When I Grow Up I Want to Be...

I have always been a confused kid. I did not know what I wanted to take up when I got into college. I wanted to be a newscaster but I did not want to take up mass communication for fear that I might not get a stable job. I opted instead to take up computer science, a really difficult course but back then it was a choice that promised a stable job. Hmm... back then...

Now, three years after graduation I am thinking again... Am I where I want to be? It is a bit funny though because even after the course work for my master's degree and pending thesis, I am still unsure of what I want. After all these years, I never stopped to reconsider. Thinking I do not have a choice, that it was too late, that I just had to keep on trudging towards a future I will have to learn to enjoy. Not anymore. I refuse to go on wondering what might have been. I might be a bit late but not too late for me to not even try. So did I quit my job? Of course not. I am not that crazy! Gradually, I am trying once again the things that I used to enjoy but stopped doing to give way to things that I deemed "important" simply because they were work related. I can have plenty of time for other things, it is just a matter of priority and time handling.

I have tried out for a news reporter job, I have enrolled myself in an acting workshop, I have sung two songs in a bar, I will be acting on the biggest stage here in our country. I am a lector, a skater, a swimmer, a teacher, a student, a member of the community. I want it all, I do. I think we can all have what we want, if only there were not so many people thinking that we cannot. If only people will not stop you and tell you, you have to choose. Why is it that kids are always asked what they want to be when they grow up? Why are they always limited to just one choice? But to heck with them, doing what they do not want me to do justifies my cause more. I want to learn how to play the piano, to paint, and oh so many other things. Then I stop again, is this really what life is all about?

What if after doing all the things I wanted to do I still feel empty inside. What will it be after that? I wonder... In the meantime, let me do the things I enjoy the most, perhaps after all these I will know what I want to do, where I will find meaning in life.