Apologetically Speaking: 2013 and What Is Happening To My Life?

I start a new semester tomorrow, and let me just say that it's gonna be a doozy for several reasons:

1) I may or may not have gotten iffy grades last semester and

2) I may or may not have made a sort-of bet-slash-promise to my father that I would legitimately try to get straight A's this semester and

3) I am scheduled to graduate in August unless I can't but it would be next December if not August and

4) IT'S REALLY SOON AND EVEN THOUGH I LOVE MY MAJOR I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE.

This is a large problem that has risen from last semester's grueling schedule of work and classes in the mornings and realizing that even though I love being at college and taking fun classes, none of the classes I have taken have the potential to prepare me for a real job.

I have taken steps to rectify this. I went to the career office at BYU and was like, "Help, I have no idea what my life has become!" and the nice girl at the desk was like, "Here, look at all these very fat books and take this little piece of paper and look at the websites on it! It will help!" and I did those things and now several months later I still have no idea what I want to do with my life.

Well, okay. I know exactly what I want to do with my life. I want to write a best-selling YA fantasy novel (hopefully involving feminism, POC, and queer characters because have you noticed how every hero is a straight white male these days? that's not a bad thing or anything, but the thing is that the world is like eighty percent not white and therefore white people should not be the main characters in eighty percent of the books. yo.) and I would like to get married and have either four or six children, preferably four because that will be a heck of a lot easier on my body but six if I decide I want more later, and an even number because then everyone has somebody to play with and I can keep one eye on them and one eye on the sequel of my best-selling feminist YA fantasy novel. I dunno. I would also like to learn how to drive a car at some point and someday own an Audi because they are small and pretty and run well and I would like to have a gray or yellow house with a porch swing and a rocking chair and a million billion trillion books.

But since there are dreams that cannot be, and since I am not likely to do any of those things except probably get married and maybe learn how to drive a car (haha who am I kidding, I'll never learn how to drive a car), I need backup plans. I know that I am only twenty years old and therefore cannot measure the success of my life by what has already happened because 1) nothing has happened to me yet and 2) I can't wait for some of those things to happen to me or I will be a destitute wreck sharing a room with the Beauty at the age of thirty, which is a thing I ARDENTLY DO NOT WANT to happen. I mean, in ten years the Prodigy will be in college, and the Beast will be home from his mission and probably married or something, and the Beauty might even have found herself a rich trophy husband as she makes her living on the stages of Broadway, but in all probability, I will be living at home because I am kind of uninteresting. The only reason my life seems interesting is because I have a knack for dramatizing the unimportant. All writers are drama queens. It's how we get by.

So I need backup plans. There is one thing I desperately DO NOT want to do with my English degree, and that is:

1) Teach.
2) Teach.
3) Teach.
4) Educate.
5) Instruct.
6) Lecture.
7) Teach. 8) Teach. 9) Teach. 10.) Guess... you're right! Teach.

This is not because teaching is a thankless job, or even because I find a majority of people between the ages of six and sixteen who are not related to me kind of annoying. (Count yourself lucky if you're in that demographic and I still like you.) It's mostly because I am the last person who should be teaching anyone anything. I am afraid of people I don't know, including small children and teenagers, and I like sitting more than standing, and I can't make eye contact with people I don't know. I would make a terrible teacher because I would never be able to look at the kids and I would start mumbling and they wouldn't understand me and I would either make people cry or start crying myself and it would just be messy, man. It would be terrifying, like one of those nightmares where you go to school in your underwear, except every day for a hundred and eighty-two days a year.

This leaves several options: I can go into publishing (editing), I can go on to grad school and postpone my eventual decision about what I will do with my life, or I can become a copy writer/tech writer/translator for hire, that kind of deal. None of these sound particularly appealing to me. I would like to do editing, but I would have had to take more editing classes by now to do that. Grad school costs money, which I don't have and don't currently have the grades to obtain for free. (I do not want lectures about what I should have done it was in the past and you cannot change the past it is over and done it is in the past thank you very much) And copy writer/tech writer/translator is doable, but it also sounds really, really boring. However, it's really the only career option I have at this point, so I am taking a technical writing class to figure it out.

"But what about internships?" you cry. That would be nice, but if it's not paid I can't do it because I sort of need money to, you know, sustain my incredibly poor lifestyle.

And I could, of course, go on a mission- but the thing is, I am not yet ready to go on a mission. I know this, and the Lord knows this, and it's between us. If you really want to know, then too bad, it's none of your business because you don't have stewardship over me. But because I try to be at least a decent and polite person ninety-five percent of the time (the other five percent being when I become HULK SMASH on everything you love because of reasons), I will provide you with the explanation that it has to do with the fact that I am taking pills to help myself get by on a daily basis. And while I kind of maybe think that missionaries are allowed to serve while taking anti-depressants, I don't want to become one of those missionaries who ended up going home because they were pressured by those around them into not taking their medicine. If I do not take my medicine, I will become very sad and tired and I will gradually descend into a fog of nothingness that may or may not result in wanting not to exist. Additionally, people kind of freak me out sometimes and I get panicky about stupid little things and some less stupid big things like the fact that I can't say my own name sometimes without my mouth tripping on itself and how I don't have basic conversational skills and how I don't know what to do with my life. And sometimes this makes me hyperventilate and have to find a small, dark space to curl up into and cry. Yeah, a mission is kind of out of the question for me right now. I know that God can get rid of all of these problems, and I have the faith that he would do so should I decide to turn in my papers, but I, like my brother, want to go in to serve a mission in as good health as possible- physical and mental.

This past year has been the hardest one of my life- and yet, one of the most rewarding. 2013, you saw me through stupidity and extreme heartbreak, depression and anxiety, a gradual descent into apathy over the past semester, and a lot of lessons learned about feminism, rape culture, and some really important stuff that I wish I could raise awareness about without offending people like I inadvertently seem to do every time I open my mouth. But mostly, I learned some amazing things about my self worth, and I learned that I have a loving Heavenly Father who loves me because I am his daughter, one hundred percent, no matter what mistakes I make. I have learned that I am beautiful and infinitely precious, and I have learned that I am brilliant and dangerous. And all of these have combined to give me a fuller understanding about who I am and what I one day hope to become. I mean, I have to figure out what will happen to my life in the short-term first... but in the long-term, I think I'm pretty set on one destination, and I'm doing all I can to get there.