Having a Fifth-Life Crisis

Hey guys!

Ok so in case you’re confused by the title I don’t mean that I’ve been reincarnated loads or something and am now having a crisis in my 5^th life. I guess that would be cool but also weird. And if I could choose, I'd be reincarnated as a meerkat or something cause that seems like it'd be kinda fun. ANYWAY, what I mean is that I feel as if I’m having a mid-life crisis but at 17, I think (or at least I hope) a fifth-life crisis is more accurate, because I'm about a fifth of the way through my life. Yeah, doesn’t quite have the same ring does it?

(Ok so this is a pretty cringy selfie thing, but just thought the post looked a bit bare with no pictures. This is my 'omg what am I doing with my life' face.)

This year will be my last at secondary school which is exciting but also scary. I feel as if I can’t wait to go out and live my life but at the same time I feel about as independent as a 12 year old. However, whether I’m ready or not the time will soon come to venture into the big wide world as an adult (or at least legally an adult, possibly not mentally). So, I have a pretty huge decision to make… WHAT DO I WANT TO DO WITH MY LIFE? 

It seems crazy that at 17 I have to decide how I want the rest of my life to turn out. Ok, I know that I can always change my mind and change career and change my name (not that I think I’d ever need to do that) but really? What I choose to do after school will shape the rest of my life. One thing that annoys me in Ireland is how everybody assumes you’re going to college. And there’s never any choice with the Leaving Cert (i.e your last really really important school exam) , like you don’t actually have to do it but you’re pretty much taught that if you don’t finish school you won’t go to college and you won’t get a job and you won’t be happy and then YOU'LL DIE. By the way when I say college I mean university, cause I know in the UK it means something else.

However I do want to go to college. I’m not sure what I want to do there yet but I definitely want to go. I know that I want to do something science-y because chemistry, biology and maths are my favourite subjects in school so it would make sense. At the moment pharmacy is top of my list but it’s not like my one big passion and dream to become a pharmacist, it’s just what I can most easily see myself doing.

And then there’s where to go to college. There is a good university near where I live but I don’t really want to stay in my home town. Eighteen years of living here and now I just want to see new places and experience new things. Also I’d like to move out of home and see what it’s like living independently of my parents. There are other universities in Ireland I’d like to go to but right now I’m really set on Scotland. I’ve never even been to Scotland but lots of Irish students go there and it would be really cool to live in a different country for a while (even though Scotland’s probably the country most like Ireland in the entire world)

I think that this is A LOT of stuff for me to be figuring out right now. What if I hate what I choose to study? What if I decide I want a completely different career path? What if I’m unhappy? WHAT IF I MAKE BAD CHOICES?

So in case you haven’t guessed by now, I can get pretty stressed out. But when you think about it, you literally have this one life that you can make really exciting and fun or just average and safe and it’s all up to you, like that is scary.  I’ve only started thinking about this recently and it’s impossible to un-think it. So, sorry if I’ve made you start questioning your existence now..

I know this is really different from my usual posts but I don’t want to restrict myself to just beauty stuff, I want to write about stuff that’s actually happening in my life.

To end this I guess I can just say YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE so do what makes you happy (I'm being ironic, k?)

Catriona xo