Dream What You Want To Dream...

I feel I should issue a trigger warning here for mentions of human dissection and associated events. If you're squeamish or disapproving of this then you might want to skip this post, or at least the big paragraph in the middle of it.

My Mum gave me this picture for a birthday a long time ago and it's hung on the wall in my bedroom ever since. Right now, I don't think I'm very good at doing what it says, and I kind of feel like my life may be slipping through my fingers somewhat, and I really should make more of an effort to grab a hold and start doing something with it.

Yesterdays NaBloPoMo prompt was "What is getting in the way of you reaching for your dreams?" and I can honestly say that right now the answer is 'not having any dreams' because I have no idea what I want to do with my life at the moment. It's hard to chase your dreams and try and catch them when you have no idea what you actually want them to be.

It's weird because for years I knew what I wanted to do-since 14 I knew exactly what I wanted to do with my life and how I was going to achieve it, right through until my 2nd year of uni when I was 20 when the whole idea got turned on its head. I wanted to be a forensic pathologist-the people who do autopsies on bodies for cases involving suspicious deaths, and I knew I needed to go to med school to do this. I actually got in to med school at my beloved Sheffield but didn't get the required grades in my chemistry A-Level. Had a bit of a cry about this on results day but then shrugged it off-I'd just do a science degree first, then medicine as a post grad. Simple. So that's what I did, I shipped myself off to do my Biomedical Science degree with all my ambitions still intact (Put it this way, about 50% of the people on my course wanted to go on to be Dentists or Medics, so it was a very good plan!). Then my second year of uni rolled around and several things happened to halt my ambitions in its tracks. Firstly, David Cameron and Nick Clegg came along and decided to up the tuition fees for universities to £9Grand a year, meaning I couldn't really afford med school at all. Secondly I realised that I probably wasn't going to get the high 2.1/1st that med school requires. Thirdly, and I feel this is fairly important, I realised that I was absolutely pants at anatomy. Don't get me wrong, I loved it, and I recognise I was really lucky to be able to do human dissection on a Biomed course and it was really interesting. But I'm pants at it. Give me a list of bones or muscles to remember (or a big chunk of text, or a script etc) and I could do it easily, reel them off and sound like a true professional. The trouble is knowing the names is no help to you if you can't work out which one is which when faced with a picture of a partially dissected arm (NB: I have developed a dislike for the forearm because it has an unnecessary amount of muscles in it for such a small area, all of which have very similar names.) or a torso with the skin removed. All the colour-in-anatomy books didn't help me because everything inside your body is all basically beige-with the exception of your gall bladder which is violently green-and so I didn't do very well in any of our anatomy exams. This culmination of events finally taught me once and for all that I wasn't cut out to be a pathologist, as I wouldn't really be very good at it at all. And actually I was fine with it, mostly, although obviously felt more than a little lost-the thing I had been aiming at for 6 years of my life had just been lifted out of my fingertips and placed firmly out of my grasp forever.

But then this kind of apathy set in. I wasn't really connecting with my course, wasn't pushing myself to do better, wasn't really enjoying it any more. I had personal problems which didn't help, but I didn't really do myself any favours when it came to third year because I guess I wasn't really sure what I was doing it for any longer. I had no purpose, no direction, no goal to get to in ten years time. I got my degree but I know I could have done better if I had tried a little harder (and hadn't got dumped at the end of the Easter holidays, but that's another story...) but I just didn't have the inclination to.

I'm still the same way now. I graduated in July last year and since then I've done...nothing. Don't get me wrong, I've had some amazing times in the interim, done some awesome stuff, but I'm still living like a student and not doing anything with my life. I still don't know what I want to do for a career, I'm flirting with various ideas but I've not committed to any of them in any way. I don't have a job or an ambition or drive to do anything and I need to change this.

I'm writing this post to remind myself that I am the only person who can help myself. I am the only one who can dream those dreams and go where I want to go. That it's time to get serious and start trying to live like a proper adult rather than a bum who wears pyjamas more than actual clothes. That I may not know what I want to do yet, but I have to do something because I can't live in my childhood bedroom with no money forever. That I need to take a hold of myself and give myself a good kick up the arse to do something. I'm 22, this is the time of my life, the time I should be making myself and discovering myself and seeing the world through un-blinkered, open eyes, not shutting myself away in my bedroom and not doing a thing with it.

So yeah. Right now I don't have any dreams, or aspirations. But for Gods' sake Jenni, get out there and turn over every stone until you find a new dream to alight its flame in your heart. You're never going to find it staring at your computer screen. Do something, be someone, before you're old and riddled with regrets.