So I'll get to the point and then try to explain why this is the single most important thing I've ever realized. It's right up there with "heroin is bad", another thing that you probably learned that in grade school. I'm a little slow, that's all.

Pete let me smoke some of his pot a week and a half ago, and I was watching some stupid advertisement on television, when for some reason I started thinking. This is how I explained it to Donna, sitting in a booth at Beuhlahland:

"You know how my father always used to tell me that unless I started when I was 6, and worked ten hours a day, and went to Harvard, I would never be the best photographer, artist, journalist, or whatever?

Well, what I never realized is that even if I never become the BEST photographer, I can still be a SECOND-RATE photographer."

I cannot express in writing the weight that has for me. It is monumental.

I mean, how many out of work photographers do you know? Out of work doctors? Out of work lawyers? Or whatever? All you have to do is PICK something, and DO IT. Even if I'm not a journalist for The New York Times, I can be a journalist for The Oregonian. Even if I'm not an anthropology professor at Reed, I can be a professor at some community college. It's a hell of a lot better than what I *am* doing.

It's not that I was previously turning up my nose at those "second-rate" careers. It's that I DID NOT KNOW that they existed, or how many of them there are. These careers are absolutely possible, even for me, even though I am twenty-six and am just now realizing what I should have known when I was eighteen and starting college.

Four years ago, when I was 22, I had a similar, but less earth-shaking realization. I started waking up to the fact that many things my father told me about the world, and careers in particular, were unnecessarily harsh. I saw that I was much more afraid of failure than those around me, and that it had paralyzed me to the point that I couldn't even do my homework because I was certain there was no point, because even if I graduated, no one in my chosen field would ever hire me. Four years ago I took the first baby step to realizing my beliefs were skewed. But I still saw the world like this: "There is a 30% chance that Becky will find a job in anthropology, and a 70% chance that she will become homeless and destitute, working at minimum wage." That was a marked improvement from my beliefs from age 0-22, during which time I believed that there was only a 5% chance that I would ever "make it."

This is all due to a communication error between my father and me. He didn't MEAN to make me so discouraged that I didn't even see the point in finishing college. But the world looks different when you're a child or teenager with no experience. He would tell me things I should do if I wanted to be extremely successful and #1 in my field. And I would HEAR: "Becky, if you don't do these things, you will NEVER be able to find ANY job in that field." He made the whole career field seem so narrow and exclusive -- I never understood that even if I didn't become "the best", I would still have a job, just not a super-amazing job. He wanted me to avoid the directionless path he'd taken: going to Yale, being uncertain of his goals, and ending up in a different career than his major, competing against people with more preparation. Of course, what did happen to me was far worse than what happened to him, far worse than anything he'd imagined.

But it's not too late!!

There IS enough room for every person in this world, in terms of having a career and making enough money to support yourself and your family. And unless you want to be a famous novelist, Hollywood actor, or astronaut, you CAN be the thing you most want to be. Sure, some people are unemployed at any given time, but everyone finds enough work to get along.

I know this is where you're thinking: So? It's hard to explain why this means so much to me. It is NOT because I've redefined success in my head, like I previously couldn't accept anything but the most prestigous career. I redefined what is possible. I never, until a week ago, thought that I could do anything I wanted to do, even at the "mediocre" level. That's why I've worked in restaurants for so many years (though I do enjoy the excitement as well) -- I stuck with the lowest common denominator of work, because I assumed I could do no better.

Now all I have to do is choose what I want to do and go back to school for that thing. This is what most people I know have been doing since they were a teenager. Take my brother. Journalism must run in our blood. He was never spectacular at school, and went to an average Wisconsin state school. His passion is sports, so he decided to be a sports writer. Now he's a journalism major, writing articles for the school paper, and our uncle is going to help him get a job at a his newspaper!

This is when I started crying when I was telling this to Donna, right in the middle of the restaurant, and I'm starting to cry again now, sitting in Powell's. It's not that I'm jealous of my brother, in any way. It's that he is the mirror image of what I could have done and I don't understand how this happened. We grew up in the same house, with the same parents. I had better grades and went to a "better" school. But somehow he realized he could do what he wanted to do! Why didn't I know that until now? Why did I just waste eight years believing I could never be a journalist?

Donna said, "But would you really go back and do things differently, and not have the life you've had?" Yes, I would. Definitely. I still would have made the same mistakes, done too many drugs, etc, but at least I would not have spent the first twenty-six years of my life believing that I could never do what I want. I would have finished college.

The important thing, now, is to stop crying and get on with my life. When I was talking to Donna, she asked: so what DO you want to do? We discussed several careers, including journalist, photographer, anthropologist, graphic designer, etc -- all the things I've dreamed about all these years -- but I think journalism is where my passion lies. So now I need to research schools and decide if I want to finish my anthro degree and then get a masters in journalism, or what.

So there you go. That is what I realized last Saturday. In the last week I've gotten a little bit more used to thinking like this, though it still makes me cry to think of how much time I've wasted. I have to let it sink in a bit more. It's hard to completely remake your belief system, even when you realize your old beliefs are totally false. But I can kind of feel the world shifting and making a space for me.