I enlisted with the Navy.  I spent a few years spinning my wheels in and out of college and I was at the point that I needed to make a decision about my career path, and I didn't know where to go.  I don't know what initially sparked the idea, but when I looked at the benefits, it was everything I needed.  Skills, discipline, paycheck, travel, and experience, all of which I sorely lacked.  I feel like now I'm realizing my potential, working harder than ever before.  Even if I end up pursuing a whole new line of work when I get out (something not electronic or power plant related), I'll have realized of what I'm truly capable.

I'm on a highly secret space ship mission to a distant star system where they found an earth-like planet. I've been on the ship for 5 years now and we just passed Mars last month. We are scheduled to arrive at the star SH8346G in 150 years.

cool.  I'll see you there.  I'm stationed there now.

This may sound cheesy but I have enjoyed reading these. haven't been able to read through life stories anywhere else on the web. hopefully this will be interesting at the very least

i talked to alot of people who let themselves get pushed into things (by their parents or just by their own sense of 'that's what you do' or whatever), and it always sounded like such lame crap and you're got to work things out first. not worth getting in debt and digging yourself into things.

Same happened to this fellow; it's pretty much true. It's a stupid social pressure. "follow ur dreams but goto college frist!!"

After I graduated college I stayed in town for the summer and worked facilities/carpentry for the same school and ran into one of my old teachers, he quipped in his own deadpan and gross way "hey didn't you graduate" and it pretty much angered me so I replied in a way I shouldn't have, but that's all done and it felt good at the time. so like graduating high school and pushing you to the generally considered "next level" apparently you're supposed to have a job with a corner office just months after you get your college diploma (or go to graduate school etc.). In a related note, I was an English major so everybody, EVERYBODY, asks you if you're going to be a teacher. Hated it so much I didn't consider the possibility.

I am trying to build a steady-paying career as an actor. Stage, film, voiceover, it doesn't matter. I just like getting involved with productions, it's a very useful emotional release, and you meet people. Sure I will dress up as a celery or bottle of pepto and sing you a song. I take a lot of enjoyment from people laughing because of something I did, so it's a little natural to do get into performing. Only thing is I didn't consider it as a serious career until last year of college, so it all feels wasted in that sense.

Tried to open my own theatre up in south dakota because I was at odds with a community theatre there and their shows sucked (I let them know it too) but everyone loved them. Celebrations of mediocrity are the worst. Long story short the theater didn't work out. This was all while doing other shows, training, and working fulltime! It was a very busy summer. The temp job ended and bills started take over so I had to move to Houston and now I assistant manage a fitness center in the morning and audition in the afternoons/evening. Been in a couple of nonpaying indie films but haven't had any luck so far getting bigger roles anywhere.

Also took part in a couple of open-mic stand up comic sessions at random bars here and was kicked out first round of a stand up competition since I've been here. I guess if I wanted to win I would have been dirty or racy or whatever but I agree with groucho that "real comedians are clean and funny." It was a fun deal nonetheless.

I'm about to finish my second year of university (university of applied sciences would be the official term, it's a little bit different but i don't know if any other countries have the same system we have here in Finland) studying computing which includes everything from local networks and servers to coding to visual design/multimedia and pretty much anything computer related. I have mixed feelings about my university because a lot of the courses are ridiculously basic and easy and I'm afraid that after I graduate, I might not have the requisites to get a good job. It's a difficult situation because I'm still not completely sure what I want to major in or what I really want to do! And it's a problem for me because I'm pretty lazy and I don't get easily motivated if I don't find something I really want to do, which is really one of the reasons why I'm studying computing in university even though I could probably learn faster on my own. By going to university I'm forcing myself to try different things I would normally be too lazy to do and hopefully I'll find something I really enjoy doing. I actually worked as network administration for 8 months last year and that's one thing I definitely could see myself getting more into because depending on where you work it can be a pretty versatile and challenging job. But anyway, another thing which irks me about my university is that I have to take a lot of business courses as well and it's just not really my thing. The courses aren't too difficult for me but there's so much work and so many projects involved that the amount of work I have to do for something I don't really have interest in is pretty ridiculous.

I don't want to quit though because if I did, I wouldn't really know what I'd like to do instead and my current university isn't competely bad, I do enjoy being there. The challenging courses are a lot of fun and starting next fall, there won't be anymore mandatory business courses which is great because then I can focus on the courses I'm interested in. The downside is that I have failed like 10 business courses due to lack of motivation or being too busy so unfortunately I still need to retake those. I have been working full-time for this whole year as well as studying at the same time and it's been pretty tough, at one point I pretty much studied and worked from 8-9 am to 10-11 pm every weekday and I had to spend weekends on school projects and other unfinished homework and it was really tiresome. I kept that up for almost 3 months but it was just too much so I had to drop a few courses so I'm studying a bit less now while working full-time. I plan on keeping this job till the end of summer so I can focus on studying when the next semester starts in fall, of course I'll try to find some part-time job as well.

I also moved out to my own apartment 2½ months ago so I'm really happy that I have been working full-time because I needed a lot of cash for that. I also want to save up money for traveling as there are a lot of places I want to go to (Rome, New Zealand, somewhere in Asia, Greece, interrail in Eastern Europe, Argentina, America...) but unfortunately I'm pretty impulsive when it comes to money and I also drink and party more than I probably should so we'll see how that's going to work out.

Anyway, long story short, I'm really happy with how things right now and even though university isn't exactly everything I wanted it to be, I still think it was a good decision to go and the past two years of my life have been pretty much the best ones despite the last five months being really challenging and tiresome. I have to admit that I don't always take studying as seriously as I should and one of the reasons I don't quit university is because I have made some really great friends there (and again the fact I really don't know what I'd want to do if I wasn't studying) and I just want to enjoy my life right now without worrying too much about what's to come. I have always kinda lived in the moment without thinking much ahead so I'm not really too bothered that I'm more or less undecided what I want to do with my career despite being 23 years old already. I'll discover it sooner or later!