What should I do with my life?

“I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all.”

-Leo C. Rosten 

What do you want to be when you grow up? Who would have every thought that would be such a hard question to answer? People have been asking me that question since I was about 5-years-old. My answer constantly changes but lately I’ve been feeling more pressured than ever to pick a career path. It’s almost time to start applying for grad school. I know what I want to do with my life I just don’t know how to go about it. I want to help people. I want to change their lives--make people feel safe and loved and happy. I want to talk to people. I want to appreciate all the beautiful people and things in this world. And I want to be loud about it. I want to share with people and have people share with me. I want to empower and inspire people. I want to be an advocate for myself and for others. I want to educate people. I also want to hug lots of people. 

This is starting to sound like a children’s book. Which is something else I want to do—write children’s books.

 I’ve been pretty set on finding social work masters programs for graduate school. I’m not 100% sure but that’s what makes the most sense to me right now. In my research, I found that you could possibly be a counselor with a Masters of Social Work. Counseling is along the lines of what I wanted to do during my senior year of high school and when I first got to college. I wanted to be a psychiatrist because I wanted to talk to people so that I could help them. At the same time, I wanted so much more than that so I changed my career paths a few dozen times after that. 

I’m stuck on Social Work programs because they pretty closely match what I want to do. If you take all the mushiness out of dream job description, it pretty much screams something that sounds like social work, community development, non-profit work, or something like that. I just don’t know what but I social work seems like a great place to start. The only thing is, I look at many of the programs and their subprograms and concentrations and nothing really ever jumps out at me. It also just seems like they narrow it down so that you have to do one thing for the rest of your life. Why pay so much money just for one career option? I want many options. I want to do many things. I’m determined to touch many lives and I don’t think a narrowed focus in one field will help me with that but I don’t want to not miss out on any chance I can get to help people and I know in this day and age I need some kind of degree on my wall for me to be allowed to help anyone. I guess I’m looking for something with my exact description but since that won’t happen, I guess I’m feeling pretty lost. That really only means that I need to do some more research. Any suggestions?