D is for dream

Confucius apparently said, "Choose a job you love, and you'll never have to work a day in your life." Who would've thought that would become my dream? For the longest time, I didn't even realise that was my dream -- I thought my dream was to be a journalist.

But why did I want to be a journalist? Because I loved to write, because I knew I could write. In the midst of my very nerdy, bookwormish, slightly awkward teenage life, this was the one thing that stood out. Nobody ever encouraged me to write, but nobody told me I shouldn't, either. I wrote unceasingly -- not made-up stories, but stories about my life. I sent reams of letters to penpals all around the globe, and got frustrated when replies weren't forthcoming in a timely manner. I never found anyone who would write as much, and as frequently, as I did. Ever.

And there was the poetry. Startlingly bad poetry, which still makes me cringe to think of it. I'm sure every writer has stuff like that, bits of work you can't bear to throw away because they're something you wrote, part of your history, something you know you'll never be able to replicate if you were to get rid of it -- but that you fervently hope will never see the light of day!

Anyway. So I wanted to be a journalist, and I became a journalist, never mind the bumps along the way (like deciding to study law in university). And journalism was fun. It was easy. It was exciting. I was living my dream, or so I thought.

Until I realised it wasn't my dream any longer. I became restless. The work wasn't fulfilling. I wondered what the problem was. Was it me? Do I simply get bored too easily? What if I were to try something else and didn't like it, either? What would I do after that? Would I keep hopping from job to job? Should I just stick it out regardless of what I feel?

Driven by my real dream, the dream of doing something I love, I finally decided to try teaching. How I came to consider teaching is a whole other story, too long to get into here; but I can tell you that I never, in a million years, would ever have thought I'd be a teacher one day. If you had told me, ten years ago, that I would be a teacher today, I would have thought you were mad!

Yet I am a teacher, and at the end of my first semester of teaching, when my principal came to the classroom and sat through the lesson, watching me teach, evaluating my work, he told me, "You're a natural in the classroom." I was gobsmacked!

When something is right, it just is right. I can't explain it, I don't understand it, I have no idea how this happened, but teaching is right for me. Within a year I was telling friends that I could see myself teaching for the rest of my life, which is a HUGE thing. It's so ironic that the job I thought would be perfect for me, wasn't, and the job I never saw myself doing, is.

So now I've achieved my dream and I don't know what to do with myself! What do you do when you already have the biggest, most important thing you ever wanted? I mean, I still hope to meet and fall in love with a great guy one day, and get married and hopefully, have a family, but I can't do anything to make that happen. (Sing with me: "You can't hurry love, no, you just have to wait...") Barring that, I don't have anything to work towards now. I completed my Masters in 2012 and don't particularly want to do a PhD (*shudder*), so what's next? What's next? Can one be happy, yet slightly restless at the same time? Humans, never satisfied... lol. I need a new dream!