what should I do with my life?

Seriously, please tell me.

I’m turning thirty in three and a half months. To celebrate/cope with this, I’ve been compiling lists of plans: a “30 new things to try before 30” list, a “PhDs/MAs I could try” list, a “classes to take” list, a “goals to meet before 30th birthday” list. These documents have taken over my notes app and even google keep, joining the likes of “Lol” (list of everyone I’ve ever kissed, etc.), and “Bands I have seen!,” a list of bands I have seen.

some of the notes kicking around my phone

The thing is that I feel sincere, hot relief, like a lemon ginger tea, at the idea of aging. Thirty is sexy. It’s such a privilege to age, to be healthy, to gain a fuller understanding of myself with each year and treat her with more and more love. To quote my favourite tweet of all time:

As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain and more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love. - Jenny Slate

Unfortunately the only proof of this Tweet I can find is the version I printed out and paper clipped to my mirror in 2018

I think my trepidation and neurotic list-making stems from the worry that I won’t do thirty justice. What do I want to do with my life? Write a novel, yes. Write, in general. Edit a literary magazine. What else? I want to have a lot of friends, a “community” if you want to get all political about it. I want to have a dog and live on Grand Manan in the summers. I want to buy art. I think that’s the extent of it.

These seem like reasonable goals for a thirty-year-old. I am already working towards all of them. The problem, as always, is money. What step do I take, professionally or academically, to make more money in a way that doesn’t make me hate myself? The options I have come up with are as follows:

1. Do another MA, in library sciences. Become a librarian.

2. Do another MA, in counselling. Become a counsellor.

3. Do a PhD. Become a professor.

4. Get a better random administration job that pays better.

5. Get a random government job that pays better.

6. Something?? Else????

The problem is that I could do any of these things, but I can’t decide which direction to start walking. I could go back to UNB but I’m so tired of Fredericton. I could go to Montreal but I just started a writing collective here. I could focus on a steady job, but I’ll regret never pushing myself to a PhD. I could do a PhD but I might just waste another five years and never find a job in my field anyways. I go around and around like this every day.

In the end I’ll probably find some arbitrary reason to escape the feedback loop. A crush, or a falling-out, or a midlife crisis. Is that what this is? Yikes.

For now I’m signed up for a horror writing class, a yoga class, and a dance class. I also bought air dry clay and booked the first session of my back tattoo and am drafting another poetry collection. Decision paralysis has flowered into many little hobby blossoms as I try to scratch the “progress” itch.

But yeah, if you have any suggestions on how to live the rest of my life, let me know.