I'm 30 something. What do I know?

Mar 29, 2008 - 10:56 AM PST

You expect to have alot of the answers to life's questions by the time you are in your 30's. Well, this 30-something-year-old doesn't. In the past week I have had pointed out to me that it's not so much that I don't have the answers to my life questions, but that for the most part I have ignored those answers because that's not who I am "supposed to be" according to the definitions given me by my family and society as a whole.

I have taken tests, surveys, and filled out forms all week and have discovered that I am the single flower that grows in the sidewalk I call my family. I am surrounded by accountants and computer geeks telling me that I am irresponsible, flighty, childish. They have told me that I belong in this box called office employment. In this week I have discovered that I have known who I am all along and that I have been allowing others to color my judgment of who I am only to fail at filling the shoes they have laid out for me. I am a social butterfly, I am a caregiver, I am an idealist and a romantic, I am an artist who sees the total composition, not always the little details first. I see beauty and complimentary elements, not absolutes.

I am beginning to see myself the way my friends have seen me forever and am finally ok knowing that my world needs to adapt to better fit me as much as I adapt to fit in my world. Otherwise, it isn't compromise, it's selling out. Where's the beauty in that?