What am I doing with my life? Part 3

I am not a person to make plans. I mean, I'm an INFJ and yes I prefer to know where and when I'll be hanging out well in advance, but I don't run my life by plans. I'm a passive person and I like to sort of let things happen to me, things tend to work out like that. Other people seem to have direction and ambition; I just sort of float around. I tend take my life one "chunk" at at time: in high school, I didn't think beyond college. In college, I didn't think beyond moving to Stockholm to be with my boyfriend. Turns out that necessitated a move to Korea, and now that I'm in Korea, I'm trying to figure out what the next chunk is.

I've been dating my boyfriend for a while now, about six years. I definitely want to spend my life with him, I'm not suffering from cold feet. But...I really like Korea. My job here is pretty easy and fun (most of the time), it's very easy to save money, and honestly I like puttering around on my own. Being a grown-up in Korea is surprisingly easy. Additionally, I've made a few friends here that I will miss when I go home. I'd like to have more than one year with them. (It's hard for me to make friends, but once I do, they're really important.) I'm running out of time here in Korea, and the pressing question just becomes even more important: what am I going to do when I go home?

Part of me wants to go back home, work my old job, lose some weight (vanity!), visit my boyfriend, and then come back Korea in 2011. I've taken to Korean culture pretty easily (like a fish to water, or more appropriately, a Russian to vodka). Plus, as a weigukin, I could rock graduate school for an obscenely little amount of money. Not that I've ever been particularly enthusiastic about graduate school, but much like Jaclyn, I feel that as a "smart kid" I'm obligated to collect degrees like Girl Scout badges. At the least, I'd like to take some Korean classes.

At the same time, despite all my fun here, I miss my boyfriend. I know he misses me, too—to be honest, he's probably the one worse off during my contract. And while we've spent most of our relationship on different continents, I feel like one more year in Korea would be an unbearable strain on our relationship.

Unfortunately, he would be hard pressed to get a job here in Korea. You need a four-year degree to teach here, and he never went to university. And there's not much else for white people who don't speak Korean to do here, it's pretty much just teaching or military.

So I have before me: move to Stockholm, stay in Korea. Not counting my love affair with Indonesia, or flights of fantasy I have from time to time, where I spend a year or two just idling around with college friends in a new city back home. There's so much in life to do, it's impossible for me to pick.

What am I doing with my life? Part II

Graduate school, huh? Huh. Well here's the thing (and yes I overuse that phrase): my husband and a few friends are going to graduate school in the fall. Also, news flash: though I may have ADD and I may not always come off as very "with it," I'm not dumb. Being married to an engineer can make someone with an art degree a little territorial about brains and talent. Joke though we may, we BFAs have plenty of intelligence, we just didn't choose to major in math or science when we went off to school. But I digress.

I feel somewhat entitled to a higher degree, as if being gifted obligates me to earn as many academic achievements as I can. The thing is (see?) I like what I do. I don't want to give up a ton of time and money, cut back my hours at work, not audition for the symphony, and all that just to get a graduate degree in something else I'm not sure about. Because really, who of my close friends can really say I was sure about majoring in painting?

So as I sift through the options (I live in a major city -- there are many) and try to decide between Non-Profit Management, Sociology, Social Work, or Creative Writing & Publication Arts, I wonder: what's the point? What am I trying to accomplish here? Am I honestly just trying to use up my $10K AmeriCorps education award?

I feel like in your 30s you either raise children or find your calling. My hope is I can do both, and not alone. Another secret: introverted me really wants to go through life with a nice little group of friends, chasing (finding? just making up?) our dreams and weaving a crazy extended family. Given these admittedly pretty weird life goals, what do I see myself doing with my education monies and my mid-to-late 20s? Am I working for a performing arts organization? Am I at my current job and auditioning for the symphony? Am I starting a business? Moving to the country and starting an intentional community? Still living in the city, stubbornly raising children there to disprove the naysayers who said "oh, you say you won't, but you'll leave by the time those kids turn two"?

I have this feeling really awesome things are in store for me, I just can't for the life of me figure out what they are. Of course I just need to wait and see, but how much should I be waiting vs. actively moving forward? At what point am I just kidding myself, making believe that there's more to life than this? That I'm going to find something to do every day that's just so RIGHT I can barely contain my joy? Everyday happiness and contentment can make me so complacent, what is it going to take for me to risk upsetting the balance?