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"Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t." --Baz Luhrmann

You know what they say about a woman's intuition? That's bullshit. My intuition is about as trustworthy as a bum selling homemade cookies to children on the streets. One minute I'll think I've chosen the perfect direction for myself. Job, location, everything seems to be falling into place. But then once I take a moment to step back and actually look at this so-called perfect direction, I've come to realize something--I have absolutely no idea what direction my life is going.

For the first 22 years of everyone's life, we are on autopilot. Starting with kindergarten, we are on the fast track to success up until high school graduation, where for some of us, the option to enter the real world is thrust in our faces. For the lucky few of us who reside somewhere in the category of "upper to middle class families," we don't have that choice, it's off to a four year university to take classes on subjects we have nothing but weak to mild interest in, simply to gain a sheet of paper validating the $40,000 a year our parents just shelled out.

So here's where things start to get scary--during what some people would consider to be the culmination of 17 years of education, graduation comes and goes in a blink of an eye, and all of a sudden, we are stamped with the "grown up" label and thrown flat on our asses into the real world.

Now the class of 2009 can be divided into two very simple categories: the ones who know what they want to do and the ones who don't. For the ones who do know, you can turn the autopilot switch back on, because here is the Cliffnotes version of how your life is going to go--you will find a somewhat appealing job that may or may not relate back to your college degree and inevitably, you will end up hating it, but continue to work at it because it's a lot easier to complain and do nothing than to quit and make a positive change for yourself. You will meet your future husband or wife, and find him or her somewhat appealing, but not exactly the sort spouse you had envisioned for yourself. You marry anyway. 2.5 kids, a dog, and a minivan later, and you are living the American dream. Are you happy? No. Are you successful? Not really. But hey, you've got everything you're supposed to have in life and maybe that's enough.

Going back to the categories, now we must discuss the ones who don't know what to do with their lives. Rather than hop on the bandwagon post graduation, they choose to explore their options a bit, perhaps moving back home temporarily in order to do so. For this group, anything and everything is an option, whether it be a teaching job in Istanbul or a permanent vacation in Australia. As a result of their pseudo bohemian actions, they get slammed by family and friends with colorful adjectives such as "lazy," "unmotivated," or "crazy," in some cases. But take a step back and notice for a second that the group labeling are the ones on autopilot and the group that doesn't know what they want still has the freedom to turn that switch off.

Naturally, I consider myself a member of the latter group, and as half cocked as it sounds, there are some days I look at plane flights to far off places and think, "What if I bought a ticket right now, left, and never came back?" And while I may not know where I'll go or what I'll do, I know one thing--I will never be a person who lets other people make those decisions for me. So if that means quitting my job and joining an indigenous tribe in Africa tomorrow, you can call me crazy, but I'll call you boring, because I'll know I've lived my life more fully in one day than you will for the rest of yours.