Would I change my path if I could?

Sometimes I sit alone and wonder about what could have been, about what could have changed or been done differently.  I found myself where I am by following the path of least resistance.  I didn’t know what I wanted to do after high school, so I took some scholarship and loan money to go to college.  I didn’t have a post-college plan, but I didn’t know what else to do, so putting the decision off for four more years was easier.  I chose a pretty not-outstanding major as far as jobs go because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do by my sophomore year.  That’s why, instead of picking anything practical, I picked what was interesting.  Everyone said I’d find out what I wanted to do when I got to college.  They lied to me.

Then came time to graduate from college, and the only exit plan I had come up with was “steal crap on my way out.”  It turns out that dry erase markers couldn’t pay off my student loans, however, so it was back to the drawing board.  Still no idea what to do, I kept going on the path of least resistance.  Library school.  Sure, what the hell, why not?  It didn’t seem like a hard job, I liked reading and libraries, and I didn’t know what else to do.  If I didn’t have such a horrific, paranoid fear of bugs, I honestly would have just been homeless by choice.  That’s how much I had no idea what to do.  Instead I chose library school, again doing the easy thing.

What if I’d done something different?  I still wonder what my life would be like—if I’d actually have one—if only I ever really wanted to do anything in particular.  If, instead of throwing a dart when I had to make a decision, I had been really into the idea of being a plumber, or dentist, or ninja.  If at any point in my life I would have had some burning passion.  Instead, I identify very much with the protagonist from Office Space.  We were supposed to imagine what we’d do if we could do anything we wanted for the rest of our lives, and that was supposed to be our career choice.  The problem is, there’s just nothing we wanted to do all of our lives. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do want to be a librarian.  I’ve enjoyed the work so far.  There are some parts I want to leave behind, and some parts I need to leave behind, and hopefully one day I’ll get the kind of library job I want so I’ll be able to.  But I do want to be a librarian.

But what if there had been a real passion in my life?  What if I were one of those kids who wanted to be a veterinarian from the age of 5 and worked my whole life with that goal in mind?  What if I swam against the current that took me to library school and ended up anywhere else?

The only problem is, even now when I try to imagine it, I can’t think of what that other path could possibly be.  The truth is, I never did have an interest in being a plumber or an exotic dancer.  What good is it to ask myself what I would have done differently when I still can’t even imagine how?  Even now I don’t know what my other option could possibly have been.  If I could hit reset and live it over again, I can’t imagine what I’d do instead of this.  

I guess it doesn’t help to imagine anyway.  After all, I’m a librarian.  I’m a librarian, writing this future blog post at 9:20 PM on a Monday, October 29^th, wrapped in a blanket despite being a little too warm, while avoiding grading some essays.  Just like I was always going to be.  And then in a few weeks or maybe over a month, I’ll post this. Whenever I do it, it’ll be when it was always going to happen.  There were different outcomes possible, but none of them were ever going to happen.  It may not be true that anything is meant to be, but everything that happens will be the only way it was ever going to happen.

I’ll never know what my other options were, and I was always going to be a hopeless, failed librarian.