When I was growing up, I always had this idea ingrained in my head about how my future would play out. It goes something like this:
After graduating from high school, I would go to college.
While I was in college, I would find a guy and fall in love.
After graduating from college, I would get married and start a career.
And after a while, I would have kids and start a family, leaving that career behind. I would maybe have the opportunity to pick the career back up once the kids were grown, but a large portion of my life would be spent as a mother, a wife, a homemaker.
This is the traditional way that American society sets us on our way – the expectation of the American Dream and all that it entails. For women, the expectations are clear: at some point in your life, your biological clock starts ticking, and you give up everything else to have a baby (or many babies).
But what happens if you start traveling down that road, and realize that the traditional path isn’t your path?
I’d love to say that society embraces your choice, and supports your decisions… but I would be a big, fat liar. It’s more like weird looks and puzzled whispering when you walk out of a room; people wonder what’s wrong with you!
Now, I know that our society has made many gains in the past 100 years – the fact that I can vote, and that I own my own business – yeah, that was made possible due to some amazing women standing up against the status quo and demanding more. Equal rights, the suffragette movement – those brave women paved the way so that I can make the choice to live life on my terms, and to those women I am eternally grateful.
(And, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with the traditional path. I have great respect for those people who dedicate their lives to raising the next generation, and who are made incredibly happy by doing so.)
But – that path? It’s not for me. So here I stand today – divorced, owning my own business, and with no intention of having kids.
I have pretty much smacked society and its traditional expectations square across the face.
And you know what? I’m okay with that.
I’m here to tell you that if you want to step outside the traditional way of doing things, do it. Be brave – take that step – live the life that you want to live. You are the only person who can make you happy, who knows what you want out of the life you have been given. Make the most of it. Live YOUR life, follow your authentic path.
My take is that as long as we’re happy, and making a positive difference in this world, then we must be doing something right.
The world would be awfully boring if we all followed the same path.
My invitation to you is this: come color outside the lines with me, decide on your own path – and who knows? By going against the grain, maybe we will look back someday and see a change in the definition of traditional!
A girl can hope, right?
PS. I would love to continue this conversation with anyone who is interested. Feel free to leave me a comment, or get in touch with me via twitter, email, whatever!
I’m just going to get this out of the way – say it out loud for the world to hear: I am a procrastinator.
Remember how your mom always told you not to play with your food? Well, I’m here to tell you otherwise. Or… at least to tell you that sometimes it has something worth saying. Err… too much of a stretch? Probably, but stick with me!
I have the feeling that if you’re carefully examining the title of this post, you may get the impression that I jumped the gun on posting it – that I meant to save it for later in the month, around the Thanksgiving holiday. Well, maybe you’re right, but wait until you have finished reading to make your final decision.
It seems like every time I turn around, I hear about another famous person who has finished up their time on this planet and moved on, or about the passing of someone who was close to someone I knew. Sometimes it’s even someone I knew, someone close. There has been a lot of that recently for me, on each of those levels.
There is a software developer in town who has become somewhat of a mentor to me over the past year and a half. He encouraged me to step outside my then-current worldview, and was one of the first to encourage me to start my own business. I had been hiding behind finishing school as a start date for doing anything, but he pushed me to believe that I didn’t have to wait for some magical event; he even brought me onto a team project as a designer – my first real client work. As work ebbed and flowed, we went our own ways, and it had been a while since the last time we had spoken. This past spring we ran into a small error on the site we had worked on together, and it gave us a chance to catch up. I was getting him up to speed on everything that had been going on in my life, and he said the following: