still none the wiser

I'm 26 and I have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. I realize that it's normal not to know exactly how you want your life to turn out, the path your career is going to take and where you will finally settle down. But my life is so up in the air that I don't even know which planet it will finally land on. I studied PR, thinking that fashion PR would be my dream industry to work in, that I was going to live this fabulous life filled with parties and clothes and luxurious trips. Then I worked at a PR agency, a rather terrible agency as it turns out, and that experience just made me swear off PR altogether. A mistake perhaps, not all agencies are the same, and PR can be done in many ways. Doing PR for something that you're actually passionate about is very different from just doing PR for some random company whose products you really wouldn't buy yourself if given the option.

So after spending a significant amount of time and far too much money in my strive towards becoming a successful PR executive, I completely changed paths, moved back to Sweden from London and started working at an embassy in Stockholm. I wanted to do something more meaningful with my life, I mean there must be more to life than parties and fashion, right? So I thought I would apply to the diplomat program att the Ministry for Foreign Affairs here in Sweden. If I get accepted, I will have to spend at least three years in Stockholm before I can even think of going abroad. Now, only a few months after my decision to put all my efforts into getting accepted to the program, I'm beginning to reconsider.

Can I really stay in this country that long? When I was living in London I missed Sweden a great deal, I missed the higher standards of living, the cleaner streets, the architecture with buildings that weren't falling apart. But it seems as though I definitely appreciate Sweden a lot more when I'm not actually living here. It is nice and all, it has all those things that I missed. But it also has a lot of sides that I just kind of forgot, aspects that I don't particularly appreciate.

I live in Stockholm, Sweden's capital and biggest city. And when I walk down the streets, they're empty. Perhaps not the main shopping street, it's always very busy, but also incredibly ugly. I try to keep as far away from it as possible, except when I have some serious shopping to do. In Stockholm's defence, people do tend to stay indoors when the cold winds are blowing, and they certainly have been for a while now. It's grey, it's cold, it's windy. It's excruciatingly depressing.

So what do I want to do? That I still don't know. If I could choose, I would be a full time writer, hence the blog, but odds are that that will remain just a dream. I have no experience, and frankly I'm just not good enough. At least not yet. Here's my plan:

New York City, the city of cities, the place I have always dreamed of, the ultimate city where I was destined to end up. A city that sucks you in, captivates you, begs you to stay. A city where you feel that you're part of something greater, you're invisible, you're anonymous, yet you feel like you're starring in a movie. Because New York looks just the same in real life as it does in the movies. Breathtaking, majestic, enchanting. I have no choice, my entire being is filled with a desire to move there, to live the Manhattan life.

So I will keep blogging, I will do my very best to improve my writing, to find my own style, my own niche. Then when I go to visit my friend Misha in Boston in August, I will also travel down to New York for a few days. I will job hunt, I will track down every single company that might be willing to do the paperwork to get me a work visa, I will show them my (vastly improved) blog, which will showcase my amazing potential that they just cannot resist. They will realize that with some more experience, which I will gain from working for them, perhaps for a lower salary for a couple of months, I could shine as the star I was meant to be and that they would be fools not to hire me.

That is my grand plan. Do I believe in it? Not really. I want to, I really do, but I'm not sure if I believe that dreams really do come true. On the other hand, when you think about it, I really have gotten pretty much everything I wanted in life. I've had no major setbacks, except for the depressingly humiliating five months that I was unemployed last year before I found the job that I currently hate. I've never really had to fight hard for anything, it has always just kind of come my way, although I have to add, not completely undeservingly. This time around, however, it seems as thought I might have to fight a little harder. And I definitely need to be sure that this is really what I want, because once it happens, there's no going back. I can't keep going back and forth, I need to stay at least for a few years and establish a career.

I know that some people, or should I say one person, don't want me to go. She would probably do anything to keep me from going. For serveral reasons, I guess. For selfish reasons, such as wanting me close by, even though we're not actually living in the same city right now. For unselfish reasons, such as wanting me to establish a career, settle down, be a grown up, live life the way society wants me to. And it's not that I don't want to settle down, I do. But living in New York has been a dream of mine for such a long time that I can't even remember a time when it wasn't. And not doing something that I want to do, never knowing what it would have been like, not taking the opportunities given to me, missing out - those things scare me shitless. Even though a part of me wants to just save up enough money to buy an apartment here in Stockholm, settle down and be the grown-up that I'm supposed to be, a far bigger part of me panics at the thought of never trying out life in the big city. Of never knowing what would have happened if I tried.

So I guess that no matter what other people think, I need to do what my gut tells me. Because no one else will have to live with the constant stomach ache that is left as a reminder of what could have been. No one but me.