decide what the hell I would like to do with the rest of my life

Even though everyone around me is telling me to hurry up and apply to grad school/law school, after four years of uni all I really want to do is relax and focus on becoming a healthier and happier person. I neglected myself and my health during school; I was extremely depressed and it can take awhile to recover from over four years of intense depression. It was more like 8.

In the past five months since graduation I’ve been so much healthier, happier, and overall more introspective and honest with myself and what I want with my life. I haven’t felt like this for years – every day I feel a little bit better, a little weight is getting lifted off my heart and I feel like I’m finally starting to get my joy back. Sometimes I get scared about the future because most of my friends are heading to law school and grad school immediately after graduation. I have to remind myself that I’m 21, I have a degree, I have a lot of time, and I can enjoy being young-ish. Thankfully, I don’t have to work, I don’t have to pay bills, I don’t have to do anything but take care of myself. I didn’t get to enjoy my youth at all, so right now I’m going to focus on deciding what to do with the rest of my day, week, month, whatever. Just not the rest of my life. I’m having too much fun to commit to a plan just yet.

i just graduated with a degree in philosophy. i have no idea what i want to do, only that i have to go to graduate school. i know i have to go to grad school because i’m not done learning and it’s necessary for me to do in order to be independent.

i love libraries. however, i don’t know if i’d love to be a librarian. i’ve talked to a few librarians and they love their job. i’m worried that i’d get sick of the monotony (shelving books, teaching classes, etc) but then again, i can think of several examples of how it isn’t a monotonous profession (learning something new quite often, helping people learn, crazy patrons of the library). incurring more student loan debt for this profession scares me a bit though.

i love law. i did well on the lsat. however, i don’t know if i’d love to be a lawyer. in theory, high stress situations make me uncomfortable – the idea of a lifetime of stress makes me cringe. experiential evidence shows that i perform very well when stressed. i’ve never dealt with that kind of stress though, and i’d hate to be graduated with heaps of debt and afraid of going out in the real world and practicing. everybody says law school has nothing to do with practicing law, and seeing as law school is my primary motivation for become a lawyer, this could be a mistake.

i love to write. i’d love to be a writer, but apparently not that much, because i can’t motivate myself to write anything. i don’t know if i’m a good writer. i’m afraid of being criticized. i lack discipline.

i love psychology. my mom did this and she’s very satisfied with what she does. i’ve always been fascinated with mental health issues, loved to help people, and i’m a good listener. again, student loan debt scares me, but if got my master’s i think i’d do well.

right now, it seems like a toss-up between going to school to become a psychologist or being a writer. hey, i could do both! my mom wants me to go to law school or (to a lesser extent) grad school for library science, but this goal is figure out what i want to do with my life.

it doesn’t help that i’m in a foreign country, i don’t know if i’ll stay here forever. i hope everything will go swimmingly and i’ll get married, live in australia for the rest of my life, and be a successful careerwoman. i just don’t know if it’s wise to invest a lot of my bank’s money in that hope.