How did you figure out what to do with your life?

I’m not done yet…

Yes.

Born with three sixes embedded in my scalp determined what I’ve become.

I knew it! the mailman is the anti-christ!

…or are they three nines?

no, pretty sure they’re 6’s – nevermind Disney, it’s the postal service that’s the evil empire

What’s the postal service? Oh. I remember. Does anyone use it any more? How quaint!

I’m still trying to figure that one out!

Still trying to figure it out.

The Yuppie nuremberg effect.

A combination of following my heart while listening to my brain.

I always had a very loose plan.

“Do something creative for a living”-check
“Marry my best friend”-check
“Buy a house, don’t rent”-check
Etc. Etc.

Beyond that, just winging it, trying to make good decisions, hoping for the best while expecting the worst.

By accident.

I’m in my 40’s and still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. As for where I’m at now; financially it was a long term plan seen through to fruition(so far), emotionally it was all just a big gamble that has required lots of work but has paid off well.

@CTNP: WTF?!

I’m still trying to figure it but…I’m trying to:

- read lots of supposedly “life changing” books
– shut my mind to the past
– open my imagination
– start thinking “I can do ANYTHING”
– spend time thinking whilst walking in nature
– watching films
– painting
– praying that it will reveal itself to me like something falling from the sky….

Went to college, got a degree with the intention of working in a bank, graduated during a bank hiring freeze, got a job in an ad agency. The rest is history.

You just have to start walking. Stay in school, try different things. Sometimes figuring out what you don’t like helps you figure out what you do.

After all, life is what happens while you’re busy making plans.

My cousin Giovanni, in Italy has a great saying about this:

“If you’re gonna buy a bike, pedal the damn thing!”

I’ll let you know, if I ever figure it out. I’m 41. Sigh.

I saw Van Helsing with my best friend. We were in the theater and when the credits started rolling, I sat up straight in my seat and said to myself, “I have to become a filmmaker.”

In my high school psychology class, we had a unit on the biological basis of behavior—how the brain works, what it does, that kind of thing. I was done for. Nine years later, I’m still hopelessly in love.

You are never finished.

There’s tomorrow and the week after that and the year after that, hopefully.

You learn from your actions, some from your successes, more from the bad ones.

Some things will tie you down for a period of time, children the longest, education, this job, that business, but you are still going to have to contemplate what you are going to do next.

I made some decisions, education the most important, that led to a career and a marriage and children but none of this was planned in any long term strategic way.

You are walking through a labyrinth and you never know where it ends.

SRM

I’m just going along for the ride!!

Yep. I don’t know yet, either. I don’t know if I’ll ever know, so I’m just trying to be more spontaneous and enjoy the ride.

@nikipedia…now that’s the sort of thing i’d love to know more about…what to you do? what did you study? and does it pay well?

Right now I’m in grad school studying neuroscience. The school part doesn’t pay so well, but I’m hoping the afterward part does. My tentative plan after this is to go to law school and try to finagle my way into working in bioethics, but that could be as a lawyer, a scientist who does expert testimony, a fellow in a neurolaw foundation, or a hundred other things. I have about eight years to figure that part out, though.