all over the place, really, but what I can say is that I’ve had the luxury of time. It’s interesting because once you stop living life in a linear fashion, the concept of time also seems to stop. No longer part of the frenzy of the dreaded hamster wheel, I had time to reconnect to myself, to connect to the Greater Whole, time to explore a diverse range of experiences that my younger self never got the chance to live. I’ve also had the luxury of time to work through the unprocessed inner turmoil that showed up unconsciously in different areas of my life.
As I shared with someone my innermost thoughts the other day on how my life was going, I went back and forth between feelings of pride, inner peace, and acceptance, to feelings of shame, uncertainty, and self-doubt. What struck me, however, was my ability to express all of these things so comfortably to someone I barely knew. I felt anchored, I felt confident, and so grateful that I could observe and speak of myself so articulately.
I look back at the last decade of my life and I’m proud of how far I’ve come. I’m not as “ahead” in life as many people my age, but I certainly feel like I’ve connected much more closely to my values and have more clarity on how I want to continue down this non-linear path.
There is much more work to be done, that’s for sure, but for once, I feel aligned — that I can set one foot in front of the other and keep moving ahead, steady, focused, confident.
I’m nowhere near where I thought I’d be, but in the end, the life I’m living feels more like my own than it ever has. Using personal development, communication, simplicity, and sustainability as cardinal points on my life’s compass, I’m convinced that eventually, I’ll reach my goal of weaving my professional life more organically into my personal life.
Even though I’m not where I thought I’d be, I realize that back then, my vision was not my own. What I’ve lost in terms of linear “time” I’ve gained in terms of clarity. The decisions I now make are mostly my own; they come from an authentic, connected place.
I’m not where I thought I’d be, but right here seems much better.
