“So, what do you want to do with your life, when you’re done university?”

Well,

I’m going to start by spending the summer with my favourite people, and meeting a best-friend in Europe. But you mean aside from that, don’t you? Like long-term? Of course you do, so in that case…

I’d like to travel – with my friends, but also by myself. I’d like to do a solo backpacking trip. I’d like to live in a van for a little while and drive across the continent. I’d like to go to California with my cousin. I’d like to go anywhere with my cousin. I’d like to do different trips with all of my closest friends. I want to live in a tiny house for a good period of time. I want to live off less, and less, and less. I want to – I mean – I will write a novel before I’m 30, even if I’m the only one in the world who ever reads it (just kidding, I know my mom will). I want to blog, about anything, or everything, whatever. I want to read more books. I want to be the kind of friend that people can turn to for anything, I want to be the kind of friend who listens, I want to be the kind of friend – the kind of person, you remember. I want to learn more about God, maybe go to church a little bit more often. I want to try new hikes. I want to do things that scare the absolute shit out of me. I’d like to work for a craft brewery, maybe doing marketing or something. Maybe I’d open up a peanut-free cafe with a friend, maybe not. I’d like to love, and be loved in return. I want my heart to be pulled in a million different directions, across every single ocean. I want to fall in love, one day. I’d like to get married and have, I don’t know, maybe three children. Maybe I already have names picked out, maybe I don’t. I’d like to spend the rest of my life falling in love with things, pushing the boundaries of my own existence, learning about things that test my knowledge and sense of self. I’d like to spend every single day of the rest of my life growing up and never growing old. And I know this is cliche, and I know that every single person who asks the question, what do you want to do with your life, you know, after you graduate university, they’re all looking for the career-based answer. I don’t have an answer to that. And I don’t want to choose something because I feel like I’m supposed to – because I’m jealous of the fact that my friends have desires and ambitions that include specific occupations. I think that’s fantastic, but I don’t think it’s something you can – or should – force. And, I mean, when you ask me what I want to do with my life, I just don’t think I want to answer a question like that with a job title, you know? When I think about what I want to do with my life, I think about how I want to spend it learning how to love myself and every single person who comes in and out of my life. I want to live a life that makes me proud of who I am, but never proud enough that I don’t keep trying to become better. I want to surround myself with people who push me, who ask serious questions, and never ever forget how to laugh. I want to one day, spend the rest of my life with someone I consider my best-friend. I’d like to have the kind of marriage my parents have – I’d like to be the kind of wife, the kind of mother, my mom is. I want to spend the rest of my life writing about all of this. And yeah, I need a career of sorts, and yeah, I want one too at some point. But when I set the idea of a career against the backdrop of everything else I want in life, it just seems so small right now. Maybe, this is called being twenty-one.