Late last night, I tweeted at my acting professor:

“Help me talk to the person I want to become. She’s playing hard-to-get.”

While alternately a reference to a class exercise he leads, it is a truth universally acknowledged, by Lizzy, Liz and Leslies alike, who any person existing on Earth confronts a variety of challenges on their way to becoming their fully fledged selves. The fashion and book covers may change, but the difficulty of becoming an adult never goes away. On that note, I would like to discuss some wisdoms I’ve been ruminating on of late.

Defining terms

Like so many others, I worry about my future quite a lot. I see friends who have “actor,” “writer,” “rocket scientist” or “future president” stamped on their profiles as a way of defining who they are. Knowing exactly what you’re headed for can be a great gift, I grant you.

Call it my Gemini moon or just general difficulty deciding on emotionally connected aspects of my life, but I have always struggled when trying to pin down my interests to a single title.

And I’m here to tell you that is not a bad thing.

Yes, it's not always feasible, so don't go to college for 30 different fields. But spending some time every so often to reevaluate what is most important for you to contribute to the world is too often frowned upon in a society of status quo mentalities.

“A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one”

Yes, we've all been misquoting that.

A classmate and friend once coined the phrase: “Jackass-of-all-trades,” a hilarious, head-nodding-type phrase that sticks a pin in the backlash of my desire to try a lot of different things has incurred over the years.

I completely, 100 percent agree that placing your focus on one thing can help you get there faster. It can, but that isn’t always the case. Most likely, one job will help you make connections into another one and so on. Remembering this helped me open up my vision for the future and become so much less paralyzed when considering job options.

When you hear about people who started out in a completely different profession than the one they are ultimately most successful and lauded for, it can be easy to write it off as a lucky try.

The truth is that the typical person can, on average, have 6-7 different careers or job fields in their lifetime, with the 18-42 demographic having 10 or 11 job changes throughout that age span.

I’m not saying to hop from job to job on a whim; only that we, as human beings with various skills and actions, should not tie ourselves to one vision of our future.

For example, I consider myself primarily a theatre practitioner and am currently an acting major, but the reason why I loved the Theatre BA degree my first two years was the freedom I had to try my hand at nearly every facet of the theatre business in some way or another.

I worked backstage, coordinated prop rentals, built sets and assistant stage-managed a production at our student run theatre company that I had helped run marketing for throughout the year. I also continued to perform, take playwriting, French, economics and creative writing classes. Liberal arts colleges are ideal for this very reason.

I also directed a show in high school and assistant directed my community theatre’s production of "Oklahoma!" last summer.

The purpose of that pretty little list is not to applaud my varied efforts, but to illustrate the education I chose to give myself in the hope of being more prepared in the future.

I love my chosen field very much, and of course, ideally, that will be what I'm doing in five years. But, getting there isn't a straight course of A to B, and more like a big kid water slide of slopes, loops and mini inner tube crashes involved.

Let it Unfold

Yes, it is great fun when people ask me what I'm going to do with my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. I simply say:

I'll let it unfold.

I want to be able to serve the world in whatever capacity it asks me to.

This concept of being open to what the future brings doesn’t only include jobs in my chosen field. Obviously, I don’t know that I’ll be able to obtain a theatre job, and therefore have been on the hunt for really anything dangling a pay check — within limitations, naughty readers. But, knowing that I'll be able to handle more unique jobs than I think I'm ready for just because I'll try my hardest and usually end up landing on my feet, is comforting — or at least helpful to my confidence level.

Don't diminish who you are

With a love for art, music, journalism, elementary education and working with kids in general, animals and nature, I am a hippie child out of southwestern Wisconsin, the Driftless region of hills and organic farms. I was brought up to love a lot of different things that gave me great balance of palate in my younger years.

Compressing that enthusiasm and curiosity to only one topic has become wearying of late, not to mention worrying my mind into “what if I hate it? What if I regret not doing it?” battles until my brain gerbil gets tired of its wheel and passes out of exhaustion. If I hate it, I can do my best to change it. And if I try my best to make it work, regret won’t ever be an option.

The conclusion I’ve come to is: you can’t know until you try.

I understand and appreciate the enormous fortune I have of even being able to somewhat control my work choices in a world where so many are unable to.

It is truly a privilege to have choice in our lives, so go out there and use your power and don’t let the threat of failure hold you down.

You are strong, powerful and courageous being that will be able to handle — or be wise enough to change — any situation life throws at you.

I hereby give you permission to live the life you've set out to live.