I've always known myself to be a very ambitious person. The only problem is that I'm ambitious in more ways than one. This results in conflicts of interests. As the saying goes, you can't have everything.
In my case, I always thought I would go back to school to get a Masters or MBA. I also always wanted to advance my career as fast as possible. Oh, and that's the goal of getting married and starting a family fairly young (~3 years?). There are people out there that juggle all of these things at the same time. I just don't see how I could do it.
Everything conflicts with each other. Going back to school makes you take time off from work. If you think about doing school part-time, it's difficult to find a university with a good part-time program that's worth getting a degree from. Maybe that doesn't matter, if you're just going for the piece of paper that says M.B.A. or M.S. but if you are going for the highest quality education you can find, I think you have to commit yourself full-time. And for me, I would want to go to the best school I could get into. If I start a family too soon, I will want to have a very good work-life balance to raise my child. This results in being seen as one of those people who don't put in those extra hours of work to get ahead. It's silly but it's true. People who work more hours are often seen as more dedicated than those who clock in at 9 a.m. and out at 5 p.m. And if I don't have enough time to do more work, I certainly won't have enough time to go to school. I've stressed about this kind of stuff ever since I graduated. It'll be really interesting to see how everything pans out.
I came across the blog linked and I thought I would give it a show to help me to put things into perspective. I know what's most important to me and everything else is icing on the cake. However in doing the exercise for about 10 minutes, I got writer's block. But I guess I'll use this blog to keep a running list of my (possible) life purposes:
What is my true life's purpose?
- make money
- start a family
- become rich
- support my family
- take care of my parents
- take care of my family/relatives
- have kids
- teach my kids
- raise good kids
- have kids not worry about money
- bring joy to those i love
- spark a idea
- keep my family happy
- keep my family close
- see my grandchildren
- love and raise my family
- fix the bad things that happen to those I love
- get rest
- create something new