I’ve always been the wildly ambitious type.
When I was little, I was always an actress and a singer and I knew I was destined to be an A-list celebrity. At the time I, of course, wanted to be Miley Cyrus, teen acting/music sensation. Even through high school, my ambition was always to be an actress, despite the fact that I told everyone it was to be a scientist. By senior year, however, when it was time to decide where I was applying, I went the route of environmental science, a definite passion of mine, only because I felt like I was letting my parents and partially myself down because I had good enough grades to go to a good school and study a “real” subject.
I have inner turmoil once I make my final decision. I regret not pursuing more acting and singing lessons in high school, or not letting my parents realize how much of a priority it was for me to be performing. I finally had friends convince me that I could start acting again whenever I felt like it, and I kept that thought with me silently as I packed my bags for D.C.
Once I came to terms with my focus on environmental science, I convinced myself that I need to do something groundbreaking. If I’m not going to be the next Hannah Montana, I need to be genius-level smart in my field. I’m already setting myself up for failure here, seeing as though I’ve never taken an IQ test, I can almost assure you I wouldn’t qualify for Mensa. And if I don’t have the smarts, I have to convince everyone around me that I do and work five times as hard as I ever have to get to where I want to be. I need to invent something that will change the world or inspire a generation to change its ways to solve climate change, or solve world hunger.
But as I’m sitting at home this summer, I think to myself, “Man, it would be really cool if I could own a coffee shop.” And usually, my train of thought would stop here and go back to “well I don’t have time for that on my career path to changing the world,” until this time I thought, “wait, I totally could do that.”
Maybe everyone else doesn’t pressure themselves into thinking they need to change the world and are thinking “Abby, this is obvious, we can always do whatever we want when we want,” but for me, this is a groundbreaking thought. I don’t need to wish for a life of stress and anxiety inducing work to change the world if I don’t want to; I can get that entry level post-grad job, save some money, and open a coffee shop. Or I can even pursue my acting career again after college. Or I can do whatever I please at the moment. Because I don’t need to change the world. If it happens, that would be really cool, but if I want to just open a chill little coffee shop and be content with myself (as long as I don’t go out of business,) I’d be just fine with that.
