i really love birds
I just realized I've never really talked about what I'm doing with my life here, as in what field I've chosen to chase my whole life, so here's my first kind of sciencey post, with a side of quarter-ish life crisis.
I love birds. It's the natural consequence of growing up in the countryside, in a bedroom with windows bracketed by trees. I woke up to birdcalls every single morning, and it's still one of the things I miss most about home. The very first living thing I successfully identified myself as a child was a species of sunbird that lived in my family's garden. I trawled through countless lists of birds for it, and when I finally figured out what it was, I realized I wanted to keep doing something like that for the rest of my life.
And then I fell in love with marine animals, and land animals, and flowers, and trees, and pretty much every other living there is (except maybe centipedes). I loved beetles. I loved roses. I thought human bodies were pretty cool. I just thought organisms were pretty cool, and now that's essentially the driving mindset of my life as it is right now. Life is pretty cool!
Now I'm in college, studying biology. It's been brutal, but my main point still stands: life is pretty cool. I just don't know if I think humans or animals are cooler, which is the catalyst of my very long, neverending career crisis: medicine or wildlife research?
I'm running out of time to answer this question, which is ridiculous, because all you and I have is time. But I'm graduating soon, and I still need to figure out what I want to get an internship in and start building experience in, and it feels like the rest of my life hinges on this one choice.
I know that's ridiculous, too, because I got through the transition between high school and college just fine even when it felt like the world was ending, but don't you just get those moments where it feels like this, right here, right now, is the only thing that matters? I know I have the rest of my life to go after everything I want, but I don't know what I want to start with right now, because what if this is the only thing I ever get to do, after all?
I need to exercise the privilege of figuring out what I want to do with my life. It's a good thing, but nerve wracking all the same. My mom would call it a good problem to have. Maybe I should just call her.