I Aspire to Live My Best Life
Based on where I thought the direction of my life was going to go when I was in my early 20’s, I found my career focus but not in the way I thought. My interests were many but I had two directions in my mind that were the frontrunners yet so very different and far apart from each other.
I’ve always been social from as far back as I can remember but in a more shy and reserved way which wouldn’t work for my first pick (from the age of 6) of what I wanted to be when I grew up, I wanted to sing. I loved music, dancing and loved to entertain and make people smile but was too shy to get up on a stage by myself, I was a closet singer basically. Looking back at it now I think the bottom line was that it obviously didn’t feel as natural to me to have that kind of career as I’d thought or I would have fought harder to get there.
My other pick was a psychiatrist/therapist (from the age of 19), these two couldn’t be any farther apart on the spectrum, could they? Of course looking back this now I realize that writing out my thoughts in a journal was a form of (self) therapy that I was already developing and in my conversations, chats or long talks with close friends or co-workers I found that there was therapy in another form. We provided therapy to each other simply by listening and caring and the occasional words of inspiration, motivation or wisdom. There is wisdom to be gained from everyone we encounter, we are all here for a reason.
The only connection I can find between these two very different career choices was my desire to make others happy, feel better, smile or just connect with them. To somehow change another’s world for the better, to make it a little bit brighter, even if just for a day, an hour or a moment is something I aspire to. I write on a more consistent basis now and continue to pursue my life of writing. There are people out there that have read my book, follow my blog and have given me positive feedback to say that I’ve either been the voice they needed at a specific time or that I gave them another perspective or option to consider. Just to know that I changed someone’s state of mind/being for the better, even for a moment is a much appreciated validation for me and is extremely humbling and incredibly motivating.
The connection I’ve realized now is that my desire to make others happy, feel better, smile or just connect with them has been not too far off from either of my initials goals. The “being a singer” goal because that form of career is a form of creativity and the “psychiatrist/therapist” goal because that form of career is to help. In essence it is a combination of the two that creates my writing career focus and has been a blessing for me in more ways than I could have ever imagined.
If you look back to the points in your life where you had your initial ideas of “what you wanted to be”, are you anywhere near it? You may be, but not in the way that you had expected, it could be an alternate path but connected at the core like mine was. It was quite a moment of “aha” to realize how much of these two very different career goals ending up blending together.
It was a direction that I never could have predicted and where I will be 20 years from now will be a prediction that I could not make either but I am definitely looking forward to finding out.
Shelley Hallmark 