Remeeting your Kid Self

How did you envision your adult life back when you were a little kid? How does your current life match (or not match) what you envisioned?

Back when I was a kid, I always envisioned being focused on my career when I was older. I wanted to be a psychologist, have my doctorate degree, and teach at a university as well as have a private practice. A fallback position would be to teach at a university and do research instead of have a private practice. I didn’t want to get married, and I didn’t want to have kids.

And here I am. I have a master’s degree (no doctorate), don’t work in the psychology field at all, am married, have a child, and have never taught. If you look at what I envisioned versus how I have fared thus far, it doesn’t feel like I’ve come anywhere close to fulfilling my dreams.

It’s okay though. I LIKE my life. Most of the time, I love my life. It’s a more stressful life now that I’m a mother (the worry seems to be neverending), but I still love it.

I think my disdain for the concept of marriage is one of the things that attracts men. Really. I’m not sure why I was so opposed to marriage growing up; maybe I was just cynical after seeing my mother and father divorce. My life premise was that I’d rather be alone than married to an idiot. I didn’t want to cater to someone else, pick up after someone, and do the 50s housewife thing. That wasn’t me. Then there’s the fundamental issue of trust. I trust very, very few people. Most people are flakey, not self-sufficient, irresponsible, and don’t follow through on their promises. There was little to no hope that a guy could get through all of my barriers and on top of that be smart. I don’t like to hang around people who are stupid. Please don’t take offense because if I hang around you, I think you’re smart. Even as a little kid, I knew this package of qualities was a tall order, and I knew I didn’t want to compromise. At all. I wanted my version of perfection. Since I knew I wouldn’t be able to find my version of perfection, I knew I’d casually date but ultimately never find “the one” and instead should focus on my career.

There is definitely something to having a disinterest in long-term relationships and marriage that does intrigue men. It’s likely the hard to get “thing.” Or maybe it was that I just was never very close to females growing up, so I had a much easier time interacting with men. Girls were always more difficult to have a friendship with. They were more emotionally needy, full of drama vs. guys, who you could just watch movies with in silence or play video games with. And when the right person comes along, then it seems stupid to let my version of perfection get away. I doubted that I ever would have found it again.

I realized early on in college that perhaps psychology wasn’t my thing if I didn’t like emotionally needy people. I do enjoy listening to people, but when they go on and on about the same stuff over and over, or when the sheer volume of other people’s problems weighs you down, then perhaps it’s not a wise career choice. It was good I took an internship in college at the crisis center, where I could learn first-hand that I just didn’t have it in me to do psychology for the rest of the life. That’s why I went back for a degree in business. Give me something tangible to do. Let me analyze profit and loss statements, create a cohesive business strategy, or calculate how much you need to pay off your debts. That I can do.

I like what I do now. Sure, my dream job is working at Vanguard, synthesizing client data into cool reports. But I kind of do something similar, just in a different field. Plus I like all the time off in my job; I doubt Vanguard would give that much time off. So all is good.

As for not having a doctorate, I’m not sure what I’d even get it in. The things I’m interested in are personal savings habits, microeconomics, that sort of thing. I don’t think there are any doctorates that really focus in that direction. Plus, it’s just not right to go for something just for the status of it. A master’s in financial planning actually targeted what I really wanted to obtain more knowledge about. So, again, it’s okay.

As for teaching, I have been told that I have the qualifications to teach part-time at a community college. I actually would like it, but it doesn’t really mesh well with working full-time and having a toddler. And I heard it pays really, really crappy, so it’s not worth it until Julia’s older and more self-sufficient anyway. Thus, it’s okay.

Yes, I was never really one who was itching to be a mother. Some people know it’s in their destiny. I was always the one who was reluctant about it. So much responsibility, I have horrible genetics, I’m not a mother “type,” and the list of excuses went on and on. As mothers go, I know I could be better (more patient, more nurturing—I’m not the type to fawn over a kid, I’m more the type to say, “get up, you’re fine, try it again”). I could also be much, much worse. You won’t ever see me with a whole carful of kids though.

So I sit here and try to think what I as a kid would have thought of my current life. I think a young me would like it. I think she would approve, but she would want me to push myself more. She might think I’m too complacent with some parts of my life. Particularly my work. It’s hard to argue with her. I have been pretty complacent in that area of my life. I do my job, and most days I think I do it well, but I get so dejected by the real and imagined obstacles that I have gotten complacent. I don’t want to be complacent.