Dawn Wentzell

Am I Doing This All Wrong?

Posted on January 10th, 2010 in miscellaneous

Last week, my twitter friend Andrew Norcross and several others launched Untemplater, a site encouraging GenY’ers* to shake up their lives and do what they want.

I’m slightly insulted by their use of the GenY label, as — technically — I’m GenX, and the advice still applies to me. I’ll just pretend they write GenX as well

I downloaded and read their manifesto, and was immediately struck with the thought, “I’m doing it wrong.”

What, exactly? Well, life. Here were a bunch of young people, all in very different stages of their lives, who had shrugged off society’s norms, and decided to live their lives exactly as they wanted.

I….am not. Well, not exactly. See, I got very caught up in what I was supposed to be doing. I went with the flow, took the path of least resistence, and did what most people do. I pursued the career, bought a house, acquired the stuff.

I wanted it all at the time, but now – not so much. I began to feel trapped. I enjoyed the things I did and the things I had, but they didn’t fulfill me. I wanted more.

I’d look at the life my sister is living, and be jealous of her free spirit. She carries her life in a backpack, and travels where she wants, when she wants. She’s spent winters on the beaches of Thailand, she traveled around India for 3 months, she cooked for roadies at music festivals around Europe for a while. Back in North America now, she roams the warmer parts of the continent; she’s picked fruit in BC’s Fraser Valley, she lived with circus people in Oakland, she lived in a car while she helped build houses for Katrina victims in New Orleans.

Of course, that’s not really the life I want, either. I like having roots, having a place I know I can go to be safe, and warm, and sheltered. And I really do like some of my stuff.

But I want to see more of the world, as well. I want to experience different cultures, live in different cities, eat strange food. I’ve been working, quietly, for the last year or so on getting to a point where I feel I have more freedom in my life.

I’ll be honest, I had ulteriour motives for wanting to work for Outspoken Media, and this job fits very well into my ultimate (although roughly sketched out) plan. I wanted to be able to learn from some of the best in SEO and social media, to catapult me ahead in my career. And there’s no better way to learn than working along-side them.

I also didn’t want to be tied to a specific location forever. I love living Guelph, but sometimes I hate living here, too. I want to try living in other cities around the world. So the fact that my bosses all live in different cities and work virtually with each other was very appealing. Whether I get the opportunity to relocate while with OSM, or later, is yet to be seen. (Note to my bosses: I have no plans to move in the near future!)

So no, I’m not doing it wrong. I’m just doing it in my own time. I have things in my life that have to be managed – from my mortgage, to my debt, to my career, and that pile of un-read books under my bed. I just have to make sure to keep my goals in mind, and not become quite so comfortable with the status quo like I once did.