I’ve travelled down this road in my mind so many times…visualizing every step of the way; every major milestone. I thought I knew how things would turn out, or at very least the closest possible permutation.
See as children we all have dreams, which turn into hopes by the time we hit high school. These hopes form the basis of goals when we embark on the university journey, and by the time we start our first job they’ve usually evolved into a checklist.
When I was a child I had dreams of being a doctor, or a politician, or a singer, or a Mickey Mouse Club Mouseketeer. By high-school, I had taken to idolizing the Mousketeers, but I realized I couldn’t be one…it just wasn’t going to happen. I was not a blond-haired, blue-eyed beauty queen wannabe from a small town in Texas, Arkansas or Louisiana…and I didn’t have a single parent bussing me around the American countryside to audition for everything and the Cat’s Pyjamas! So I studied subjects that would help me fulfil my hopes of becoming a doctor. By this point all my family and their family had caught onto this dream and harboured and nurtured and fed it every chance they got. I thrived on the idea of helping people and said the things everyone wanted to hear. School was never a struggle, but perhaps if I had taken subjects that I was passionate about, I may have been more inspired to study harder. Instead, I just plodded along and most of high school, as enjoyable as it was, is now a vague and distant memory.
I didn’t get into medical school because of a quota system to regulate the opportunity in a once apartheid-ruled state. So I took the next best thing – Biomedical Science. A year of plants, plants and more plants…NOT EXACTLY what I had in mind! After failing my Chemistry theory exam miserably (17%) to be exact, I decided to opt for laziness and went the route of a private party college, 3 hours of lectures a day…and completed my B.Com in Applied Economics.
Then I went to London for two amazing years but had to return to sunny (did I mention I hate the sun) South Africa thanks once again to the fact that I was born in this once apartheid-ruled state and I have no British ancestry.
After a few years of Marketing Communications, which I found frightfully enjoyable, I am now a Research Executive...go figure!
So now I am 27. A researcher, not a doctor. I still love to sing, but alas after 3 Idols appearances still not a famous singer. Where I once had dreams of being a beautiful bride at my winter wonderland white wedding at 27, I don’t even know one guy I would consider spending forever with (forever is a LOOOOOONG time). I don’t drive a Matte black BMW X5 with titanium spinners and blacked out windows. And I don’t live on a palatial estate with 15 bedrooms and a grass tennis court for a lawn in Kent.
So it begs the question, do there exist people in this strange world of ours whose lives turn out exactly as they planned? And if so, how do they do it? And if not, well…life is a funny thing, isn’t it?
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