Today is my best friend from high school's 30th birthday. We've known each other for 16 years at this point (or thereabouts - I can't remember when we actually met!), and it's kind of thrown things into perspective about how far we have come.
16 years ago, I could never have foreseen the life that I'm living now. Being 14, I imagined all sorts of difference scenarios and pipe dreams. I had an inkling that I'd be married with kids, but I also had the naive mindset that I'd have all my baby making done by the time I was 25 so I could be 30 and involved in a career. What career, I honestly can't remember. Pretty sure when I was in grade 9 I had no clue what I wanted to be when I grew up, as opposed to above-mentioned best friend who has known she wanted to be a doctor since she was a tiny human.
I digress.
Once we graduated high school, we both went off to Ottawa for university. She was going towards her B.Sc. in order to get into med school at University of Ottawa, whereas I was at Carleton University pursuing a degree in Film Studies of all things. For some reason, that just sounded a lot better than a general Arts degree, but in Canada they're equally as useless. Or rather, mine would have been useless. I got the big idea in my head that I would be a film producer - yes, in Canada - and then didn't really put 2 + 2 together when I was failing Economics that perhaps both of those would be needed to be a producer.
Best Friend completed her first year of university in Ottawa, only to find out that they only let like 6 out-of-province students into the medical program each year. Even if her grades were amazing, the chances of her getting in were very slim because of this. So she decided to move back to Saskatoon (where we had met) and go to the University of Saskatchewan instead, even though it set her back a year because her credits didn't transfer over right.
Anyway, in 2015 she's now a second year resident. And where am I? I never went back to university because it was too expensive and I didn't know what I wanted to take. Now that I'm 30, I STILL don't know what I would take because want and need are two different things. Not to mention there's no way that we could afford for me to go to school plus not be working plus put two kids in daycare. Yes, there are night classes, but it's 8pm and I'm ready to go to sleep. There's no way I'd make it through night classes.
I guess the point of this whole post was that who would have imagined that 16 years after meeting, not only would we still be good friends but she's a doctor and I'm a stay at home mom. When I put it that way, it makes me feel inadequate. Yes, I went to a business college and got a diploma in Accounting, but I did diddly squat with that. And the only reason I took accounting was because I thought it would be the most practical diploma to have - make me more diverse in office knowledge. But the shitty part is that no company will hire someone to do their accounts or accounting (the parts not requiring a CGA) if they have no experience. I can talk about how quickly I pick up on things or how competant I am with computers until I'm blue in the face - if my resume doesn't say "5 years experience", they just don't care.
Further to this, though, is that I don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Ideally, it'd be payroll or human resources... but both of those fields require more education AND experience to get the job. So... it's a fucking catch-22.
I think I'm going to call it a day on this post. I'm getting bummed out at the fact that I'm 30 with no forward motion career-wise.
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