Which Way Next?

I'm a big believer in making choices and allowing them to play out but I am a very indecisive person who is always worried that I'm missing out on something great if I choose Option B over Option A. Social media doesn't help with this either as if I turn down something as simple as an offer of going out over sitting in front of Netflix in my pyjamas, within the hour there will be photos of my friends having a fantastic time. This is how it feels now my social media feeds mainly consist of friends graduating, Timehop photos from the day I, too would have graduated and extra special news of engagements, pregnancies and brand new swanky jobs in big cities beyond my friends wildest dreams in this current job market.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'd go as far as to say that I'm bitter because I am super happy for my friends' successes in whatever it is they have chosen but sometimes I do feel a little left behind. In some ways I am so thoroughly lucky to be able to call my sofa my workspace, to have two beautiful and creative little girls and a partner who loves me to my bones and in others? In others I think of graduating from university and of different career paths in a similar field situated in an office with real live people to bounce ideas off.

I don't think a full degree would make this any easier but I do wonder if there's a place for me. I've been told many times that people admire me for raising children, coping with a chronic condition and working as a freelancer but I feel like there's nothing to admire most of the time. I'm very lucky that I can make a living from the projects I work on but these culmination of decisions I've made since I finished school have my filled with trepidation. Is there a place for the woman who blagged her way into a few freelance jobs and has been doing it ever since without months of unpaid internships? Is there a place for someone without a refined skill set to be able to do not just what they want to do but also what they're physically capable of? I worry daily that all of this will end abruptly rather than ebb and flow as the work usually does and then...well, what then?

Often I also feel like I'm missing out. Until recently I never craved the cap and gown photo looking extraordinarily pleased with myself surrounded by family but am I missing out by not having that experience or the experience of a full academic education as a whole? Logically I think that no, life experience counts for a lot more for me personally but ideas infiltrate my mind bringing with them the emotional baggage I lug around containing the facts that I just don't have similar experiences to anyone else. I've worked in retail, in SEO, in social media (freelance in the last two still) but I lack the advantage of knowing how to conduct myself in a professional environment permanently because I am just so used to doing things by my own hand. I'm often described as being a person who doesn't play well with others - I love people and yet that doesn't come across when I need to be a team player as I have the mentality of someone who just gets on with it. My sounding board for ideas are people in the same job that I've never met face to face and it changes the dynamic exponentially even when in my head it just seems like common sense to be able to adapt that to a new environment.

I try to focus on what I've gained instead of what I lack - I know how to structure myself and meet deadlines and I know how to focus and work until the job is done whatever unsociable hours those may come to be. I know how to be confident in my own decisions both logistically and creatively, how to manage time and productivity, how to sell my ideas and also myself and really just how to keep going. All of these are amazing skills to have but when are they not enough? When does the balance come in to play that I lack because of the decisions I have made? It frightens me to realise that the decisions I made when I was eighteen have such a large impact on my life now and I'm not just talking about the decision to raise a child. Moments seem unimportant until they become monumental and shape you in a way that you weren't sure you wanted to be shaped in in the first place. I worry that I am entirely not enough.

I'm twenty five, everything is pretty scary and learning how to be an adult in this world is a lot more difficult than I ever would have imagined. I am responsible for people other than myself and I think that really is where my work ethic comes from - I have to support the people around me and if I don't keep going I'll fall behind and never be able to catch up. At twenty five my friends are into their careers - not quite at the bottom of the ladder anymore and feeling the pressures of climbing said ladder - and I feel like I'm just sitting at my desk and sofa writing things that I hope people will want to read.

I think a lot comes from understanding that it is really all relative. What may seem like something beautiful from the outside may be less so when you're in it and no doubt some of my friends who I feel are doing so well are feeling exactly the same as I am inside - terrified yet exhilarated by the prospect of the future. With so much negativity in every newspaper surrounding everything from world issues to society to finances we are all feeling the pressure in our respective lives and sometimes I feel like it's futile to be hopeful about expanding and more worthwhile to invest in adaptability to whatever comes next.

But me, I'm a hopeless dreamer and I'm putting all my eggs into the basket labelled 'Growth'. I want to expand, learn, be more, do more, see more, get more and work more. That's changed during the course of the past few years - before I'd be all for realism and adapting to the state of things in front of me but now? Now I understand that while I may be on my sofa I'm also on a different sofa than I was three years ago when I first put my fingers to the keyboard and tried to make a living. It expanded and grew into something I can confidently say makes me feel worthwhile. All that may change but my choices? I'm learning to be okay with them. I think I may be just fine.