At the age of 5, I began the Monday to Friday commitment known as kindergarten. I was ready for the world – with my thick Coke-bottle glasses, checkered suspenders and bowl cut.
Since those fateful fall days back in 1998, I have followed the path I was “supposed to”. It was school, summer camps, more school, enrichment programs, more school, leadership conferences, university, and then straight into the “real world” of work. It wasn’t any one person who told me this is what I had to do, but a society where following the rules is seen with admiration.
For me, this following of the rules has created a lot of self-worth over my past 22 years. Excel in school, do all the extracurricular activities, go to university, get a job with a good salary that you are passionate about. Check, check, check, and check. But can you help me understand why? Because I am having a hard time remembering the justification my 5-year-old self was told sitting cross-legged on the carpet at Boundary Elementary.
I’ve tried to stick to these societal rules as best as I could but have found cracks in this Monday to Friday life over the last 22 years. I’ve attempted to start my own companies while in school, spent ridiculous summers bouncing around East Africa and North America, created my dream job in West Africa, and ran my way through beautiful unknown places with my sweat-soaked backpack. But there has always been a life to come back to – these adventures forming but a blip on the schedule of a Monday to Friday existence.
But why? Who told bowl cut suspender wearing me in 1998 that I was supposed to spend my life being productive Monday to Friday for the next 50 or 60 years?
So, it’s time for a change.
Rather than one job, I am building a portfolio of projects I am passionate about, projects that allow me to work and live a more meaningful, intentional day-to-day. This will include starting my own organization dedicated to building nutritious low-cost food systems, but will also allow space to support friends doing important work who could use my help, space for creativity, and importantly space to stop for human interactions. I want to sit with my grandfather and research our family history, stop to help push cars out of snowbanks, and simply stop to look up at the world and take a couple deep breaths.
I’ve decided enough is enough, I want to go back to being that dream-filled 4-year-old who hasn’t yet been told how life is ‘supposed to work”. I am defining success not by money earned or meetings held, but my impact created, and human relationships nourished.
Do you have good recommendations for cool checkered suspenders or bowl-cut hairdressers? I am ready to get back to my child-like wonder.
A World Of Oysters 